Logging in, add-ons, saved variables and name changes... things learned while fixing an issue...

Tavore1138

I went through some serious pain with logins over the last few months and as a consequence learned a few things that I thought I'd share in case they help others.

The symptom was pretty simple - 303 time out after 303 time out when trying to load from the character screen, most days I would get in after a number of repeats, some I wouldn't.

The cause was also quite simple - my character was taking longer to load than the timeout window allowed.

I'd disabled addons and been through a number of troubleshooting steps with support to no avail but in the last round someone actually got me to rename the add-ons and saved variables folders and try then. Instant fix, close ticket, move on.

But I wasn't happy so I dug around a bit in these folders and what I found and then tested suggests that the add-ons were not the problem, the saved variables were.

I don't write add-ons so won't even try to explain the whys of this but basically each add-on generates a .lua file which contains information that makes the add-on work for you. It contains things that can be real basic like the screen position you sit your mini-map in to a list of everyone you have killed or been killed by in PvP. Some do this account wide, others per character. But basically when you load a lot of this stuff is loading with you.

So back to my problem - I added back all my addons 1 by 1 to see if any particular one of them was the problem. No dice, still loading fine after they were all back on.

So I started looking at this .lua files and found a couple of things.

• They retained information for every character I had ever created and then deleted.
• They retained information from my original username that I changed ages ago.
• My wife plays too with her own account and because she once logged in using my PC when hers was playing up her info was also in these files.
• There were some random partial versions of my @accountname in there too dated around the time I changed name (maybe when I tried logging in while the name was being changed???)

Anyway these files had a truck load of stale and incorrect info which presumably was being parsed when I was loading.

So I added these version of the .luas back in and back to the 303's I went.

I then spent some time editing out all the old account names and deleted characters (very carefully because while I don't code I do script and know how much damage a misplaced bit of punctuation or missing bracket can cause... Notepad++ is your friend) and after all this my load times were fine again.

So basically stale and incorrect information in your saved variable can seriously screw up your load times and make it seems as if your addons are messed up so it's worth clearing them up from time to time.

TL:DR Look after your .lua files and they will look after you.

feyii

If you are not afraid of configuring your addons anew, you can also just delete the saved variables for each addon, as they will be generated again, when you login the next time. Just with the default settings.

But for configuration heavy addons it might be less problematic to just edit the lua files manually, as you have done, to delete old and outdated content.

coplannb16_ESO

Master Merchant can also greatly affect your login time (or the time after login needed to actually be able to do things).

would be cool if we could configure enabled addons by different conditions, e.g.:

- normal overland: all addons enabled
- BGs/Cyrodil: none (or only kill tracker, AvA allerts, whatever)
- Trial: Raid notifier

Loc2262

Each addon saves its configuration and data in (a) separate LUA file(s). So if you have trouble with one, check out which one it is.

Renaming/deleting that individual LUA file will reset the configuration for that particular addon. It will be automatically recreated with default settings upon next login. If you're unsure which file belongs to which addon, you can use the PC-based addon manager "Minion", which also has a function to delete configuration for individual addons.

Prime candidates for login timeouts are usually things like Master Merchant / Arkadius Trade Tools, since those have really HUGE sales database files (currently 20 MB on my system). Those have to be parsed upon login, and in case of corruption, can certainly take longer than the server timeout.

Tavore1138

@feyii - I did initially just install from scratch again but it annoyed me that the add-ons themselves seemed to be fine so I wanted to understand what the root cause had been so I started rooting around in the files... the curse of working in IT

@coplannb16_ESO Master Merchant comes with an option to load data after you have logged on rather than during - well worth turning it on, tends to cause a serious slow down after you've been logged in for a minute or so but as long as you haven't charged straight into combat that is probably fine. Some like Combat Metrics have a 'light' option for places where you need to squeeze every last bit of performance to beat lag etc.

Interesting to see people already seem to know about this stuff though - is there somewhere where this knowledge is freely available or is it just things people have picked up when fixing their own troubles?

coplannb16_ESO

Yes I know. thats what I implied by the part in brackets.

Dont_do_drugs

Loc2262 wrote: »

Prime candidates for login timeouts are usually things like Master Merchant / Arkadius Trade Tools, since those have really HUGE sales database files (currently 20 MB on my system). Those have to be parsed upon login, and in case of corruption, can certainly take longer than the server timeout.

never heard of a timneout problem by att, actually att has been built to prevent those timeout-issues.

zaria

coplannb16_ESO wrote: »

Master Merchant can also greatly affect your login time (or the time after login needed to actually be able to do things).

would be cool if we could configure enabled addons by different conditions, e.g.:

- normal overland: all addons enabled
- BGs/Cyrodil: none (or only kill tracker, AvA allerts, whatever)
- Trial: Raid notifier

Yes, MM especially should been an toggle.