I cannot remember how long I am using Teamspeak. But since I use it I don’t like it. I looked in many alternatives including Ventrilo and Mumble but in the end we always went back to Teamspeak. It seems to be a standard for gamers today. Now that TS3 is released we wanted to give it a try.
How to test new software
If I test a new server software I start my good old IBM T21 notebook, login and run one of my shell scripts “createvserver foobar 10.0.0.3” and after a short time I have a new shell and start installing the new server.
I downloaded Teamspeak 3 server 32bit, unziped it and started the server
Error
I love it when the first lines include a error messages and a notice that you will only have limited functionally.
root@ts2test:/opt/teamspeak3-server_linux-x86 # ./ts3server_linux_x86 Logging started 2009-12-23 14:06:58.260466|INFO |ServerLibPriv | | Server Version: 3.0.0-beta5 [Build: 9462] 2009-12-23 14:06:58.261447|INFO |DatabaseQuery | | dbPlugin name: SQLite3 plugin, (c)TeamSpeak Systems GmbH 2009-12-23 14:06:58.261798|INFO |DatabaseQuery | | dbPlugin version: 3.6.4 2009-12-23 14:06:58.281278|WARNING |Accounting | | Unable to find valid license key, falling back to limited functionality 2009-12-23 14:06:58.284054|ERROR |Accounting | | failed to register accounting service 2009-12-23 14:06:58.285546|ERROR |ServerLibPriv | | Server() error while starting servermanager, error: instance check error
This is everything I got.
Doing some research I found a problem that was similar. After running TS3 as root you cannot just start it as a user because you don’t have permissions to write / read / delete a file in /dev/shm TS3 creates.
Got you
Reading the problem with the solution to delete /dev/shm/foobar and everything should be okay I noticed why it cannot work on my test system.
Using Linux-vServer you cannot just mount a tmpfs or create files in /dev/shm. So Teamspeak3 will not work in a vServer. Running it on my host system works. So definitely the problem is /dev/shm.
It took nearly 3 days to find a answer. It was a common problem and many people ran into it. Especially those who just own a vserver with root access. If you register your Teamspeak3 server for free and add a license file to your installation it works.
If your server finds a license TS3 doesn’t use /dev/shm anymore.
Short explanation
The guys from Teamspeak really use /dev/shm to check if there is only one instance of your server running. This is what you are allowed to do with the free version without the free license.
I don’t believe that I am the only one who thinks that this is one of the stupidest ideas ever.
License
There are three different ways to run your Teamspeak3 server.
- Without a license. You can run one server with 32 slots I think
- With a free license. You can run ten servers with 5xx slots
- You pay for it.
No matter what some marketing guys try to sell us – you register your server for free to get free features you don’t have without registering your server. And if you don’t register your server you have to deal with obscure programming mechanics that cause errors on many vservers / wanna be root servers.
After all those bullets on my list why I don’t like Teamspeak there is a new one on top of it.
Configuration
You can configure you server using your client. This is basically a great idea. The webinterface just sucked.
But sadly the new configuration is no advantage.
- if you add a group you have to set 100ths of different privileges
- if you want to add users to a group you have to use strange tokens (long strings) or drag & drop them – come on. drag & drop? 2 windows needed to add someone to a group?
- if you are looking for something trivial like “only this group should be allowed to join that channel” – it isn’t implemented or hard to find
- 50+ new features / buzzwords no one knows
Configuring TS3 is not funny. I’d rather configure sendmail.
The only good thing is that the client finally got a nice look & feel.
Crashes
Some of my friends that are still into hardcore gaming reported that some games just crash or disconnect while running Teamspeak 3 (client). I don’t see how anything like that can happen if they didn’t screw up the client but it seems to be a common problem shared by many people.
I’m looking forward to some solutions, bug reports and flame wars on their forums.
Best idea ever
Release a beta and take down your site and support forums. I cannot say how impressed I was by that decision.
Let the users fight against our software till one of them gives up or cries around in other support forums so we won’t have to answer questions and help those guys who test our software.
Nearly as intelligent as a bug tracker that is only for internal use,…
If you don’t want to try TS3 but want a conclusion how it feels using the client and server: it is like Windows ME and AOL Dialin Software having a retarded baby that was dropped to often.