World randomly regenerating

[Solex]

Hello everyone. After many months of frustration, I have nowhere left to turn but to the community to ask for help. Hopefully some of you guys know what problem my worlds are having and how to fix it, because I am completely out of ideas...

I have been running a whitelisted server for me and a bunch of friends using FTB since around March. I have run 3 different modpacks: Mindcrack, Ultimate, and Unleashed on a couple of different server hosts. Yet no matter what we try, the same problem keeps happening.

The world is regenerating in sections at random times and completely replacing, or reverting chunks.

There are times that a world has lasted a couple of months, and there are times that a world has lasted only a day. But in the end, certain sections of the world where we have built in have had a completely new biome overlayed, and we lose what was there.

At first we though it was ChickenChunks causing the problem, so we removed that. It still happened, so over the next months, up until now, we have tried different server hosts, different modpacks, disabling different mods, and always different worlds.

I have finally given up complete hope on trying to figure this out with just the knowledge that we have, and need help from the community. I don't know why this keeps happening to us, I can't seem to find anything when searching about this problem that helps (and yes we have tried many many different ways to fix this). We have seriously been through around 20 different worlds.

It can't be that we are the only ones having this problem... even though it seems everyone else's server is running fine, I just don't get it.

I know this was long but I could drag this on for pages, I just don't want to discourage anyone from reading it if its too long.
But I will definitely give any info to anyone who asks about this problem. I really need the help of you guys to just finally have a stable server again.


Also, I don't have any server logs to provide right now, as I have just deleted all the files to create yet another new world. I will be attempting another world right after this so I'm sure I will have logs for you next time this problem happens. But until then I would love to still have help on this.

 

[Hoff]

The only thing that I've witnessed cause a chunk reset are ender tanks and chests(With the chests being extremely rare).

For the times that it's happened in the first day or so could you go over about how far into the tech tree you were able to delve? It would give us a good idea of what was within your building grasp and help narrow what could have caused it.

 

[WTFFFS]

It sounds like you are having chunk resets, if it is single chunks being regenerated, could be anything causing it really. A chunk reset is minecraft basically saying "urp duh no idea what that is going on, so lets reset it". I have had a reset from Portalgun in my own world (1.2.5), I know that one was Portalgun since it happened when I "shot the moon" but I have heard of resets from Chickenchunks\RP2\Logisitics Pipes\Mystcraft and Xycraft so it isn't very uncommon but it is something that is hunted down strenuously by mods authors the ones I just mentioned have all been fixed afaik but there is always the possibility of some odd behavior by mods.
Probably your best bet if this is the cause would be to figure out what was in those chunks and not use it or test to see which particular mod item it was. Likely one of your players is doing something the same way each time in every world which is causing the reset to happen repeatedly.

 

[zorn]

My friends and I had this happen once. Not just a few chunks it rebuilt half of the world. We never figured out what caused it though. Our worlds would crash in different ways each time.

The world that died in one day and that you have the same issue each time makes me wonder - could it be something to do with the hosting? Have you used the same hosting company through all of this?

 

[Solex]

So glad to finally hear others thoughts on this, and will definatly be trying out any suggestions listed here.

Anyways, @Hoff, we've definatly had ender tanks/chests on every world thats lasted over a couple days as far as I know. So that does seem like a good possibility. I'll have to try disabling it on a new world along with some of the other mods I feel may be causing it and see how that goes.
As for the couple worlds that only lasted 1 day- not very much tech was built at all by anyone, maybe to around generator/macerator level but possibly not even to that.

@WTFFFS, that brings up a good point. Thaumcraft has always been done in each world, and lately it has been the chunk resets have been occuring around and at my place. What's interesting about that is that I don't use tech hardly at all, I typically play for design/collecting things, so I limit myself to pretty basic things. Yet I always will start on some Thaumcraft. Now, there still has been times where no one used that mod as far as I know, but it's still something that I will test without now.

@zorn, I've thought about this too, but yes we have tried different hosting companies throughout all of this. I have used NFO, Creeperhost, and Pytohost. Each one has had 4gig of RAM. So that really makes me feel as though we are doing something wrong in setting up the server, even though we have a bit of experience in running them in the past (vanilla, tekkit, and now FTB, as well as some random challenge maps) over the past 2 years, yet this has just started around early this year.

