Improve handling of board lock expiry

RTSYork / VLAB

The RTS Virtual Lab

https://wiki.york.ac.uk/display/RTS/The+RTS+Virtual+Lab

GNU General Public License v3.0

9 stars 2 forks source link

Improve handling of board lock expiry #13

Closed RussellJoyce closed 4 years ago

RussellJoyce commented 6 years ago

Currently when a lock expires its associated board is unlocked in the database, but the user can remain connected until that board is randomly reallocated, at which point their connection is suddenly killed.

Two better alternatives would be:

Immediately disconnect a user when their lock expires
Only reallocate an unlocked but used board if there are no free boards of that type available

RussellJoyce commented 5 years ago

Second option seems most fair. Having three explicit board states instead of two: locked, in-use and free. In-use state may still need a timeout though, although this could be far longer than a lock. A least-recently used ordering would also make things more fair (and share the board load better).