Someone is apparently running a faulty system that spawns and fills hundreds of storage minecarts. I regularly get messages over 250+ storage minecarts on the server.

I would like that this setup is removed ASAP. The moment I find out who is running this, and I am spending considerable time doing so, the person will be insta-banned.

A plugin we are using changed it’s command structure. When making lot ownership changes, I need to tell the server that something changed and tell it to reload the lot ownerships to activate the changes. Since the plugin update, I cannot simply reload all lot ownerships for all worlds, I have to specify a single world to reload.

So since the upgrade, whenever someone got a new lot or added someone to a lot, the currently used command to reload failed, and the server would not know about it until a restart, when all lot ownerships would be re-read. I fixed the dozen occurrences in the code now where lot ownership are reloaded (contests, etc). I could not test all different options but since it’s quite straight forward, everything should be fine.

If you come across someone who cannot access a lot after a change has been done, but the name is on the 2D map, please ask them what exactly they tried to do and send a support ticket. Then I can check the code and fix it.

I fixed the aether. Some strange bug prevented it from loading, I found a workaround to get it going. People who died when teleporting to the Wither arena should be fine now, too.

I am finally back from my trip and planning to do the upgrade to 1.6.2 this weekend. I have by now received updated versions for most of the plugins and also had a chance to do a test run with a 1.6.2 server, saw which ones are failing and seen new updates coming in for those, so it’s looking good. So most likely Saturday will be the time for the update, let’s hope everything will work!

I have removed over 1000 minecRts from the server now and also heard that some players were toying with large scale TNT contraptions before the server crashed… I will monitor both uses from now on. Please be sensible, or I will have to disable some features.

I just re-setup the ramdisk (should automate that sometime…) and restarted the server. So it should be fine and running now. Not sure if the problems of the last 24 hours will be back.

To give you some background:

I was noticed by some users that there are some issues. Admittedly a bit late, I would be happy if you guys are more proactive with this. I think you guys are trying to be nice, but do not worry, if I do not have time, I will act accordingly. If the server is down or crashing repeatedly, please tell me. I won’t be mad at anyone.

So I check on the server and could not find anything specific. But I also found that some off-server processes (simple stuff, really) would take an intense amount of time. So I assumed that the hard disk might have some faulty places, since this kind of stuff normally takes a lot of time to read/write, but the processor and the rest of the system would appear to be fine.

So I created a file that would force a disk check on reboot and rebooted the machine. It’s impossible to run that during the machine running. I was not aware how long a check would take on 2 1TB disks, so I was not suspicious until I posted a question on reddit and finally contacted tech support who was also not able to connect to the machine. They rebooted it, did a file system check and did not have any issues as it seems. I then restarted the webserver through my mobile phone. I could not install the ramdisk howver since the SSH app on my phone is not really convenient. Since I am back at my laptop now, I could restart the MC server after setting up the ramdisk.

Now the only thing left is to check the file system logfile and to hope that the issues are resolved through the check. If not, we will have to disable maps one-by-one to find out where the issue is in the end. Let’s see. Please tell me if you see the same lag/kicks/reboots occurring.

I have now managed to restart the machine. Since I am on the way, I cannot restart the mc server right now, will do so when I get back to my laptop tonight (in 3-4 hours).

I have completed a file system check, and have yet to see the logfiles to see if there was an issue. If there was not, the search for the issue continues..

I am trying to find and fix the issue that has been lagging the server over the recent 24 hours…

Since the map seems to be corrupted in one place or the other, I am now re-rendering the whole 3D map and see if that returns any spots with issues.

I will be traveling over the coming 3 weeks (half business, half private) and therefore can put only minimal attention on the server. Should something crash, please still send me emails etc as usual. But do not panic if I do not log on too often.

After many attempts to slowly push people over the edge of a cliff without them complaining too much, I finally managed to coax everyone from the paradise-like skylands to the mob-infested hell-hole called “aether”.

Thanks to everyone who has participated early on and thanks to everyone else for finally moving yourselves :D. Just kidding of course.

I think I removed the skylands references from the code wherever I could. If you find it mentioned somewhere, please let me know.

We are closing in on the big date, with about 30 days and 800 users short to the goal!I am looking for suggestions what to do on this event, so please comment!

I have processed now a batch of recommendations for promotions. This time, the promoted users to architect are (in no special order):

• Pagreifer
• kzr_nvd
• Iamjonno23
• magmacube_king
• moirdeth
• Kod
• HoldenGs

And patpat2211 to master!

Congratulations!

The server is back up now for some time, but I have not found the place on the map yet that caused the problem. So there is a chance that this comes back.

Sorry guys, the server is down. There is some part of the map which got corrupted and I am not at home to fix it. Once I get home, I will repair it, but until then, you will have to -GASP- go outside and do something in the fresh air….

…

There are new IRC Commands for the elders:

I have just fixed another corrupted lot, the problem was the same as last time but this time it was riedi73’s. I reverted his lots to the status of 24 hours ago and the issue was solved…. no idea where these come from, I hope those get less once the final bukkit versions come out.

I enabled a new hunger feature. The game will shrink the world border by one block per minute, to a minimum radius of 20 blocks. This is to prevent a game where 6 people start, a huge map is created and the leftover two get stuck in opposite corners for hours without doing anything to bring the game forward.

The setting of a smaller world border is triggered by people joining, leaving or switching worlds. So if there is no activity on the server beyond the theoretical maximum duration of the game, the world will keep the same size. If there is a lot of activity, it will shrink every minute by one block, if there is less activity, it will shrink in larger jumps. This is to prevent to have too many triggers when the server is busy that might overload the server.

If you are cornered by a shrinkage underground, you should be teleported to the surface. So be aware about the time of the game, and do not corner yourself! It should not kill you however.

This is still up for testing. Please try it out so we can adjust it when necessary.

I want to try to get rid of the skylands again. Here is the list of users who still have a lot there:

• blakavalanche
• hydroflame62
• colossal92
• luklukk

If you do not anything from that, tell me (here in a comment or a ticket) and I will reset it. If there is anything on the lot that you would like to transfer over to another lot, please mark it with red wool, send me the coordinates of one corner and the target corner etc so I can reliably, easily copy & paste it. This means no “the building on the lot to emp_a1” but rather something along the lines of

I marked all 8 corners of a spaceship in lot sky_a1. The lower-right corner is at -100, 10 -150. This corner should be at -200, 20, 300 in lot aet_01, there is a blue wool block in the spot. There is no need to rotate the item.

If you have anything there that you still need and that does not need to involve me for copying, please move it and I will reset the lot then. If there are any other issues, feel free to contact me so we can find a solution. I would be happy to remove the world within the next 2 weeks.

I now added walkways to the map that we use to reset aether lots. This means that newly reset lots will have the walkways now, too. Of course there are still some walkways in the current aether that are missing those walkways. If you get one of these lots, you can either build them yourself or ask me, then I will make them.

You can now deposit items in the end! This means that you can now win a dragon egg and actually take it home!