I know it seems inconsistant that these resets are sometimes happening at times we use certain mods, and then times when we don't, but, unfortunatly that's just how random this seems to be for us.

 

[zorn]

Are you one of the people who set up myscraft mining worlds for people right from the start? ive heard mystcraft has (had?) a lot of bugs.

The one day worlds really makes it seem like its not something being built and placed in the world. I dont know anything about runniing a server though. It just seems its either something put on the server or its something to do with a client. did a quick google search, found a bukkit forum that said "A cause can be faulty quiting of the server, a crashing computer, IO-errors, etc." can cause the issue. So does that say that someone's client could cause the issue?


Another guy said plugins on the server can cause it. If its a client problem it would probably be impossible to pinpoint.

 

[Solex]

That's probably something I should mention. None of us on the server ever use Mystcraft. We had it many many months ago back on our Mindcrack server, but never seemed to have any issues with it (that world is the one that somehow lasted the longest), but that world was lost to memory leaks with ChickenChunks.

About the faulty quitting of the server- that's something very interesting you mention. We do at random times have the server crash on us, not too sure why but it does happen. And yes, it seems most times the server is brought back online after a crash, we log in to find that certain parts of the world has regenerated... After that I will try to restore from a backup only to find that the backups hardly ever replace what was lost, in some cases causing it to happen to more places in the world. I can also sometimes load that same backup after that, and it will appear again. Its very inconsistant.
It seems this is getting close to how its happened a majority of the times.

We also typically don't use plugins, but we have on some just for the fun of it. Both with and without plugins we have lost the world.

 

[K4b6]

hmm Just wondering to help us out do you still have some server files because I would love to see some forge logs about the crash(es).

other then that, this is actually the first time I have seen this happen before (maybe because my server is set up in my house on a 2003 dell laptop )
But here is a few questions

how many people are on the server at a time?

Do you leave the server running all the time?

What are the most common mods used on the first day (this is not including generation, but what you build/make)?

what biomes do they change to? (vanilla to mod biome or mod biome to vanilla or well you get the idea)

Is it one chunk or multiple in one area?

Have you tried disabling the biomes mod? (this may not be the case but if biomes are changing to other biomes then that means generation in that chunk never saved or became corrupt this is the only world generation I can think that would do such a thing)

 

[Runo]

Your backups...are you deleting old backups? If you want to make mine craft spaz out, run out of drive space. 10 gig storage doesn't mean you should use all 10 gigs.

 

[virus236]

I help with the op's server.

We have 4-6 people on the server.

The server is always running unless it crashes of course.

We have built most ic2 and buildcraft machines by the end of the first day.

We were using biomes o plenty for world gen and that crashed so we switched to just vanilla world gen.
When we used BOP they would change to vanilla/BOP biomes or just reset like they were never touched.
Most of the time is like a whole biome reverts, but then there has been other times where just a chunk will change.

Disk storage is not an issue. When we start a new server after a crash everything even the backups are deleted.

We have disabled:
Chicken chunks
Chicken chunks, twilight forest
Biomes o plenty

None of those combos worked and all resulted in chunk regen issues.

There is a SEVERE error that shows up in console saying that a chunk is either invalid or missing with a location as the regens happen.

 

[Hoff]

A print out of the console would be great if you're able to come by it.

As well the only IC2 item that I'm aware that can cause server problems is the trade-o-mat. As well placing any sort of molten metal in the world is a no-no.

 

[virus236]

We didn't save any of the server files so the only way would be to start over again and get the logs when it happens.

 

[Hoff]

This'll be fairly hard to track down then.

Then only way to be positive of what might cause it is to have every player log every block they place or item they use. This is a less than ideal situation though.

 

[Darth Sith]

I help with the op's server.

We have 4-6 people on the server.

The server is always running unless it crashes of course.

We have built most ic2 and buildcraft machines by the end of the first day.

We were using biomes o plenty for world gen and that crashed so we switched to just vanilla world gen.
When we used BOP they would change to vanilla/BOP biomes or just reset like they were never touched.
Most of the time is like a whole biome reverts, but then there has been other times where just a chunk will change.

Disk storage is not an issue. When we start a new server after a crash everything even the backups are deleted.

