5 months, 5 worlds, all crash and burn. Cannot ever get to 'End game'

[zorn]

How rare is it to have a world survive for more than a month? Do most of you play for months and kill a world when you get bored, or do most people end up having worlds crash due to bugs and such?

Right now ive played minecraft for about 5 months with a few friends on a private server. We have had every single world crash due to bugs... apparently. We dont even really know why. We once lost all hostile mobs due to Dimensional Doors mod (actually figured that one out), lost all hostile mobs for some other reason we never figured out, then had our world completely rewrite itself, parts of it anyway, destroying half my base. It basically just created new chunks in huge areas. Mountains cut right in half, etc. Then last world, we just had the server go to 100% CPU and ram usage within a minute or two of reboot, no idea why. Scrap the world and start a new one.

This prompted us to move to FTB from (cough) technic (cough) as it appeared that ftb was more stable, so we started an Ultimate world. At first things seemed ok but then we started to get what appears to be latency issues. If you watch the sun, it will rise in the sky for sometimes up to 10 or 15 seconds, then pop back down to where it started. machines all work super slowly, you cannot break blocks or will break one 10 times before it actually stays broken. A minecraft day takes hours to pass by.

The guy who runs our server said that it was caused by a bad connection at my ISP... but I would think that the CPU being at 100% would cause 'latency' because it seems possible that my client would display the sun movement, and then check with the server periodically. The snap backwards seems like it is syncing to the server.

Now we moved to a whole new host, and right away... the sun is popping up then back down, things are slow, etc.

Does anyone have tips for actually getting a minecraft world to survive, or what to do to troubleshoot these issues? I keep reading about mods that cause bugs and problems, but how do you trouble shoot them? Where do you even start? Start picking up blocks in your bases til it goes away? I also keep reading about people with more players and bigger builds than we have, with no server issues at all. How do people do this?

Im about to quit playing, i like building up but this is silly. Just as we get to a solid mid game and can look at things like reactors and bigger stuff... the worlds crash.

 

[quantumllama]

You should always back up data that you think is valuable. No exceptions to this rule.

Modded minecraft is a time bomb that's ticking. The more stuff you have, the faster it ticks. It will eventually go off and you'll start having problems. It's always better to have a return point before a problem starts, helps you understand what is going wrong and how to get around it or solve it.

 

[Riuga]

Backup?

I ragequit my mindcrack world for 3 chunk resets (2 in my old base, 1 in my new base that I move to because of the reset D:) and a random inventory and TC research reset.

Backups are a pain when theres tons of Myst ages. try deleting the unused ones.

 

[Cirom]

I don't think I've ever had to force-stop a world, mostly I just switch due to inactivity on the server, or updates. This might be due to my attempts to be as lag-efficient as possible in my builds (no IC2 cable loops, etc) or just pure luck. Most likely luck.

What are the specs on your host anyway? It might be that they just don't have enough power to run a FTB server.. FTB is pretty intensive.
And yeah, the guy who runs/ran your server thinks it's an ISP problem? That issue is bad TPS (Ticks Per Second), which is almost always a server-side issue. The snap backwards is indeed synchronizing to the server, you're right there.

 

[Omicron]

I've never had any world-destroying issues. None of my single-player worlds ever suffered a single chunk reset or corruption or mob bug. Neither did my server worlds, which I host on my own machine. I've played vanilla Minecraft since beta times, and modded Minecraft for close to a year now.

The single worst thing that ever happened was in my last server world, where users would crash on login if they logged out in the same chunk as a specific type of GregTech machine. But even without having to update GregTech that wasn't a big issue for us, as we almost never logged out in the workshop anyways, and if we did, a simple /tp command during login would fix it.

The single most gameplay ruining mod I ever encountered was Mo'Creatures, which all but destroyed the mob balance in the world and made regular survival play impossible (you try making a Thaumcraft research table when Mo'Creatures essentially deletes Squids from existance regardless of config settings). But that problem, too, was easily fixed - simply by uninstalling Mo'Creatures.

As such, I can't say I have ever lost a world to anything but old age abandonment.

