Instance check error / failed to register local accounting service on Linux

[Arzellus]

That sounds very much like a shared memory and files permission permission issue. Or said in short... the user you created to run the teamspeak server is not allowed to use the systems shared memory. The shared memory is needed as long as there is no valid license to run the local accounting. It's the way teamspeak checks if other server instances are running on the local system.

So do a quick check of the permissions of the shared memory.

I forgot to add it in the original post, sorry. That's something i saw in another thread, and to be sure it is ok, i setted permissions to 777 on this specific directory (/dev/shm). I also checked with a ps -aux if another instance wasn't already running, but it's ok. Even after this, i've the same problem.

Result of ls -l : http://puu.sh/5hekF.png

However, i mounted tmpfs multiple times (using mount -t tmpfs tmpfs /dev/shm) : http://puu.sh/5hefp.png
Do you think it could be the problem ?

That sounds very much like a shared memory and files permission permission issue. Or said in short... the user you created to run the teamspeak server is not allowed to use the systems shared memory. The shared memory is needed as long as there is no valid license to run the local accounting. It's the way teamspeak checks if other server instances are running on the local system.

So do a quick check of the permissions of the shared memory.

I forgot to say that it was already something i did some search about. In fact, the shared memory is in a folder that is totally free to access (777) : http://puu.sh/5hekF
So, my user shouldn't have any problem with it.

However, i may have mounted too many times this shared memory : http://puu.sh/5hefp
I wonder if the problem could come from here. Restarting the server could fix the problem then... But i would be sure before trying it. Is there another way to unmount all those shared memory ?

[Barungar]

Did you try "umount /dev/shm"? This works for me...
Also normally I have only one mount on "/dev/shm" ...

Also acording to you screen shot /dev/shm does not have "777" in chmod... it has definitly 1777. Which still is okay.

What exactly is the error in the log file?

[Arzellus]

Did you try "umount /dev/shm"? This works for me...
Also normally I have only one mount on "/dev/shm" ...

Also acording to you screen shot /dev/shm does not have "777" in chmod... it has definitly 1777. Which still is okay.

What exactly is the error in the log file?

Yeah ! Finally !

So, the problem was the shared memory was mounted multiple times. After unmounting it and mounting it only one time, it finally worked.

It was hard to find ! Thank you very much Barungar

[Arzellus]

Hello,

Coming here after being mad as hell. As you can see with the title, it's is a pretty common error. However, I still didn't fix it, no matter what I did, including :

• Following this help (Doesn't work)
• Following this thread
• Checking permissions on my ts3 folder. The whole directory, and every files are ok, and there is nothing weird like a file owned by root (http://puu.sh/5h8W5.png). Same thing on all subdirectories.
• Trying to download multiples times the archive (In case of corrupted files)

So, since I already got a similar problem here, I tried to follow the same solution, but, it doesn't work anymore. I'm still pretty sure it's a problem with shared memory. My ts3 server is on a VPS, and I had to reboot it some hours ago, and the server refused to restart. Like the previous problem, I still can run it as root, but not as my special user.

The previous solution was to unmount the shared memory, then try to mount + start the server, but it doesn't work actually. The console tells me it's started, but a status command will tell me it seems to have died. Running the server as root is something I don't want to do, so... If you have a better solution for me, I'm listening.

Oh, and if it can helps : I mount/unmount the shared memory as root, since my user can't do it (mount: only root can do that). Does it could be related to the problem ?

[BradNunchr]

Okay, SO I just setup a teamspeak 3 server on my Cent OS 5 32bit VPS and I try start it but it just dies as soon as it starts
Log file -

2014-06-30 09:23:00.174311|INFO    |ServerLibPriv |   | TeamSpeak 3 Server 3.0.10.3 (2014-01-01 16:28:39)
2014-06-30 09:23:00.174430|INFO    |ServerLibPriv |   | SystemInformation: Linux 2.6.32-042stab090.5 #1 SMP Sat Jun 21 00:15:09 MSK 2014 i686 Binary: 32bit
2014-06-30 09:23:00.174464|INFO    |ServerLibPriv |   | Using hardware aes
2014-06-30 09:23:00.175475|INFO    |DatabaseQuery |   | dbPlugin name:    SQLite3 plugin, Version 2, (c)TeamSpeak Systems GmbH
2014-06-30 09:23:00.175518|INFO    |DatabaseQuery |   | dbPlugin version: 3.7.3
2014-06-30 09:23:00.175803|INFO    |DatabaseQuery |   | checking database integrity (may take a while)
2014-06-30 09:23:00.197837|WARNING |Accounting    |   | Unable to find valid license key, falling back to limited functionality
2014-06-30 09:23:00.198044|ERROR   |Accounting    |   | failed to register local accounting service
2014-06-30 09:23:00.198080|ERROR   |ServerLibPriv |   | Server() error while starting servermanager, error: instance check error

[Barungar]

Use search... your problem was discussed a myriad of times in this forum and is as old as /dev/shm.