We have disabled:
Chicken chunks
Chicken chunks, twilight forest
Biomes o plenty

None of those combos worked and all resulted in chunk regen issues.

There is a SEVERE error that shows up in console saying that a chunk is either invalid or missing with a location as the regens happen.

Can you post the server log?

 

[budge]

After that I will try to restore from a backup only to find that the backups hardly ever replace what was lost, in some cases causing it to happen to more places in the world. I can also sometimes load that same backup after that, and it will appear again. Its very inconsistant.

How far back did your backups go? Did you find that every single backup as far back as you save them had this regeneration issue? The reason I ask is because if you can find at least one pair of backups that consistently go from good to bad (e.g. backup from 9-4 is always restored as expected, 9-5 is always regenerated) then you may be able to track it down. I know you don't have the old backups anymore, but keep this in mind going forward!

Just a thought, do you have the Secret Rooms mod installed?

Edit: Another thought. Do you have the option of running your server locally? If you can duplicate this behavior on a local machine as administrator, perhaps you can rule out User Account Control/file permissions issues.

 

[Runo]

Another thought, you say you run your server continuously? I've never been on an FTB server that didn't have scheduled restarts every 12 hours, my guess is due to memory leak issues. Is there a remote possibility that the crashes mentioned are due to running out of ram on a memory leak and causing bad behavior when writing to the save?

 

[Solex]

Hey just an update on the server. After 3 days of a brand new Unleashed world (default mods enabled, BOP and Reliquary disabled) it has reset again. This time it wasn't a couple chunks that reset, the entire world reverted as if it had just generated. Same world layout, just nothing placed by us.

One thing does seem to be happening each time though. The server randomly crashed, and when I restarted it, upon logging in we all got "downloading terrain" to find everything had reset.

I have tried looking for a log in the server files but it doesn't seem to be there. I will keep looking and if I come across it then I will post it.

 

[budge]

Okay. We need more information. Please answer all of these:

1. Is the physical server your own or are you using a service?
2. Is the server folder stored/executed in any kind of disk image/virtualization/ram disk?
3. If it's your own, what kind of computer? Mac, Linux, Windows XP/Vista/7/8?
4. Do you have world backups?
5. Do you have another computer to experiment with?
6. Do any of your backups work as expected on a different computer running the server? Or does this happen on server #2 as well?
7. Do any of your backups work as expected in single player, or does the issue persist there?
8. Are you 100% sure there are no logs?

There are always logs. If there aren't, I highly suspect the server computer to be the culprit. This is why I'd like you to try it on a different one.

PS: Don't forget to try a backup in single player.

 

[Sphinx2k]

I forced a chunk reset one time when making a backup of the server.
I make a local copy of our server once a month. One time i made a backup while the server was still running and not in read only mode. This caused some chunks to reset. Gladly my hoste makes backups every day and i could revert the reset this way.
So i learned to always put the server in read-only first or better stop completely

 

[Solex]

@budge
1. The server is run through Creeperhost
2. I wouldn't know, since it's run through a host
3. Not my own, but I do happen to know it's on Linux
4. Yes, backups are created every day. Problem is once the world regens/reverts, those backups will not restore our placed items. Sometimes one players house will be restored, while another players is overwritten. If I shut the server down again and choose another restore, it may be opposite, or may have regenerated again. The backups are never consistant after the issue starts
5. No, not to the extent you mean by that. We have never been succesful in running a public server through one of our personal computers. And in SSP, with the same modpack settings, the world will not have this problem. It appears to be due to the crashes we randomly get
6. This isn't possible due to #5, but #7 should be able to be tested
7. I have never tried to load one of the backups onto singleplayer to test the world. That's something that is worth a shot
8. Unfortunatly, yes. After looking into it last night it appears that when the world reset, our log was removed for some reason. Later on after finding that the log was missing, we logged into the game (still with the reverted world) which then created a log, from that point on. I have absolutly no idea why the log was lost along with the revert

@Runo, with this latest world we had scheduled restarts occuring every 8 hours. We seem to think that the restarts stopped on the day of the revert, although we are not completely sure. We are not able to check the logs either to see due to them being lost.

@budge earlier post, no, we don't have Secret Rooms installed. And the answers to your other questions should be answered earlier in this post.