[Server] HOMETOWN

micheal65536
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Re: [Server] HOMETOWN

by micheal65536 » Post

Maybe if ExeterDad explains the problem that he's having then I or one of the other technical readers could help to fix it?

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Re: [Server] HOMETOWN

by Miss Micah » Post

micheal65536 wrote:Maybe if ExeterDad explains the problem that he's having then I or one of the other technical readers could help to fix it?
Yes, please!
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Re: [Server] HOMETOWN

by MommyKat » Post

Guys, guys, back down! You sound like a buncha freakin' addicts. If this is done sloppily, then we'll all regret it. We may lose a few builds, and that stinks, but guess what? Mistakes happen. Things like this should help you all to learn to appreciate that the admin of this FREE TO PLAY server (he's paying for everything and you don't have to, so chill out!) is as conscientious as he is. Just sheathe the claws, maybe go clean your room or do some chores and make your mom happy (or pass out) and the server will be up when it's up.
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Re: [Server] HOMETOWN

by 6722 » Post

Is it on yet

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Re: [Server] HOMETOWN

by Miss Micah » Post

MommyKat wrote:Guys, guys, back down! You sound like a buncha freakin' addicts. If this is done sloppily, then we'll all regret it. We may lose a few builds, and that stinks, but guess what? Mistakes happen. Things like this should help you all to learn to appreciate that the admin of this FREE TO PLAY server (he's paying for everything and you don't have to, so chill out!) is as conscientious as he is. Just sheathe the claws, maybe go clean your room or do some chores and make your mom happy (or pass out) and the server will be up when it's up.
I’m not an addict. I’ve already cleaned my room. I also know he’s trying and working hard!! I’ve finished all of my chores....I went to the movies, I’ve been running...ITS SUMMER IM BORED!!!!!! Also I do appreciate this a whole lot!! Kids appreciate things!!!!

EDIT: but now I think I’m gonna stop, I’ve gotten way into this game than intended.

EDIT #2: also I love this server a whole lot and thank you from the bottom of my heart :)
Last edited by Miss Micah on Wed Jun 20, 2018 19:38, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [Server] HOMETOWN

by Fabiowd1990 » Post

I've been playing minetest for two months, I've began from Hometown server, and I can say that Hometown has one of the best fair and polite environments I ever met among all the multiplayer games I played. So, thank you very much for all of your efforts, ExeterDad!

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Re: [Server] HOMETOWN

by random_geek » Post

ExeterDad wrote: I'm gonna admit I'm very freaked out. For myself and the players. If anyone has any "unplayed" map saves... keep them handy. :/
I have about 300MB of map data backed up, possibly more... Not very much, but maybe better than nothing.
6722 wrote: Is it on yet
Everyone, calm down, like MommyKat said! You can try to log in at any time if you are really that devastated. As for myself, I don't even really care if the world gets reset, etcetera. I enjoy building things and talking to people more than I enjoy being rich and powerful. A fresh start might even be kind of nice, but I doubt anyone shares that opinion. :)

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Re: [Server] HOMETOWN

by darkturretyt » Post

random_geek wrote:
ExeterDad wrote: I'm gonna admit I'm very freaked out. For myself and the players. If anyone has any "unplayed" map saves... keep them handy. :/
I have about 300MB of map data backed up, possibly more... Not very much, but maybe better than nothing.
6722 wrote: Is it on yet
Everyone, calm down, like MommyKat said! You can try to log in at any time if you are really that devastated. As for myself, I don't even really care if the world gets reset, etcetera. I enjoy building things and talking to people more than I enjoy being rich and powerful. A fresh start might even be kind of nice, but I doubt anyone shares that opinion. :)
I agree with you, having a fresh start does let the player fix their mistakes on previous builds

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Re: [Server] HOMETOWN

by micheal65536 » Post

random_geek wrote:
ExeterDad wrote: I'm gonna admit I'm very freaked out. For myself and the players. If anyone has any "unplayed" map saves... keep them handy. :/
I have about 300MB of map data backed up, possibly more... Not very much, but maybe better than nothing.
Do you have 200 blocks west from spawn from around last Saturday or Sunday? I had a build in progress over there which I had not downloaded yet. If the server comes back I shouldn't lose any progress on it because I hadn't done any work since Sunday when the last server backup would've taken place but it would be nice to have it if the server doesn't come back.

