fCraft Forums

So, some of you might be wondering what happened to Freebuild.

Long story short:

ALMOST ALL THE MAPS BETWEEN JUNE 14th AND NOW ARE GONE - INCLUDING BACKUPS - FOREVER - NOTHING CAN BE DONE!



How did we get there?

So, our server uses some administration software called Plesk - it's quite awful and we don't use it for its intended purpose (re-selling hosting) at all but when I initially ordered the server it seemed like a nice idea since it came with a lot of stuff preconfigured and ready to go, while I have absolutely zero clue about setting up IIS (Internet Information Services).

The first warning signs came a few months ago when the forum was down for like four days because Plesk updated itself and fucked everything up. But that's OK - it was just the website.

What happened now is as follows:

* Plesk was bugging me about a pending update for a while and since I knew it had the tendency to auto-update, I wanted to be there when the update happens so I could fix problems.

* I tried backing up our system but the backup function was b0rked at the time since our virtual server was moved to a new host machine a while ago - I just said "Fuck it, how bad can it be? The website will be down for a while at the worst..." Little did I know!

* Plesk merrily proceeded to ERASE all our FTP directories without any warning, prompt, error or whatever, skipping the Recycle Bin and overwriting deleted data with its own installation files on the disk.
Any software company that designs something like this should be sued but alas...

* As you know I have given FTP access to logs and maps via a shared FTP account and thus everything was deleted by Plesk since it was cross-linked under the FTP root... Not in a million years would it have crossed my mind that a software update would DELETE non-native and totally unrelated files without any prompts...

* The hosting company doesn't have any backups of our system since regular backups are a paid-for service.

* This means everything is gone FOREVER - apart from the few maps I was able to rescue via a data recovery utility.

What can we do?

I am now considering requesting our host to uninstall Plesk from our system but at the same time I don't possess enough knowledge to set up IIS properly myself at the moment and am not really forward to investing a lot of time into acquiring the required skills.
We'll see...

For now all we can do is ask everybody who had access to the FTP whether they have any backups.

Also, set up manual back-up procedures to save everything every two weeks or so - I was doing this in the past back at SpA but in this community I haven't been tending to the Minecraft servers for a long time.

All I can say is that I'm sorry and the human part of this disaster rests fully on me, even though I don't believe I would have made any other decision at any other time - I simply could not foresee Plesk affecting anything apart from the website - and it never did!

Important note: If anybody lost his or her personal world and wants a donation refund, I will grant it. Otherwise a blank world will be provided as usual.

It's gone? Can we get an ETA on when we can get NSFW back?

That does seem like terrible software design... I would definitely ask about that

Smokey and I are currently working on getting a decent amount of our maps back.

As mentioned by Lim, although this was partly human error, there should be NO software that overwrites a file without first prompting you. That's just ridiculous.

Sometimes unforseen shit happens. Get on with it, move on, and wake up the next morning the same you did that morning.

If you have any backups please tell us so here:
http://forum.fcraft.net/viewtopic.php?f ... 528#p11528

Yes, in fact, when the smoke settles, I will write some kind of long rage-post on the Plesk forums and warn all the unsuspecting people about this piece of shit software.

"Update successful! All your files have been deleted! *trollface*" -.-

i have some of the maps dumped if that will help at all..... i can send them if i am wanted to they are saved as level######## tho

I will set up an FTP where anybody can dump anything they have.

If you didn't get my PM I've reinstated a few maps from Pemalite and Smokey. You'll never believe it but in a redundancy scan my computer said I should delete many of my unused folders on my OS drive, and one of those was a folder with many, many map backups. So yeah, I'm kinda hating on myself right now for that

Sounds like a perfect storm. Everything that could have possibly gone wrong did. Ah well.
The backups that i have are very old (june 21) and if i could bet 5 dollars on it, they're only of main/guest. not very useful. :/

suggestion: i think from now on we should have some users dump important maps from time to time (ex. Impcity :I) and save it somewhere on their HDD. That way, if something like this ever happens again (with backups somehow failing), the data would still exist amongst the cloud of users, easily retrievable.

EDIT: yep. olde main, with the olde signs. there might be some nice builds in there taht are salvageable, so whenever lim sets up the ftp server or w/e, ill submit it.

ImperialCity was saved. At this very moment I'm making a full system backup to a cloud hosting solution, so it's K for now.

Anyways, I set up the Map Rescue FTPâ„¢

Ollieboy wrote:If you didn't get my PM I've reinstated a few maps from Pemalite and Smokey. You'll never believe it but in a redundancy scan my computer said I should delete many of my unused folders on my OS drive, and one of those was a folder with many, many map backups. So yeah, I'm kinda hating on myself right now for that

Same situation happened here...