 

[TangentialThreat]

1. Have fascist building inspectors.

Mostly you want staff that warns players about basic building codes, like help with designing mob farms that can't run out of control, no cable loops, having an energy buffer and recommending PowerConverters over walls of engines. Sometimes you paint some cables, stick some void pipes in for people and steal excessive chunkloaders. As a Lag Nazi it is important to have the moral courage to step outside the Geneva Convention or even deploy nuclear weapons/prune bad chunks for the greater good. Empowering an official Lag Nazi has its ups and it's downs.

2. Don't allow Mystcraft.

This mod is a lot of fun to just play around with but it is a bottomless pit for memory, especially if you have twenty people all creating worlds. I have seen it bring the strongest servers to their knees. Some servers have a single mining age or one world per person and others turn it off completely. If necessary, delete the DIM_MYST files.

3. World borders.

Get a plugin to set up an iron curtain at 10-20k. This applies to vanilla too.

4. Read up on known issues.

There are some chronic offenders like Mystcraft but what's dangerous and what's not changes from update to update. If you are reading these forums that's a good start. Lag Nazis must be educated and vigilant.

Also backups, automatic restarts and common sense.

 

[zorn]

Is there a reason I can ping the IP of our server from a Command Prompt and get a ping of 50ms or so, but in game it says I have a 500 ms ping?

I think the other problem is that its hard to know exactly what causes lag. I have 40 magmatic engines setup (but not running) because it looks cool and its 160 mj/t, which is not really that much power. If that creates too much lag on $50 a month server for 3 people, how are people making these massive bases like Direwolf20, and not crashing their server? None of us go much further than 2-3000 blocks from spawn. How do you 'prune bad chunks'? We all use chunkloaders but also bought a server that cost twice what Creeperhost recommended for us to use. If we all have 3-4 chunkloaders, how is it different than 10 players using 1-2 each?

On the TPS issue... it seems that minecraft runs on 20 tps, so ideally my client and the server are synced at updating the game, calculating things that need to be calculated, 20 times per second. Right? It seems that the sun (time) issue means that the server is only outputting like... 4 tps or something? that would make a minecraft day 5 times as long? but my client is running at 20 tps, so im doing things in 'real time' but living in a slowed down world. This would explain why i could place a block ok, but my electric furnace ran very slowly. anything requiring constant calculations would only be updating 4 times per second, instead of 20.

Is this what is going on? So if we moved to a new server and the same issue is happening, then we have some sort of bug, dont we? 3 people with moderate setups (one tree farm, one boiler, 30 ic2 generators, 30 thermal generators, 40 magmatics, one 200 units/t AE system, and 3-4 chunkloaders COMBINED for all of us) shouldnt cause this problem on a $50 a month server on creeperhost.

if the sun pops back down after moving, is there any way this is just a problem with my home pc or network? It has to be server related, doesnt it?

Thanks for replies btw, appreciate any help i can get, very frustrating.

 

[KirinDave]

It sounds like you guys are really inexperienced server admins, to be honest. A lot of the things you described are easy to fix, or fix themselves. For example, the DimDoors "no hostile mobs" bug is easy to fix by rolling back your map an hour and the bug is now gone. Use ForgeBackup (make SURE to configure this mod on your server or it will crash your server by filling up your disk. You have been warned!) to make hourly backups so it's easy to roll back.

This prompted us to move to FTB from (cough) technic (cough) as it appeared that ftb was more stable, so we started an Ultimate world. At first things seemed ok but then we started to get what appears to be latency issues. If you watch the sun, it will rise in the sky for sometimes up to 10 or 15 seconds, then pop back down to where it started. machines all work super slowly, you cannot break blocks or will break one 10 times before it actually stays broken. A minecraft day takes hours to pass by.

This can be caused by both server lag and network lag. While FTB is more conservative in its mod selection, its pack is much larger and there is a much bigger potential for your server to get bogged down. When we're curious how bad things are getting and what we can do to fix it, we install and use the BTPS mod and for deeper dives we use TickProfiler. These let us inspect exactly what is making the world slow. Usually so we can kill it.

I usually kill it by using Dinnerbone's location tool to figure out the name of the chunk file in MCFOLDER/world/region and then either delete the offending chunk (if it's not too offensive to the chunk owner) or replace it with a backup copy from the backups mentioned above.

Some types of bugs cannot be diagnosed easily though. For those, you need to go to the mod authors you suspect involved and make bug reports and ask for help. Sometimes you restart the server multiple times with some mods removed (make SURE to back up right before doing this!) to see if we can track down the offender.

