I have noticed this bug when I first starting hosting a terraria server for 1.2 on windows using the dedicated server executable, it continued through 1.3 and I've again seen it recently on the linux dedicated server with 1.4.0.4. What happens is I start a server with maximum of 6 active players and play on the server with 1 other person on and off over the course of a few days. It then seems that the server gets connections from random IPs (as seen in the dedicated server console) that are doing port scans, not actual legitimate players, (one of the ones recently: 167.99.109.99 | DigitalOcean LLC | AbuseIPDB) and this seems to up the number of active players even though no player has actually joined, then after this I am unable to connect because I get the message that the server is full, when it is not. This has happened twice since the release of 1.4 on the linux system, the first time the terraria server started using 100% CPU constantly and actually trying to exit out from the server was very slow, saving the world for example took an incredibly long time, the second time there was no 100% constant CPU usage and exiting out was fast. The workaround when it occurs is to restart the server but it's a bit annoying.
Both the windows and linux systems I tested this were running on a server as VMs (ESXi), the windows one had 4 virtual CPUs with 4GB total system RAM, the linux one has 8 virtual CPUs with 6GB total system RAM. The server was running on a non-standard port, not the default. The dedicated server executables for both OS's were downloaded direct from the terraria website and no mods were used. There is no scheduled automatic restart for the server, i.e. once it starts, it only gets stopped/reset for maintaince of server software.
Both the windows and linux systems I tested this were running on a server as VMs (ESXi), the windows one had 4 virtual CPUs with 4GB total system RAM, the linux one has 8 virtual CPUs with 6GB total system RAM. The server was running on a non-standard port, not the default. The dedicated server executables for both OS's were downloaded direct from the terraria website and no mods were used. There is no scheduled automatic restart for the server, i.e. once it starts, it only gets stopped/reset for maintaince of server software.
