Connection failed: the semaphore timeout has expired

[Yomar]

I tried the querry thing after that I read about it in this thread, but it does not work for me.
It only helped in the way, that now I know in advance that I will get the disconnection message.
When I querry, and get no message, it means that I already lost connection, so at least I can quit, if not I just get that semaphore message, and get disconbected anyway.

[Ado64]

You have to send /q before your connection has already been closed! Just to make a test: create a new game, send /q every minute for 15min, go back to the lobby and I'm pretty sure you won't get that message

[gnombat]

One thing to keep in mind about the error message - it appears that this is just Microsoft's (cryptic) way of telling you that you lost your network connection. So it could potentially have multiple different causes. In Ado64's case it seems to occur only in specific situations, when the connection is idle for 10 minutes, so it looks like it's a problem with the network closing idle connections. I'm not sure if this is exactly the same situation Yomar is seeing or if it's something different.

(There's a description of ERROR_SEM_TIMEOUT at https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnew ... -00/?p=483 - I think this is the same thing as the "semaphore timeout" error message.)

[Yomar]

Every minute?
Hard to do while im concentrated playing, cecking everything and planing my strategy.
Probably I will forget to do it every minute, plus reaching out for my keyboard is a bit hard, I have to stand up every time to write something, I had to setup my pc in that way, because of soace costrains.

[Ravana]

That is why I offered to leave bot online that you could message once and would then keep sending you something at certain interval.

[Yomar]

Yeah, good idea Ravana, what have I to do exactly?
Send a message to the bot with your nick?
Can my friends take advantage if the bot too?

[Ravana]

Going to sleep, but I can set it up in the evening (since the first time I offered it was not wanted I did not do it yet).

I see it working so that you send botLaela message "!ping 1" to ask to be pinged every 1 min. Once ready, it will be available for all.

[Ado64]

Every minute?
Hard to do while im concentrated playing, cecking everything and planing my strategy.
Probably I will forget to do it every minute, plus reaching out for my keyboard is a bit hard, I have to stand up every time to write something, I had to setup my pc in that way, because of soace costrains.

It was just a test, to make sure your root cause was the same of mine. Anyway if the ravana's solution works fine actually would be much better!

[Tad_Carlucci]

Question: is this really a Wesnoth problem? Is there anyone not in Italy experiencing this issue?

[Ravana]

Seems to work now. Message bot_Laela !ping to subscribe (every 1 min), !ping 0 to unsubscribe, and !ping x to subscribe to pings every x minutes.

[Pentarctagon]

Question: is this really a Wesnoth problem? Is there anyone not in Italy experiencing this issue?

I think it's as much a question of whether or not it makes sense to try to solve it on Wesnoth's side, even if it's really the ISP's fault. If there's something relatively trivial that we can do to fix it that doesn't impact anything else negatively, then it's more a question of "why not?".

Perhaps something that could be enabled in Advanced Preferences to automatically do /q (or something that accomplishes the same), for example.

[Tad_Carlucci]

I don't have a problem with Ravana's quick-and-dirty work-around. I would prefer, however, to determine exactly what is going wrong.

If it's simply that Telecom Italia made some lame-brained "optimization" a few weeks ago, that's one thing. But if it's a problem in wesnothd, then we need to fix it. Unfortunately, at this point, all we can say for sure is that giving the users who are noticing the issue the option to "ping" the official MP server seems to make them happy. The problem is, it feels like all we're doing it slapping some grease on the squeaky wheel and not fixing the bent axle.

[gnombat]

Well, I can reproduce the issue by following the steps outlined in the initial post (as I described above), and I'm not in Italy (if that was not clear already). The only difference is that I can see the issue after 5 minutes instead of 10 minutes; but this makes sense to me, because I know from previous experience that my network's idle connection timeout is exactly 5 minutes (which I've observed using SSH). The only thing I don't know for certain is whether the Wesnoth network protocol is actually idle when waiting for a game to start or when waiting for a move to be made (but I strongly suspect that it is).

[Yomar]

I don't have a problem with Ravana's quick-and-dirty work-around. I would prefer, however, to determine exactly what is going wrong.

If it's simply that Telecom Italia made some lame-brained "optimization" a few weeks ago, that's one thing. But if it's a problem in wesnothd, then we need to fix it. Unfortunately, at this point, all we can say for sure is that giving the users who are noticing the issue the option to "ping" the official MP server seems to make them happy. The problem is, it feels like all we're doing it slapping some grease on the squeaky wheel and not fixing the bent axle.

I have the problem, and I'm not using that operator.

[Yomar]

I just played and was disconnected even with the automated messages, bot.

But now it happens much lesser.
Still I got the message, like four or five times today.