[BradNunchr]

Could you please just help, Ive searched, im new to ts3 ...

[BradNunchr]

The search function helped me, sorry D:

[Barungar]

The "/dev/shm" part was meant as searching and solution hint... I think you got it at last.

[BradNunchr]

But i copied what the server_quickstart.txt said:
In some cases, the server process terminates on startup and the error message reads
"Server() error while starting servermanager, error: instance check error".

As long as you don't have a license key embededded we make sure you only run exactly
one instance of the TS3 server free unregistered version. We use shared memory to
facilitate the communication to detect other running instances, which requires tmpfs
to be mounted at /dev/shm. If you (for whatever reason) do not have this mounted, the
above error will occur.

To fix this problem, the following commands or file edits need to be done as root user
(or using something like sudo). This is a temporary fix until your next reboot.

mount -t tmpfs tmpfs /dev/shm

Now, to make sure this mount is done automatically upon reboot edit the file /etc/fstab
and add the line:

tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0

then I rebooted my vps and its not working anymore
Latest log

2014-06-30 09:43:37.031520|INFO    |ServerLibPriv |   | TeamSpeak 3 Server 3.0.10.3 (2014-01-01 16:28:39)
2014-06-30 09:43:37.031640|INFO    |ServerLibPriv |   | SystemInformation: Linux 2.6.32-042stab090.5 #1 SMP Sat Jun 21 00:15:09 MSK 2014 i686 Binary: 32bit
2014-06-30 09:43:37.031671|INFO    |ServerLibPriv |   | Using hardware aes
2014-06-30 09:43:37.032625|INFO    |DatabaseQuery |   | dbPlugin name:    SQLite3 plugin, Version 2, (c)TeamSpeak Systems GmbH
2014-06-30 09:43:37.032667|INFO    |DatabaseQuery |   | dbPlugin version: 3.7.3
2014-06-30 09:43:37.032947|INFO    |DatabaseQuery |   | checking database integrity (may take a while)
2014-06-30 09:43:37.056082|WARNING |Accounting    |   | Unable to find valid license key, falling back to limited functionality
2014-06-30 09:43:37.058573|ERROR   |Accounting    |   | failed to register local accounting service
2014-06-30 09:43:37.058618|ERROR   |ServerLibPriv |   | Server() error while starting servermanager, error: instance check error

[Barungar]

You should have checked if shm is mounted elsewhere... recently there was a case (search function!!) in this forum where an user had quite the same issue. shm was not mounted von /dev/shm but on /run/shm. This didn't work for teamspeak and also his vps got unbootable as he changed the fstab file because shm was mounted and his linux didn't seem to like double mounting shm.

[ANR Daemon]

Since it is a rented VPS, your first course, when encountering system configuration issues, should be to file a ticket to tech support staff asking for clarification and possible advice.
Your contract may be not including direct configuration assistance (i.e. they won't make changes for you, if it is in your land), but they should at least explain, what is going in, and may be suggest a solution, that would not break the container operation.

Just to make an example, I've had 2 issues with my friend's VPS, where in one, it was required to make adjustments on the host system, that support whole VPS cluster, but my argument was sound, and they did the requested changes in a next scheduled maintenance window. The other issue was a simple clarification question, and after receiveng the answer, I were able to adjust configuration to my needs.

[OraBrush]

When I run my server under anyone that is not root, I get the error:

Server() error while starting servermanager, error: instance check error

Now, I know the fix for this is to be sure that /dev/shm is mounted - it is mounted, the problem is is that I can't access the directory (not even as root; so why can root run TS without being stopped?)

I can't access the directory because, I assume, the VPS I am on is running more than just myself so every time I try to access it, I get the following message (and I am paraphrasing here): "Too many levels of symbolic links"

So, what I want to know is how can I run the TS server or can I?

[Barungar]

As root you should be able to access any directory.
You'll should check the permissions on /dev/shm and correct them if necessary.
Something like this should solve your issue:

drwxrwxrwx 2 root root       40 May 27 08:30 shm

You can get this with:

chmod 777 /dev/shm
chown root:root /dev/shm

[ANR Daemon]

I would advice against altering system settings without full knowledge of the effects.
The best course of action would be to raise a support ticket with your VPS hosting provider to amend this issue.