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Malena

Complete server map moved around 10 tiles south on it's own?

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Hey guys, 

 

As some of you might know, I've been working on the Ultima Nostalgia server for a few years now, and everything has been going fine with the map. Then this happened...

 

messed_up_map.jpg

 

THANK HEAVENS I had just taken a copy of the server which was absolutely fine. And thankfully I had not lost very much work, however this has left me very unnerved as I do not understand what I might have done to make this happen. 

 

Does anyone have any idea what the heck happened?

 

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This is really really wierd, I can tell from the pictures this does not occur to the flora of the lands.

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Aaaah you're right! The terrain textures don't seem to move either. Just buildings and any other items placed on the land! 

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I think it's more likely that the terrain map file was corrupted and shifted by a few tiles to one side, rather than everything else moved.

 

Positions for walls, fences, items, creatures, etc. are all stored in different places in the databases and handled by different code so shifting them all in the same direction isn't something that's likely to happen.

 

The map files however are just dumps of arrays of integers with no internal structure whatsoever so if a write gets written in the wrong position - it'll likely still look valid just will be shifted to the side. 

 

Why would that happen? Who knows. Could be some rare bug in wurm, could be a bug in the OS or other surrounding software/firmware, could be a cosmic ray flipping a bit in memory (and that's why servers use expensive ECC memory).

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Thanks for the info bdew! And thank goodness you've often reminded me to make sure to make backups of the server. It's really thanks to you that I do that so often and that I didn't lose my work!

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I've corrupted a few maps in weird ways by not shutting servers down properly when working on stuff.

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1 minute ago, Darklords said:

I've corrupted a few maps in weird ways by not shutting servers down properly when working on stuff.

 

Ooooooohhh that could actually be it then! Because when I'm replacing the textures in the graphics.jar (zip) I hardly ever bother to shut the server itself, only the client. 

So that may just be the culprit then! Thanks for sharing that!

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11 hours ago, Darklords said:

I've corrupted a few maps in weird ways by not shutting servers down properly when working on stuff.


By "properly" you mean, in game with a GM and an Ebony Wand, correct? 

The WU Launcher seems to rush the shutdown process. 

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1 hour ago, Trake said:


By "properly" you mean, in game with a GM and an Ebony Wand, correct? 

The WU Launcher seems to rush the shutdown process. 

Yes, I've corrupted the entire mine layer multiple times by shutting the server down forcefully(on my test stuff) never had a shift like that but it's always a good idea to shut the server down normally.

 

Also as Malena pointed out, backups are your best friend between restarts could happen for a number of reason out of your control outside that like bdew mentioned.

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So let me get this straight... the "proper way" is not through pressing the "Shutdown server" button on the launcher window? ? That's how I've always done it, and even shortened the time from 10 to 1 seconds because I didn't want to wait. (I assumed the 10 seconds is just meant for players on the server to get enough of a shut down warning) with the "reason for shutdown" message.

So if that's not the normal way then, what is the correct way to do it? Somehow when you're still in the game?

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21 minutes ago, Malena said:

So let me get this straight... the "proper way" is not through pressing the "Shutdown server" button on the launcher window? ? That's how I've always done it, and even shortened the time from 10 to 1 seconds because I didn't want to wait. (I assumed the 10 seconds is just meant for players on the server to get enough of a shut down warning) with the "reason for shutdown" message.

So if that's not the normal way then, what is the correct way to do it? Somehow when you're still in the game?

 

Yes, my understanding of 'proper shutdown' was updated recently via Discord discussions.

I was doing the same for a while until I investigated why periodically I was losing 'some' actions that happened very close to a quick shutdown.

I also noticed that sometimes the GUI window did NOT update to a red "Shutdown server" after the server was successfully launched.

I didn't feel comfortable crashing the process to attempt a shutdown, so I asked around. 

 

Apparently the best method for shutdown is:

 

Activate Ebony Wand

Right click same Ebony Wand

> Server > Shutdown server > options

 

7KL37yc.png

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Just now, Trake said:

 

Yes, my understanding of 'proper shutdown' was updated recently via Discord discussions.

I was doing the same for a while until I investigated why periodically I was losing 'some' actions that happened very close to a quick shutdown.

I also noticed that sometimes the GUI window did NOT update to a red "Shutdown server" after the server was successfully launched.

I didn't feel comfortable crashing the process to attempt a shutdown, so I asked around. 

 

Apparently the best method for shutdown is:

 

Activate Ebony Wand

Right click same Ebony Wand

> Server > Shutdown server > options

 

7KL37yc.png

 

Woah.... *mind blown* I'll have to start doing it like that then too. I never knew! Thanks for sharing!

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All those are good ways to shutdown the server:

  • Pressing shutdown in the server launcher
  • Shutting down from the wand
  • Typing "shutdown" in the console window (i think this one works only in headless mode? not sure tbh)
  • Sending shutdown RMI command (e.g. using my rmitool)

Bad ways:

  • Pressing the X
  • CTRL+C
  • kill -9 :P
  • turning off the pc
  • #sdown command (doesn't actually shut down)
  • etc.

Also if you are just messing with stuff in graphics.jar - you only need to restart the client, server doesn't need shutting down at all.

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10 hours ago, Malena said:

I also noticed that sometimes the GUI window did NOT update to a red "Shutdown server" after the server was successfully launched.

 

This usually means that something (usually a mod) thrown an error during startup and the server is not really fully up, even it appears functional.

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43 minutes ago, bdew said:

All those are good ways to shutdown the server:

  • Pressing shutdown in the server launcher
  • Shutting down from the wand
  • Typing "shutdown" in the console window (i think this one works only in headless mode? not sure tbh)
  • Sending shutdown RMI command (e.g. using my rmitool)

Bad ways:

  • Pressing the X
  • CTRL+C
  • kill -9 :P
  • turning off the pc
  • #sdown command (doesn't actually shut down)
  • etc.

Also if you are just messing with stuff in graphics.jar - you only need to restart the client, server doesn't need shutting down at all.

 

Thanks bdew! So I guess I've been doing it right up till now. But I'll probably start doing it via the wand in-game just to be on the safe side, just in case it was the shut down process that muddled my map. 

 

It goes without saying that it was a shocking and terrifying thing to see after all the work! :)

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9 hours ago, bdew said:

 

This usually means that something (usually a mod) thrown an error during startup and the server is not really fully up, even it appears functional.

 

Crap, I'll look into that further. I've been using the server for weeks with this issue. 

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