I have WorldTradeCentre, Spawn2, Spleef, HallOfFame1 and VeniceMain(lol).

Plus fragmer managed to fix a few worlds he had backed up personally, including citybuild6, halloweenspleef and dbchallenge.

Also I asked Don_Don_Don whether he could give me some of SpA's maps from before they switched over to McForge (July) which I'm sure they had archived, he hasn't got back to me yet but fingers crossed we should get all of those maps back. Obviously minus the ones that the SpA community had already worked on by the time official fcraft was formed.

This bunch of maps should include spawn1 in an earlier form, citybuild 1-8, space 1-3, warships, war 1-4, contest template, ocean, NotreDame, metropolis (an old one), the themed mains and various old pixelarts, members, builders, veterans, advbuilders, masons and architects.

Finally, Kthillman made his own server (AFAIK called Tyler's freebuild, which used to belong to tylerissoawesome and which kept the name when tyler left to make applecraft) and decided to copy some maps, including one of Pemalite's worlds, space4 and some others I cant quite recall. However I cant find his server up to use WoM to dump levels.

We have all post-switch maps. Like I said - I recovered everything up until June 14th (which is more than a month after starting the fCraft.net community). Full archives of SpA Freebuild are present as well.

I can give FTP access to maps again (trololol! - OK, we have backups now) so you see what is there.

Thanks to generosity from tyler/ stantheman and kthillman, we now have Banners 1-3 back

KingCrab wrote:Thanks to generosity from tyler/ stantheman and kthillman

Generosity?

Lim-Dul wrote:ImperialCity was saved. At this very moment I'm making a full system backup to a cloud hosting solution, so it's K for now.

Anyways, I set up the Map Rescue FTPâ„¢

We lost the pond fixes, Talos Plaza and HALF THE PRISON.

Totally cbf rebuilding >.>

I built something in one of the wiped maps, (space4) but that map is restored now and my build is gone.
I have a dumpmap from WOM, however.
Can my build be saved? What do I need to do with the dumpmap?

Thanks,
Gamesaucer

P.S. I built it in a wiped map because most other maps were full or wiped as well.

Are you the one who made that spleef arena on a map clearly labelled "space 4"? Yeah, don't do that.

Xesdra wrote:

Lim-Dul wrote:ImperialCity was saved. At this very moment I'm making a full system backup to a cloud hosting solution, so it's K for now.

Anyways, I set up the Map Rescue FTPâ„¢

We lost the pond fixes, Talos Plaza and HALF THE PRISON.

Totally cbf rebuilding >.>

Eh, one day.

Sanjar Khan wrote:

KingCrab wrote:Thanks to generosity from tyler/ stantheman and kthillman

Generosity?

In other words, they gave us the maps back without any bitching like we've had to go through under other circumstances...

gamesaucer wrote:I built something in one of the wiped maps, (space4) but that map is restored now and my build is gone.
I have a dumpmap from WOM, however.
Can my build be saved? What do I need to do with the dumpmap?

Thanks,
Gamesaucer

P.S. I built it in a wiped map because most other maps were full or wiped as well.

Yes, we can restore the build. If you send us the .dat we can copy over your stuff to the proper Space4 map.

Kthillman's server is called Pedobear official freebuild we have spawns1 pens world builder 41 and 43 we have map from another server called monuments it was made by arches if u need any perms I can promo and help I'm owner there and we also have spleef2 and school I think others 2 contact me well post reply if u need me.

You just advertised a server in a single, giant, run-on sentence that is completely unreadable.
Good luck ever having somebody make enough sense out of that to actually visit the server.

Sorry, and I wasn't trying to advertise I was saying if u need worlds back, ask me or someone for perms if needed

KingCrab wrote:Thanks to generosity from tyler/ stantheman and kthillman, we now have Banners 1-3 back

McLaughlinKid wrote:Kthillman's server is called Pedobear official freebuild we have spawns1 pens world builder 41 and 43 we have map from another server called monuments it was made by arches if u need any perms I can promo and help I'm owner there and we also have spleef2 and school I think others 2 contact me well post reply if u need me.

We have already talked to Kthillman. Thank you though

McLaughlinKid wrote:Sorry, and I wasn't trying to advertise I was saying if u need worlds back, ask me or someone for perms if needed

And THAT is why you need to use grammar and punctuation. I had no idea what you were actually saying.

Oh and next time, ask if you can use our maps.

He did ask, but he took more than he asked he could.

Ok king, and I'm pretty sure he went back to Fragmer and asked for more maps. Also bloody I'll try and use grammar and punctuation more.

*unrelated
Hey lim, when you get a chance to raeg-post on the Plesk forums, could you post the link here? it would be interesting to see the feedback.