[Bela]

ok will do

[LooseWilly]

Veybold just had all the furniture he'd placed in his new Church to-be disappeared after a server reset.

From the sounds of things, however, the theory is that it's a bug related to (and maybe causing?) server crashes.

In this case, I had placed a score or so placeables, all with no problems (I'll describe my procedures below). I signed off for a few minutes to be sure I didn't get jumped by any assassins (sometimes a man has to chop up a lot of pineapple in advance for cocktails), signed back on - promptly received a message that the server would reset in 30 seconds (server generated shout)... logged back off... and when I came back with another load of furniture, the place had been cleaned out. (No one on server but Daeris and Veybold, and Daeris wasn't close enough to have come by and robbed me of my potted plant, nor any of the rest of it.)

Assuming that the issue being talked about is the loss of placeable furniture and the like, it doesn't look like any crash is required. (If the bug being chased is that placing furniture causes the server crash, however, then this would be a different bug and I'll go report it in the problem section.)

And now, some placement details. I buy the stuff. I go and use a right-click to the use-item option and place things... then I go ahead and, as necessary, right-click the house key, target the piece of furniture in question, and then rotate/pick-up and move/raise or lower as suits my fancy and guesswork using solely the conversation menu. (I sometimes click a number, sometimes use the keyboard to pick a number... and have observed no difference between the two inputs.)

This happened around 12:30 PST 12/22/2014 (the disappearance of all the placeables after the server reset).

The last item I placed was, as I recall, either a throw rug that involved about 90˚ of rotation (clockwise, option 1, as I recall) - or it was the placement of a black chair followed by about 12˚ and change of rotation (counter-clockwise, option 2, as I recall).

All looked well when I exited the property. I wasn't in the property when I subsequently logged off/on/off however... after the reset, I bought some more items (also in Pyarados) and was soon back to my property. It was bare of the new items, but the 2 or 3 placeables I'd put in it previously were still there.

---

Testing a little more, I placed one of the new items that I'd just brought to the property (a hanging shield), and then rotated it about 90˚ (counter-clockwise), then raised it about 3 "levels".

I then exited the premises, and logged off/on, then re-entered. Shield was still on the wall.

So I then logged off/on inside (while staring at my perhaps soon to be gone bit of furniture). When I logged back on, I noticed that I was outside the property - but I'd logged off inside.

* So I entered again, and logged off/on again. Watching the log on process more closely, I noticed that I began by loading into a "medium house", but then, some part of the way through that, it changed to loading me into "Pyarados - West"... and once again, I was outside the property.

I'm not sure where along in the process it occurred, but it looks like the shield on the wall has lost several, if not all, it's levels "raised".

Just got to feeling like I was losing it (sipping scotch makes one feel like details should be double checked & thorough)... so raised the shield another 3 or 4 "levels"... logged off/on... loaded again to "medium house", then swapped to "Pyarados - West" ... appeared outside, entered... and the shield had been stripped of its "levels".

Hope this is of help.

[Bertram Anders]

If you log off in a player house you will always be placed outside when you log back in due to the nature of the housing system.

[Wids]

Right now, it seems like furniture's vanishing more often than it used to vanish. Wyren's house just lost the glowing crystal ball, the two cooking pots and the scales that she put down yesterday, but the writing desk and the wizard's table from the day before are right and well. And I hear that Hazlok's house just lost a large crystal ball at around the same day that Wyren lost her last round of furniture.

Would it be possible for the players to have some sort of a "Save my house" feature, so that they can set their work in stone once they're done working on it? Because it still seems that we're losing furniture (and more often, at that) even with the more frequent back-ups.

[Animayhem]

So far Marister's house nothing is missing. I will check Rimeth's when I log in game later today.

There used to be a save option in the furniture dialogue.

[Balanor]

I first want to start and say that there has not been a server crash that has wiped out all furniture. However, the debug lines have helped determine the cause of *some* lost furniture, as well as LooseWilly's nicely detailed report. I'm not going to go into the real complicated details here, but to sum it up, the database export from the running module to the database itself was/is stopping. I don't know the reason why, however. But in yesterday's example, the last time it ran was at 1:15 AM Central Time (last line below):

Code:

[Mon Dec 22 01:14:29] DEBUG: Saving hh_property in hh_include line 139 in 60 seconds.
[Mon Dec 22 01:14:32] Wyren Caul-of-Amber(Wids)[Talk] !undo
[Mon Dec 22 01:14:33] DEBUG: Saving hh_property in hh_include line 139 in 60 seconds.
[Mon Dec 22 01:14:35] Wyren Caul-of-Amber(Wids)[Talk] !move 0 1
[Mon Dec 22 01:15:01] Wyren Caul-of-Amber(Wids)[Talk] !move 0 0.01
[Mon Dec 22 01:15:02] DEBUG: Saving hh_property in hh_include line 139 in 60 seconds.
[Mon Dec 22 01:15:06] Wyren Caul-of-Amber(Wids)[Talk] !move 0 0.1
[Mon Dec 22 01:15:28] DEBUG: Saving hh_property in hh_include SaveHousingDatabase().

