The bans on my server keep getting deleted

[Cornflake]

Hi all,

I've been using ULX v3.20 for some time now... and I have quite a few bans on my server. But, it seems that whenever you open the menu and go to the ban screen, it either clears the extra info recorded when banning, or deletes bans altogether. Both of these have happened to me multiple times. Today however, I had a new admin on my server and I told him NOT to use the ban menu because it screws up the bans. Well of course he opened it up and I looked to see that it deleted all but ONE of my bans.

As you can imagine I'm really pissed off right now. It deleted all but one bans in both my banned_user.cfg AND the ulx bans.txt file. This is appalling! Personally I find it ridiculous that v3.20 has not been updated in all this time with such a bad bug left in the release. I don't want to use the SVN version because I want the most stable release possible.

Is there any way I can remove the ban button in the menu? Otherwise I will have to do nightly backups of my bans or make the files read-only and manually insert bans from Windows which is time consuming and defeats the point of having an admin system.

- Thanks, Cornflake

[MrPresident]

Your attitude is a bit rude to say the least... and you expect to come in flaming away and get help?

I'll give you a little because I am nice..

1. Remove ulx banmenu from your groups.txt allows
2. The ban menu only displays bans and gives you a way to delete them if you press the buttons.. it wont delete them for you.


Also.. I have a fix.. and all I'll tell you is that it is listed somewhere on this site. Next time.. maybe you should be a bit nicer. Team U does not hold ANY responsibility to you or anyone else out there.. they made ULX because they wanted to, not because you needed it.

PS.. The current SVN is extremely stable.. the only thing they have done to it that arent already in release.. is fix some bugs they overlooked and added a FEW new features which have been tested and are stable.

PPS.. From what I've seen.. ULX doesn't make new releases every time they find a bug in the current release.. they add it to the SVN and when they get enough updates to make it worth a release.. they release it.

[Cornflake]

I'm sorry I sounded a little mouthy but I was infuriated because this has happened to me several times -- And I've searched the site and I haven't found any official posting from Team U about the bug. I went the the bug report section but there are so many user reported bugs I couldn't find any related to the ban menu.

2. The ban menu only displays bans and gives you a way to delete them if you press the buttons.. it wont delete them for you

Well I know but because of the bug I'm talking about, if the ban menu is opened it clears the additional information written when someone is banned (i.e. reason for being banned). And this last time it was opened, all but one of the bans were deleted. I know this shouldn't happen... but the admin who opened it swears they JUST opened the menu and did not touch any of the red X's to delete them. I will look for the fix you mentioned but I would be extremely greatfull if you posted the link to it because I can't seem to find it. Also thanks for the quick feedback...

P.S. I don't expect Team U to hold responsibility for this, i know they code because they enjoy it... but with the high quality of their addons i didn't expect them to leave this bug in the release without at leat making a sticky about it.

- Thanks

[Megiddo]

Spbogie is in charge of bans, but as far as I know, any "bans disappearing" is user error.

[Cornflake]

Well can you confirm the bans menu clearing additional info about the bans when opened? (i.e. name of player banned, reason, etc) ? There's a post here about problems with the ban menu as well: http://forums.ulyssesmod.net/index.php/topic,3033.0.html

[JamminR]

All, please calm down (if you weren't already)

Zakap, thanks for the rebuttal.
Megiddo, I agree.

Cornflake
The only ban menu bug we know of in our latest release is if someone attempts to BAN someone from the menu.
Even then, it errors out, and stops executing, because 'no reason was provided' as the option from the chat or console ban command expects.
No writeid is committed.

We have had no reports, other than yours, since our release of 3.2 stating that looking at the bans causes them to be removed.
Someone would have had to click a button that basically says 'remove'.
It is extremely unlikely that your issue is related to something ULX caused directly as a bug.


All,
Though zakap is partially correct in saying

'when they get enough updates to make it worth a release.. they release it.'

Another major reason for SVN is to allow testing of features we add. The more we have testing before a release, the more likely bugs will be squashed.

We understand that SVN isn't for everyone too though.

[JamminR]

Well can you confirm the bans menu clearing additional info about the bans when opened? (i.e. name of player banned, reason, etc) ? There's a post here about problems with the ban menu as well: http://forums.ulyssesmod.net/index.php/topic,3033.0.html

There is also major discussion here - http://forums.ulyssesmod.net/index.php/topic,2986.0.html
It had nothing to do with opening the ban menu.
zakap found the issue to be on his end, not ULX.
He wasn't executing the ban lists on server startup in his server.cfg file, so bans were dissapearing.
exec banned_user.cfg
exec banned_ip.cfg
This has nothing to do with ULX, but is a Source/Server admin responsibility.

[MrPresident]

There is also major discussion here - http://forums.ulyssesmod.net/index.php/topic,2986.0.html
It had nothing to do with opening the ban menu.
zakap found the issue to be on his end, not ULX.
He wasn't executing the ban lists on server startup in his server.cfg file, so bans were dissapearing.
exec banned_user.cfg
exec banned_ip.cfg
This has nothing to do with ULX, but is a Source/Server admin responsibility.

Right, I'll go a little deeper since we are all working together and not pointing fingers anymore. What was happening, was that my server would not open the ban file when it started properly.. thus when ULX would write a new ban it would save the file with the new data (which EXCLUDED) the old data, causing the old data to dissappear. Not a ULX problem, even though by misfortune ULX was writing the file.

I didnt click the links provided by JamminR, but if you add
exec banned_user.cfg
exec banned_ip.cfg

in your Server.cfg file in GarrysMod/cfg it will load the ban files each time your server loads. Since I added these lines to my config.. I have NEVER had my ban lists dissappear on me.

Try it.. i'm positive this will fix your problem

[Cornflake]

Right, I'll go a little deeper since we are all working together and not pointing fingers anymore. What was happening, was that my server would not open the ban file when it started properly.. thus when ULX would write a new ban it would save the file with the new data (which EXCLUDED) the old data, causing the old data to dissappear. Not a ULX problem, even though by misfortune ULX was writing the file.

Ah I see, that explains it all. That would also explain why sometimes banned users could join my server from time to time. It may have not been a bug in ULX, although ULX aggravated the problem by rewriting the file with blank info. Just out of curiosity, why would the ban menu rewrite the file even if no bans were removed and the list was viewed only?

Spbogie is in charge of bans, but as far as I know, any "bans disappearing" is user error.

Ah, it would appear it isn't user error But at least we're all educated on the matter now. Just a note, maybe in the next release it should be mentioned to add these two lines on the cfg to prevent the problem from happening? If it was in the current readme and I missed it, forgive me.

P.S. I just look and I don't seem to have a banned_ip.cfg. Will this cause any problems?

[MrPresident]

1. ULX when it writes teh new file takes the old data (that wasnt loaded.. plus it's new data and writes to the file.) by simply loading the file on server/map load, when ULX writes the old+new data.. it'll be there to write.

2. If you havnt banned anyone by IP... if you are using ULX then you have not... then you will not have a banned_ip file.. you can still incude that line of code to load it even if it doesnt exist and it wont effect anything, but it WILL then load it in the case that that file appears.


sorry if my typing is sloppy.. im being fast.. my room mates are yelling on me to get off here and back on BF2.. oh.. and it's 6am! =)

Holiday Vacation FTW..

Hope everything works out for ya.

[JamminR]

Ah, it would appear it isn't user error But at least we're all educated on the matter now.

Though a common easy mistake to make, the lack of executing the ban files at server startup from server.cfg has nothing to do with ULX and is the responsibility of any server host. This is the way Valve ban system works and would have the same problem if you didn't use ULX.