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Re: [Server] HOMETOWN

by micheal65536 » Post

Also since the topic seems to have come up, I would not want the server reset and if this happens I will certainly quit.

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Re: [Server] HOMETOWN

by random_geek » Post

micheal65536 wrote: Do you have 200 blocks west from spawn from around last Saturday or Sunday? I had a build in progress over there which I had not downloaded yet. If the server comes back I shouldn't lose any progress on it because I hadn't done any work since Sunday when the last server backup would've taken place but it would be nice to have it if the server doesn't come back.
I probably don't, but if you could tell me your in-game name and describe where it was, I might be able to find it.

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Re: [Server] HOMETOWN

by Lone_Wolf » Post

The server will have to reset eventually. Maybe now is the time. ExeterDad could fix up anything with mods that might have been hard to before. We could get all the good builders together if anything needs building. I have a few large builds. But if you want to keep your builds I'm sure ExeterDad will have posted the server map. I can help anyone who wants to take from that. You have to remember though: This is just a game. And whatever you do in a game is almost always a waste of time.
EDIT: Might be better now than later. There are currently less builds than there will be in a few months/years/weeks time.

EDIT2: Feel free to not waste time answering this post
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Re: [Server] HOMETOWN

by Miss Micah » Post

That sounds fun, I could undo some stuff and have a clean start with some of the stuff I’ve messed up. (The garden around my house XP) Also i’d like to help with the rebuilding thingy, please.
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Re: [Server] HOMETOWN

by Lone_Wolf » Post

Miss Micah wrote:That sounds fun, I could undo some stuff and have a clean start with some of the stuff I’ve messed up. (The garden around my house XP) Also i’d like to help with the rebuilding thingy, please.
If we reset. I would like to help but don't have the time. Doubt I'll be able to make any either :/
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Re: [Server] HOMETOWN

by random_geek » Post

Also, there's no guarantee of this reset actually happening. I just said it was possible.

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Re: [Server] HOMETOWN

by Miss Micah » Post

random_geek wrote:Also, there's no guarantee of this reset actually happening. I just said it was possible.
Well yeah, I know that.
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Re: [Server] HOMETOWN

by ChimneySwift » Post

Woah, lol. The server has been offline for like 2 days and we're already throwing around the potential for a complete map reset? I can see EDad's having some issues, and I guess if it happens I'll sound like an idiot, but like c'mon guys XD

If it does happen, think of it this way, there's gonna be a metric ton of land close to spawn available ;D

I've only got around 50mb of backup, and not sure how much is up to date, I did do a little bit of flying around spawn but I'd need to load it to check, I was going to create a quick map of it but apparently that would take ~10GB of ram, which is much more than my 1GB available, lol.

EDIT: Anyway rn we should probs chill and see what EDad's got to say :P
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Re: [Server] HOMETOWN

by Miss Micah » Post

You people act like we are dying because the server isn’t here. We MISS it a whole lot yeah but we aren’t saying, “EDad what the heck are you doing wrong?!” no we just wanna know if everything is okay and is there any complications, I am soooooooo sorry that it seems like something else but no. And I hope we all know that EDad also has a life, so we aren’t freaking out as much as you think we are.....unless I’m missing something.
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Re: [Server] HOMETOWN

by ExeterDad » Post

Okay. I'm going to summarize my findings in one sentence and then continue with how it happened.
The bulk of HOMETOWNS map can not be recovered. This means unless we can cobble together local map saves that I have, and what players contribute.... everyone's work is lost.
It's a horrible thing to accept, and it's why I've waited to announce until I knew it was certain.