Finally, this all may give you the impression that running a server is a lot of work. It is. If you don't get how these tools work, then it is time to become stronger or quit the field. We've had arguments in these forums by people who are resentful of how complex this can get.

Im about to quit playing, i like building up but this is silly. Just as we get to a solid mid game and can look at things like reactors and bigger stuff... the worlds crash.

You could also play SSP, you know.

 

[Seraph089]

My additions to all of the great ideas so far:
If you're running a lot of lava power (I'm assuming BC pumps from the nether), that can cause extreme lag after a while. All of the flowing lava left behind can cripple systems regardless of anything else. It doesn't sound like your setups are anything crazy, the rest of it shouldn't cause any issues (unless lots of cable loops, etc)

Do the others on your server have the same lag and desync issues? If so, it may be worth trying to run the server with MCPC+ if you aren't already. I had similar problems on my local server, MCPC brought my TPS from ~14 to a full 20

 

[TangentialThreat]

Walls of generators and engines aren't really good (especially 30 generators that all have current loops, that'll hurt) but your server should survive. The real killers are often badly thought out mob farms and overflowing tree farms. The more block updates and entities to keep track of the deader the server.

How often do you restart? Once every two hours? Also, does the sun get better if you're far from base or is it bad everywhere? Do other people have the same issues?

 

[zorn]

Im not a server operator at all. A friend of mine used to play a couple years ago and quit, then got back into it when I mentioned I was playing on a LAN server with my son. He invited me to his server, etc. When our first world died, I asked if there was a way to make backups and then he said that he would copy the world save folder weekly. Now it seems there are mods/plugins that will do this automatically, so obviously we are very ignorant of a lot of what should be done.

@dave the tools you recommended are great, thanks a ton for the tips ill pass them along.

@Seraph089 - i was under the impression that the lava only created lag while in the nether, or if usinga chunkloader there. Is this not true? Both of the other guys went for nether lava right away when we started this world, so we have a LOT of pumped out areas there. Just a week ago I told the guy running the server that pumping lava can cause lag (because i finally found a post that explained why, not just that it did) and that we should be using the gregtech pump, or just quarrying out netherrack instead. Right now I dont think anyone has a chunkloader in the nether at all, so i dont think that is it.

Im trying to find out if the other players have the desync issues. I assumed they were, as everyone complained the server was not running normally, but maybe they were having some other sort of problem.

 

[zorn]

Walls of generators and engines aren't really good (especially 30 generators that all have current loops, that'll hurt) but your server should survive. The real killers are often badly thought out mob farms and overflowing tree farms. The more block updates and entities to keep track of the deader the server.

How often do you restart? Once every two hours? Also, does the sun get better if you're far from base or is it bad everywhere? Do other people have the same issues?

I was using 10 generators with no loops to run my ore processing, then had set up another 12 for a gregtech area. Thats only 120 eu/t, without advanced solars how do you get big power without lots of server load? I had setup a tree farm and was trying to just run everything off of charcoal, is this why everyone moves to steam boilers, to get lots of power in a single 'generator'?

Got an example of a bad mob farm? I have some spawners iwth MFR grinders and an auto enchanter, but hadnt set up a shard yet. Overflowing tree farms? I did have a large tree farm.

But in the server section here one guy named off things that were 10 times what we had: a dozen tree farms, huge AE networks, etc. and ran it on a server that was half the cost of what we pay for.

Not sure on restarts, i think my friend used to restart once a day. When the sun issue started, he said the server would run good for an hour or two, and then max out CPU at 100% and he would have to restart it again. This doesnt sound normal.

Ill try moving far from my base, to see if the sun changes. Right now i have one big factorization solar setup, a big sugar cane MFR farm (emerald upgrade), the 40 magmatics that dont even run, and 10 generators that keep my 10 MFSU's topped off. One AE network that is using like 30 units/t, I just started it. I started a new base so i have an electric furnace, a compressor, a pulverizer, and an induction furnace hooked up. Thats it.

This cant be causing all that trouble, can it?

