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warriorsofcats
28th February 2014, 03:19
TFC server has been up and down recently and why is that?

InsaneJ
28th February 2014, 09:43
Because TFC is an extremely unstable mod, it crashes about 4 times a day. Usually the server is automatically restarted in such events, but sometimes it takes a bit longer. Not much I can do about that unfortunately.

overkees
28th February 2014, 11:23
How much time is about the maximum a restart will take? Then I can come back after that time has past and don't have to be obsessive compulsive about it ;).

InsaneJ
28th February 2014, 11:57
It depends on how the server crashes and how it's detected.

I wrote scripts that poll the server much like your Minecraft client would. It does this every 3 seconds, and if it fails for 20 times in a row it will restart the server. The script also monitors the server's log file for mentions of crashes, and if found it will restart the server. This is done because sometimes a Minecraft server will crash, but the client can still poll it and get a player count from the server but will be unable to join.

The problem with TFC is that it can crash again right after being restarted. In general crashes are a bad thing because they can cause chunks or even the entire world to become corrupt. When a chunk becomes corrupt the server will often be restarted several times in a row due to crashes, until Minecraft has been able to discard the corrupt chunk and generate a new one.

Most of the times the server should be back in about 5 minutes or so. But with TFC you never know for sure unfortunately. It's without a doubt the worst server from a maintenance standpoint we've ever had.

However sometimes it just freezes. There is no mention of a crash in the log, dynmap seems to load and the server can still be polled by the script. So it's very difficult to detect automatically that there's a problem with the server. If the server is down for a longer period of time, you should report it.

You can do it here on the forums which will be the fastest way to get noticed. Or you can send a message to @HappyDiggers and hope I check it regularly.