How it happened:
Our postgresql database server needed updated. Mainly because it lacked upsert. It's a more efficient way to update data that is stored. Minetest supports this feature and complains about our database not having it on every restart. If we had upsert... our database performance would be faster.
I was logged into HOMETOWN making announcements ahead of time, but mostly AFK while pasting all the commands needed to do the upgrade to speed up the upgrade. I pasted one command in the wrong order. It was the command to delete the entire cluster of the old setup. It should of been after the commands that migrated the old to the new. I should of never been logged in to HOMETOWN. It's much too distracting as I don't log in often... and everyone likes to say Hi and stuff.
The pg_dropcluster command asks no questions, and yields instant results without a "undo" command. We suddenly had 85 GIGS or so of free space on the server. I was stunned, in disbelief, and mad at my carelessness but not overly concerned as I have been backing up weekly. So at worst we would lose a week of data. Irritating... but not the end of the world (literally).
All backups kept have been recent ones as we simply don't have the storage capacity to hold on to too many. And the latest backup needs to be stored off site (at my house) because we need empty space at least equaling the size of the database available for weekly "vacuum full". I recently had to move 20 gigs of daily logs to get this space.
Vacuum Full cleans out all the bloat out of the database. Data that has been deleted, is never really deleted. It's just marked as no good and current data just keeps getting stored. So this bloat slows down a database and needs "vacuumed". This is the cause of the long restarts at the beginning of the week. The database is locked during this time, so Minetest wouldn't work, so best done between restarts.
So to get the backup back to the server took roughly 12 hours to upload from my house. Then naturally the restore wasn't successful no matter how I approached it. So I threw in the towel for the night as it was very late and I needed some sleep before work. Then work. Lot's of Googling.... and I'm back at it again.
My restore commands were right. The data appeared to be in the database because it took forever to finish every time I ran it. Still Minetest wouldn't start because it didn't like the database.
I connected to the database and ran commands directly to study the schema, structures and everything and discovered three out of the four columns in the blocks table were missing. These are the posx, posy, and posz columns. The "data" column was there only. This means the mapblock binary data containing all the node data of all blocks was there, but there's no way to know where that info belongs on the map (cords). Those three columns also are what makes a "composite key". Without the key, the tables can't be indexed. It's just a pile of data, no way to find or sort it. Minetest handles sqlite3 differently. One column for the key instead of three.
So I decompressed the database dump (my backup) and poked around in the files and see the same thing, the pos's are not there.
I can not for the life of me understand how this could happen. A dump is a dump. It's not selective. It could be, but it would have to be done very intentionally, and I honestly have no clue how to set it up. I searched my command history and there is no typo's (this time). So I'm at a loss of the "how". It's possible us running out of free space might of been a factor. But it still makes no sense.
I hoped my upload was corrupt, but the md5sums the backup match. So the transfers were complete. I also checked on my local copy and it's the same. Although I knew it would be as the md5sum was generated from the server at the time of the dump and compressing.
I've been pretty silent in this thread as I didn't have all the facts and didn't want to start sensless panic that "might" not even happen.

