Ban List Errror?

[Willdy]

So recently, one of my admins alerted me that the ban list on xgui was rather short. So I checked the amount of names which we had banned.

We used to have more than 500 people banned (More than 350 are now unbanned), this was a mixture of ulx bans, and other types of bans, but the ulx ban file is a lot smaller than it used to be.

On finding there was a problem, I checked the console and saw this:



Does anyone have any ideas?

[Assault_Trooper]

Most likely a banned user has had an unusual name, which has contained a character as printed in the console. Find that name and remove the name part, should fix your issue and restore your bans.

I've had this before aswell.

[Willdy]

Most likely a banned user has had an unusual name, which has contained a character as printed in the console. Find that name and remove the name part, should fix your issue and restore your bans.

I've had this before aswell.

Right, if you read my last reply, ignore it.

If we completely delete the bans.txt file, it doesn't create a new one on load.

If we only delete the content, one error remains (key = 1 error in the screenshot).

[MrPresident]

In all likeliness the users were not actually unbanned, it's just that the file couldn't be properly parsed into XGUI due to the unusual character in the name, and all entries after that one were skipped.

It could be any name. Banned user or Banning admin.

[Willdy]

In all likeliness the users were not actually unbanned, it's just that the file couldn't be properly parsed into XGUI due to the unusual character in the name, and all entries after that one were skipped.

It could be any name. Banned user or Banning admin.

But the actual bans.txt file is 80kb smaller?

A lot of the bans which are still in the file after the "reset" takes place are changed in to this type of format:

}
"STEAM_0:1:14137101"   
{
   "unban"   0
}

[MrPresident]

Actually come to think of it.. I do remember having an issue similar to this way back..

I'm not sure what caused it or if it ever got fixed, but when I would mix ULX bans with non ULX bans, sometimes one would lose bans. Also.. do you or any of your other admins use HLSW? If so I think loading bans in HLSW can cause issues too if I recall correctly.

[Willdy]

Actually come to think of it.. I do remember having an issue similar to this way back..

I'm not sure what caused it or if it ever got fixed, but when I would mix ULX bans with non ULX bans, sometimes one would lose bans. Also.. do you or any of your other admins use HLSW? If so I think loading bans in HLSW can cause issues too if I recall correctly.

I use HLSW on a very regular basis, and yes, I load the ban list on it.

President, I have added you on steam, it would be very helpful if you accepted.

[MrPresident]

That can cause issues if I remember right. here's why...

You have ULX loading the bans.txt from your server and managing it..
You have HLSW loading the bans.txt from your server and managing it..

If you save the bans in HLSW, ULX will not know that and will save over it with what it has in memory. It's the same thing flip side as well. Sometimes ULX will save something and your HLSW will not have it loaded and will write over it.

My strong recommendation is that you do NOT use HLSW to manage bans. Or if you DO want to view them in HLSW be VERY VERY careful not to save with HLSW. Only do your unbanning via console using HLSW.

In short.. don't use built in banning system and ULX banning system together.. it never ends well.

[Willdy]

Right, I just saved the ban list which I had in my last backup. I deleted the content of the bans.txt and replaced it with the contents of the bans.txt from our test server.

Our test server doesn't show any errors, but when it is on the normal server it does.

It is causing a lot of worry :/

[Stickly Man!]

We've had several reports of this in the past, although much less common recently. I'm not sure it's related to HLSW though.

Can you send your garrysmod/data/bans.txt (perhaps any backups of this if you had one before it was messed up) and garrysmod/cfg/banned_users.cfg files to me and Megiddo via PM or email team@ulyssesmod.net?

Generally, this error has popped up due to a corrupt entry being somehow (haven't figured that out yet) added to bans.txt. When the file parser gets to that ban, it freaks out and doesn't parse the rest of the bans. If you're using XGUI to check the banlist, then yes, you won't see all of the bans unless you click the "View Source Bans" button at the bottom-right corner of the bans window.

But the actual bans.txt file is 80kb smaller?

A lot of the bans which are still in the file after the "reset" takes place are changed in to this type of format:

}
"STEAM_0:1:14137101"   
{
   "unban"   0
}

What I'm assuming happened is that the bans.txt file didn't get parsed completely, then a new bans.txt file was saved over the old one, thus removing any information about the bans that didn't get parsed. However, the SteamIDs still exist in source's banned_users.cfg file. Therefore, the next time you started the server, ULX recreated entries in bans.txt for the SteamIDs that didn't get parsed initially.

So, in a nutshell: A bunch of bans in your bans.txt file lost their information such as name, date banned, who banned them, etc, but you should not have actually lost any bans (except maybe the 1 that caused the problem).

As for the solution-- well, hopefully it didn't set you back too much, and hopefully you had a recent backup of your bans.txt   I'm going to bring this up with Megiddo again, and if you can supply the bans file for us, then that would be very helpful.

[Willdy]

Sorry for my late reply, to fix the error, I literally just readded all the bans manually. We haven't had a problem since.

EDIT: Please read the PM.