Bukkit (the system, built on the normal (vanilla) minecraft server, that allows all our plugins and non-vanilla stuff to run) has released the first developer builds for 1.7.2. So what is keeping us from upgrading?

Well, as you can see in the graphic, there are still tons of bugs in it. The red line is the number of reported bugs, the green one is the resolved amount of bugs. Since the first dev version was released 1 day ago, people have been reporting bugs that need to be fixed until the first stable version will be released. The issue for us is that plugin developers need to fix their plugins to work with the new version, but since it will still change a lot (because they need to fix all those bugs), it does not really make sense to start working on the plugins before the biggest of them are fixed. So we have to first wait for the biggest bugs in Bukkit to be fixed, then for the plugin authors to fix their plugins. Please stand by and be patient.

In the meantime I will see what plugins still work and if I can try again to make a new map for the empire. So as you can see, I am frequently monitoring the situation so that we can upgrade as soon as possible.

I have found a module that lets you generate a heatmap from data and combined it with the previously mentioned location data captured during lag.

I also added a new link to the 2D maps where one can switch any map to a heatmap to see those new maps. Again, this is not a 1:1 locator for lag, specially not until we have at least 1-2 weeks of data. But then we can use it as a really good indicator where the issue is caused. The heat map will update with the other maps once a day.

I have now programmed a new function that records user locations when lag is high into a database. Then, when we render the 2D maps, it will count the amount of times users have been inside each lot at times of lag. This will be written into the map with a number.

So if you check out your lot on the 2D map, you might see a “Lag: 5” behind the lot name. Of course this does not necessarily mean something. It could mean that you are online whenever someone else causes lag. Or that you are just always online. My hope is that over time we will have quite accurate numbers about sources of lag in certain locations.

Regarding item frames:

Item frames are entities in minecraft code, that means that they are treated like mobs. If you have a lot of item frames in your building, to label your boxes for example, you create lag. I know that item frames are really cool to do that, and that they look great, but please keep in mind that this is creating an issue for the server. So please do me a favor and keep those to a limit. I do not want to limit them with code like we do for the mobs. But if we find out that the major lag locations is coming from the lots with many item frames, we will have to do something about it.

I would like to mention lag issues once again. The above illustration is one of the typical applications of redstone/minecarts/mobs that cause excessive and unnecessary lag (although it looks damn funny).

This is not supposed to be a rant, but more a reminder: Please be thoughtful of what you do with mobs, animals, redstone, minecarts etc. All those items are causing lag the more they are used. We have good times on the server with little lag, but we also have some times where the lag is very very heavy. As you might know, lag is measured in ticks per second (tps), and ideally we have 20tps. Many times however, we have less than 10. This will result in lag for all users. Often this is caused by automation mechanics that try to make the miner’s life easier.

If you are using any kind of redstone mechanics, I would like to encourage you to check the impact of those. This is best done when there are not too many people on the server. Check the “/lag” command before you switch on whatever you are doing, and then again while it is running. You can then judge the impact of your machines on the server. If it uses 10tps or more, you better take it down. If it is 5 tps or more, you better not run it when there are more than 10 people on the server.

We now have 2 PVP arenas built and ready. I placed mob spawners where requested. The whole thing works like this:

The upper arena (the nether-type one) has spawners for pigzombies and blazes. Otherwise no mobs spawn there. The lower arena has 2 spawners for zombies and 1 for pigzombies and zombies can spawn anywhere if it is dark enough. Otherwise no mobs spawn there. Both those arenas have PVP now ON.

What can be done next is a command system similar like the hunger games. This system can place people at one of a list of pre-defined spawn points.You guys have to decide how you want to manage those arenas. And you also have to tell me when they are finished built, so that I can take away the build rights.

The middle arena does not have PVP On yet, please tell me once you are ready to switch it on.