But it's real. All of your hard work is gone. Like really and truley gone and it's my fault. I can't even begin to express how sorry I am for this. I've been a wreck since it happened, and researched and tried every possibility short of a time machine for some sort of data recovery. And now I'm mentally and physically exhausted. I'm officially giving up on any kind of decent recovery.
I do however have a backup from 13 months ago that's 20 GIGS. I can base the new map from that very old data and it should give us a little base to start from. The backup isn't a vacuumed backup, so it's loaded with God knows how many duplicate entries that will make it into the restored database. But the problem is that these "deleted" entries were deleted data and updates. When these are backed up and restored, they are no longer considered deleted. These duplicates will make indexing impossible unless found and removed. The indexes are required before the database will work properly.
Once restored (what there actually is). I can then apply local map saves line by line into the database and the new will merge with the old, saving whatever was recent at the time the player "recorded" it. I have many map saves as I use them for test worlds. Some are a bit messy from testing nodes, but there is quite a bit that can be salvaged.
I would appreciate any and all local map saves you guys may have. Even if they are older. Whatever is there will be helpful to the owners of the builds. Just please upload your map.sqlites somewhere and PM me a link with a description of what might be on there and roughly when. I will apply the oldest maps first and keep overlapping the newer ones so we hopefully get stuff as current as possible. Also please note anything you want me to pay particular attention to. There could be awesome underground builds there that might easily be missed. I'm going to do as much restoration at the database level to avoid mapgen/treegen/rivergen from ripping things apart as they would if the world was entered too soon. Also please, please note if the local save has been played offline. Dumping it directly into the map database would also introduce corruption as a played world will keep filling in with generated map that might take out restored builds if they overlap.
I was going to set up a file server as we now have all this extra room on the server. But this seems silly as there is so many free and ad free choices out there that host files at great upload and download speeds. Here is one of them. https://nofile.io/ Just upload what you have and link me via PM here. HOMETOWNS forums as you are aware is wiped out for now. It's the least of my worries for the moment, so that will have to come later.

I've been working on this draft off and on all day. I think I should post it before I chicken out :P
Thanks for all the support everyone. And please know that I'm very sorry. And this to me is a big deal.

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Re: [Server] HOMETOWN

by MommyKat » Post

So a mistake was made somewhere. Computers are built by humans, and humans are idiots, and glitches happen. There is a reason I let Mad Cat do all the updating, or I would have blown away my desktop a million times over.
It is sad, and I'm sure there will be some tears, but in the end... it's a game. We can always start over, and to be honest, I'm kinda excited about having a fresh start around spawn to get rid of the bloat from a certain player who shall not be named here. We totally understand, ExeterDad, the players love you, and just do what you can. If we have some local saves, that's awesome. If not, we can rebuild, or just build anew!
Keep the claws sheathed, m'friends, and let's see what our Captain can come up with. The relaunch of the server can be a heck of a wild ride!
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Re: [Server] HOMETOWN

by ChimneySwift » Post

ExeterDad wrote:HOMETOWNS forums as you are aware is wiped out for now.
Damn. I was almost at 1337 posts.

------

In all seriousness though, this can be seen as an opportunity. After I build things I hardly go back there anyway, I play to build, not to look at what I've built already, and I'm sure a lot of people are the same.

It's not great, but I don't think it's even necessarily bad either, it opens opportunities to start fresh.

I also want to express my thanks to ExeterDad, he's shown outstanding dedication toward the server with these recent events, mistakes like this happen, and he's sacrificed a lot in the past few days trying to get the map back.

I do have a mapsave which should include most of MineCity, my NyanCat build, the build competition, should have a full fairly recent save of Verdant, and I know for a fact has a full copy of Emerald's new city the day before the server went down. It should also have a bunch of area around spawn. I also have an older mapsave from another client which is bigger, so should include even more areas. I'll upload and send everything I have as soon as I can, but I won't be able to do it at home because they're too big.
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Re: [Server] HOMETOWN

by ExeterDad » Post

Thanks guys :)
I hope like heck we have something from Miniminaut and AspireMint, Techy5, Darkturreyt, and so on. Those builds are a long time in the making. I'll be heartbroken if they are lost. Pangland should be in good shape as his builds are near spawn. I have stuff of his from mid March (that I can think of offhand). Any other spawn areas from players uploads might get him even closer to restored.

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Re: [Server] HOMETOWN

by jSnake » Post

I got two local saves, one is 185MB and the other newer one since downloading the latest version is 10MB.

Maybe that will help, I do quite a bit of running around as well. Visited Miniminaut, and some Darkturretyt stuff the other day, as well as Verdant and the new town. And me castle. lol

Will PM as soon as I get it uploaded. My upload speed isn't too great though.

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Re: [Server] HOMETOWN

by BBmine » Post

When exactly is the server's backup from? I have a local save from Friday.

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Re: [Server] HOMETOWN

by Miss Micah » Post

So if you use the local save everything will be good again?! :D
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