 

[JohnTzimisces]

My additions to all of the great ideas so far:
If you're running a lot of lava power (I'm assuming BC pumps from the nether), that can cause extreme lag after a while. All of the flowing lava left behind can cripple systems regardless of anything else. It doesn't sound like your setups are anything crazy, the rest of it shouldn't cause any issues (unless lots of cable loops, etc)

Do the others on your server have the same lag and desync issues? If so, it may be worth trying to run the server with MCPC+ if you aren't already. I had similar problems on my local server, MCPC brought my TPS from ~14 to a full 20

Out of curiosity, since this annoys me in SSP all the time, couldn't someone use a filler loaded with sand to cover up the lava flow blocks that never go away due to nether pump use?

 

[cynric]

Out of curiosity, since this annoys me in SSP all the time, couldn't someone use a filler loaded with sand to cover up the lava flow blocks that never go away due to nether pump use?

Sure. Or you could use the ender-thermic pump from extra-öutilities (which replaces pumped blocks by cobblestone, thus avoiding the problem from the start).

 

[KirinDave]

Sure. Or you could use the ender-thermic pump from extra-öutilities (which replaces pumped blocks by cobblestone, thus avoiding the problem from the start).

I have realized I don't like this pump. It's very inflexible about placement. Usually I am like dozens of blocks above a lava sea on a projection over a negative slope in my nether spawns. The EUETP is totally useless there.

 

[zorn]

So the lava wouldnt cause an issue unless someone is in the nether, or its chunkloaded?

And also the big question is: if it takes an hour for a minecraft day to pass, instead of the 20 minutes or whatever it is supposed to be, is this not showing its a server issue?

 

[Seraph089]

Sure. Or you could use the ender-thermic pump from extra-öutilities (which replaces pumped blocks by cobblestone, thus avoiding the problem from the start).

This. The Ender-Thermic is awesome, on top of replacing the lava blocks it also chunkloads itself. A bit more expensive than a standard pump but well worth it.

@zorn - It's true that pumping only causes lag if players are present or it's chunkloaded, but if you're pumping enough to run engines it should definitely have a chunkloader anyway. Using an Ender-Thermic pump (if on 1.5.2) or the GT pump is the way to go, both are designed to avoid flow-related lag. Any areas pumped with standard BC pumps can be filled in with a Filler loaded with sand, as mentioned (a hassle but effective)

@KirinDave - The placement problem is annoying, but it's so good that I go out of my way to use it. I'd rather spend a bit of time looking for a good spot than deal with massive lag later

 

[Bibble]

So the lava wouldnt cause an issue unless someone is in the nether, or its chunkloaded?

And also the big question is: if it takes an hour for a minecraft day to pass, instead of the 20 minutes or whatever it is supposed to be, is this not showing its a server issue?

From what I can gather, yes, this is likely to be server load, and the tools mentioned previously should help.

From the limited amount that I've picked up both on my own, and from here, the sources of tick-lag can basically be summed up as follows: stuff and stuff happening.

If you have a large amount of entities (darkroom EMC generators used to be infamous for this) in the world, it takes a lot for the server to keep on top of everything.

Similarly, if there's a lot of stuff happening (flowing lava, for instance, or 20 electric furnaces going full pelt, rather than an induction/upgraded one) the server is likely to take longer to calculate it all than there is time in the tick.

 

[zorn]

Whats odd is that we have a server that should hold plenty of players and their builds, and yet 3 of us are somehow bogging it down? To me it seems like something is specifically causing huge problems, like looping cables, etc. Not just too many furnaces or whatever.

 

[PoisonWolf]

Whats odd is that we have a server that should hold plenty of players and their builds, and yet 3 of us are somehow bogging it down? To me it seems like something is specifically causing huge problems, like looping cables, etc. Not just too many furnaces or whatever.

If you're having paid hosting, I'm inclined to think that it's something specific to some in-game looping mechanic that one of you guys have inadvertently created without realizing it. I would back up your world, and methodically remove every machine/pipe/autarchic gates that has been placed and see if you're seeing the same symptoms. If you don't, you have your answer. I would start with clearing out your nether of any machines and observe the effects of doing so, then move to the overworld, etc. I mean, if you guys are repeatedly getting this issue across multiple game-worlds, it's very likely that it's what one of you guys are doing (possibly unintentionally).

And your so-called 'computer' guy likely doesn't know what he's doing. I'm saying this not to offend you or him, but purely as an opinion.