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• MrsBaxtersCat (from ArchitectDonatorPlus to DesignerDonatorPlus)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• AZJaguar (from CitizenDonatorPlus to ArchitectDonatorPlus)
• RDStewart1992 (from Citizen to Architect)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

I have now installed a new theme to the website that should make it easier to navigate the website with a mobile phone. The stad. theme was quite broken to serve mobile phones and this new system, while being not very exciting to look at on the phone, should give 99% of the functionality. Except for the forum where I strongly recommend to install tapatalk.

I wanted to outline here once how our backup system works right now so you know what is being done and what you can expect in case of a crash but also to get input in case someone with server maintenance experience wants to share possibilities for improvement.

1. We are running all limited-size world on a RAMdisk. Nether and Darklands are not. They are just too big for that. We are copying changes to the ramdisk to a save-folder with rsync to the normal disk every 5 minutes. If there is any issue (server crashes, system powers down), we should have 5 minutes loss maximum. On hardware restarts, the RAMDisk is built from these saves.
2. Every day once, I stop auto-saves on the MC server, copy all changed files with rsync to a mirror folder on a second hard drive and continue saving afterwards. This prevents us from issues where the main HD fails.
3. Every day we zip this mirror on the same 2ndary HD and store the archive in folders numbered 1-31 depending on the day of the month. Like that I keep always the last 31 days as a backup. Same happens with the databases.
4. Every week we zip the folders on top of that in folders numbered 1-52 depending on the number of the week. This way, in case we can track back an issue to originate further back than one month, we have weekly backups for one year. Same happens with the databases.
5. On top of that, I have a crashplan subscription which makes off-site backups to a cloud server of the daily databases and the weekly file mirrors of the drives. I had this subscription already to backup my photos to a secure location so no extra costs there. This is newly setup for minecraft since I did not know that I can install the crashplan client on a headless linux server.
6. Nether and darklands are neither mirrored nor backed up. The nether is now 2.6GB and the darklands 2.3GB which is together larger than all the rest of the files (5.4 GB). Given that we delete those from time to time, there was never a backup and there won’t be one.

So if anyone has some more suggestions on how to improve the system, I am happy for feedback. Finally I am not a learned sysadmin and still learn with every crash :)

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• lukecreative (from ArchitectDonator to DesignerDonator)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

I also now resolved issues with teamspeak so the server is back online.

MineConomy is repeatedly disconnecting from the MySQL server. Since I have re-setup everything from scratch on the new server, there might be some default setting on the new version I am using now that is causing this, but Mineconomy as opposed to other plugins is not automatically reconnecting to the server. So after a while, it simply stops working.

Since Minecononmy was not updated since 1.5.2, I am not sure if the admin is still maintaining it. I sent a bug report, but it seems that the same bug was identified by other users for the last 2 versions already, marked as fixed but we still have the issue.

So what I did now: I wrote a simply plugin that can deal with money since MineConomy was basically only used to see the account status and to give money to users. The only real advantage of having a economy plugin is if other plugins have money functions (such as a shop) but we do not use any external plugins that do that. We wrote all money-related plugins ourselves. So in the end we got rid of another plugin by writing some lines of code.

The new commands are now /money status and /money give <user> <amount>. There is a appropriate help in the system and on the website.

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• kzr_nvd (from ArchitectDonatorPlus to DesignerDonatorPlus)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• thegypsyminer (from Citizen to Architect)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

The server is back online, except for some automated stuff like restarts and backups. Please check if all is as you have left it: Inventories, money, lots etc.

I had do delete a couple of nether files and one darklands file. Most of them were REALLY far out, so I do not think something got damaged. Since we do not backup the nether and the darklands, there is nothing I can do. One Kingdom file got reset by one day, here I could fallback on a backup.

Since at least one of the two HDs of the server has defects, the server is down while we fix this issue. Thanks for your patience.

In line with the latest blog posts, the server will shutdown in 7 hours from now (18:00 New York, Midnight Berlin, 7:00 Hong Kong), but not restart afterwards. This will happen at the same time when the server usually goes for daily reboot anyhow. I will then take the latest backups created, copy them to a secure location and ask the hoster to re-setup the system from scratch.

With this process the chances are the highest that the system will be back up for Thursday/Friday and that there are no unsaved changes that could be lost.