So anything after that was lost, once the server reset. Like in all the furniture debug lines for Veybold, the SaveHousingDatabase function was not firing:

Code:

[Mon Dec 22 14:19:20] DEBUG: Saving hh_property in hh_include line 139 in 60 seconds.
[Mon Dec 22 14:19:26] DEBUG: Saving hh_property in hh_place_pickup in 60 seconds.
[Mon Dec 22 14:19:26] Veybold Von Zipper has picked up Furniture - Table, Illithid . (Building - Medium House)/Furniture - Table, Illithid /403gp/
[Mon Dec 22 14:20:17] DEBUG: Saving hh_property in hh_include line 139 in 60 seconds.
[Mon Dec 22 14:20:51] DEBUG: Saving hh_property in hh_include line 206 in 60 seconds.

I don't know why the SaveHousingDatabase function crapped out, but I am re-writing it to use what is hopefully a more reliable method of checking the last time the database was saved (exported to file) and make sure that it occurs every minute once again. I do want to mention that I cannot/will not allow players to specify when a database saves because that is a very CPU intensive process which will generate lag, or even cause crashes, if it is overused and/or especially if multiple people are using it at the same time. That is also why, no matter how many times the SaveHousingDatabase may be called within 60 seconds, it is supposed to only export the database item in the module for furniture once every 60 seconds.

[LooseWilly]

So, went back on today (12/23/2014)... looks like the items I placed in Veybold's Church after the reset are still there.

The hanging shield is still lower than the level I'd last set it at... but that is hardly a big deal.

Some have asked for a button or some such to try to trigger a db set... obviously that can cause a huge amount of difficulties and thread racing and gods know what all... but, would it be possible to add an option to the item placement dialog menu which would ping the {{{ SaveHousingDatabase() }}} proc/function to see if it's running, so a player could save or not save depending on its status?

Obviously, this wouldn't be something we'd want in place for an extended time.. but if players could make that ping on that process, and note when it was down... and make reports... a pattern might emerge, methinks.

In the meantime.. I noticed an index which mentioned something about 22 items in the property when I was doing some changes... so I'm probably going to superstitiously make updates and add new furniture in small batches. The large batch may or may not have had anything to do with anything (the logs suggest Veybold was screwed before he started... he just didn't have any way to know that), but at least small changes will entail only small losses.

One small question... what're the odds of re-compensation for furniture "stolen by the gods"? At least in ball park figures... (heh, 0 is a pretty specific ball park figure).

[Balanor]

This issue has resurfaced. At this point I am one step away from deleting the entire property database (which I believe may have some type of corruption causing this crash) which would require everyone active to first pickup all furniture in their building and then replace it after the database has been deleted. However, before that happens Sundraoi and DarkRanger have agreed to test if a new database will not have this problem occur.

Therefore, to facilitate this testing, I will be temporarily removing the furniture database this Thursday, Dec 3. Once removed, no furniture or containers will be available in any player-owned building. That is when testing will occur through Friday, December 4. Once testing is finished, I will replace the furniture database so that by Saturday, December 5, all furniture in player-owned buildings will be back. So if you're a homeowner and you have anything specific you think you'll need from any a container in your building on Dec 3-4, get it out now because your house will be barren Dec 3-4.

After the testing, I'll post again if a true database deletion will occur and the next steps moving forward if that occurs.

[Animayhem]

This issue has resurfaced. At this point I am one step away from deleting the entire property database (which I believe may have some type of corruption causing this crash) which would require everyone active to first pickup all furniture in their building and then replace it after the database has been deleted. However, before that happens Sundraoi and DarkRanger have agreed to test if a new database will not have this problem occur.

Therefore, to facilitate this testing, I will be temporarily removing the furniture database this Thursday, Dec 3. Once removed, no furniture or containers will be available in any player-owned building. That is when testing will occur through Friday, December 4. Once testing is finished, I will replace the furniture database so that by Saturday, December 5, all furniture in player-owned buildings will be back. So if you're a homeowner and you have anything specific you think you'll need from any a container in your building on Dec 3-4, get it out now because your house will be barren Dec 3-4.

After the testing, I'll post again if a true database deletion will occur and the next steps moving forward if that occurs.

Clarification as some players may not have housing. This is only for player owned housing not faction housing, ie barracks, etc.

[DarkRanger]

Player owned housing, not faction housing which is part of the main module.