About the tracker

BigRedH doesn't run a tracker of its own. Every hour it asks the Hotline trackers below for their lists, merges them, and checks that each server answers. Servers a tracker lists for decoration (welcome lines and dividers) are left out.

• hltracker.com
• tracker.preterhuman.net
• hotline.kicks-ass.net
• saddle.dyndns.org

The file index

BigRedH logs into each server as a guest and writes down the name, size and kind of each file and folder a guest can see, so you can search across every server. Nothing is downloaded. To download, connect to the server with a Hotline client.

• About every 60 days. Each server's file list is looked at again roughly every two months, never more often.
• Slowly. It logs in as TrackerCheck and opens one folder at a time, at most one a second, and slower still if the server is slow to answer. If anything goes wrong it waits before trying again. Servers on the same machine are done one after another, never at once. A very big server is done over more than one visit.
• Archives are left alone. If a server's files are exactly the same as the last time, it's treated as an archive and isn't indexed again. A server's owner can also say it's an archive.
• Never, if you'd rather not. A server can be left out of the index permanently, and whatever was indexed is removed.

What's changed from the old tracker

The old BigRedH tracker indexed every server's files about every five days. The new one:

• indexes each server about every 60 days instead of every 5;
• goes at one folder a second at most, and never opens more than one connection to a server, or to the servers on one machine, at a time;
• stops indexing archives: a server that hasn't changed between two visits isn't visited for its files again;
• lets server owners opt out permanently, or mark their server as an archive, with one short form;
• keeps the file lists in the open, on GitHub, so anyone can see exactly what was recorded and when.

Population

Every six hours, BigRedH logs into each listed server that the trackers say has users on it (empty servers aren't visited) as TrackerCheck, reads the user list, and leaves. The Population page shows who was on and the names seen in the last 30 days, with their icons from the Hotline Wiki's icon archive. Names are only kept on this site, for 30 days, and aren't saved anywhere else. To be left off, ask on the Hotline Discord. Servers that keep out of the file index are skipped here too.

For server owners

Use the indexing form on GitHub to have your server never indexed (and what's indexed removed), marked as an archive (indexed once, then left alone), or indexed again after it changed. To take your server off the list or off the Population page, or your name off Population, use the removal request. Both need a free GitHub account; you can also just ask on the Hotline Discord.

Without asking: make a folder named noindex anywhere on your server. When the indexer sees it, it stops, records nothing, and removes what it had.

Getting listed

Register your server with any of the trackers above and it shows up here within the hour.

The data

Everything the tracker collects is saved to GitHub as JSON: the server list every day, and every server's files every month. This hour's list is also at servers.json and live.json.