Posts by videogamesm12

  • Introduce an alternative backup solution for Freedom-01

    Freedom-01 has suffered from data corruption as a consequence of the infrastructure's backup solution fucking up. This has happened twice. In addition, the server's size has made restoring from artifacts produced by the backup solution extremely difficult. This, to me, basically spells out the obvious: the backup solution isn't working for us.


    Given Freedom-01's unique situation, I would like to suggest that we look into an alternative means of backing up server data to avoid situations like this. Clearly bundling everything into one big backup just isn't going to cut it.


    Here's some ideas as for how we could accomplish it:

    • Doesn't work:
      The current implementation.

    • Works, but may not cover everything:
      If we were to break up the data being backed up into separate backups (e.g. a backup specifically for plugin configurations or world data), we might be able to back up data without using as much disk space. When I had the Archivist role during the Seth era, I actually did something similar in that I would split data being backed up based on the actual content itself. The main plus is again, less disk space usage. However, the main negative is that we would need to be selective, and as a result the backups may not cover everything.

    • Works, but questionably legal:
      During the beginning of the Seth era, one solution that was used for backing up server data was to give someone read-only access to the server files so that they could download the files over SFTP and then save them without interfering with normal server operations. The main plus with a solution like this is that it uses very little disk space on the actual server. However, the main negative here is the legal ramifications that come with it.

  • Discord API Outage.

    [Insert excessively lengthy post here explaining why relying on Discord to manage the server is a bad idea and that we should get a panel (even though we already are getting one)]

  • Development Milestones

    Contrary to the official priorities in the development team, I've been working on a fork of the TotalFreedomMod with one goal in mind: clean up and improve the plugin by fixing long-standing issues in it and removing useless bloat. Today, I'm creating this thread to share my progress.


    I have made a lot of changes so far, but here are some highlights:

    • Multi-version Support
      Thanks to the beautiful people from Paper, I've completely removed or rewritten all code that relied on NMS. This means that for the first time, the plugin works on both 1.16 and 1.18 at the same time without needing to be recompiled.

    • UUIDs for player and admin data
      I've managed to move everything that unnecessarily relied on IP addresses to use UUIDs instead. Because there is no need for verification on a premium server, I have also completely removed the player verification system.

    • More control over the command loader
      I've changed how the command loader operates to allow the plugin's commands to be completely excluded from being loaded if either a plugin the command depends on isn't present or if the command is in a list in the configuration file. This behavior can be tweaked in the configuration.

    • Command indexing and registration improvements
      This one comes in two parts. Firstly, I've rewritten a good chunk of the HTTPD server's help module to not only fix the "duplicate entries" bug, but also optimize it quite a bit. Secondly, I've finally figured out and fixed what was causing the plugin to not show up in /help.

    • WorldGuard isn't required to run the plugin anymore
      For the first time in a very long time, the plugin will now work standalone like it once did. No more needing to download WorldGuard to run the plugin. While the way I did it wasn't very clean, it got the job done quite well and solved other problems afloat.

    When I feel that I have made enough changes to be satisfied, I will make a pull request to merge these changes into the official branch. For now, if you want to watch development as it happens, you can go here to see my changes: https://github.com/VideoGameSm…omMod/commits/development

  • StevenNL's old Super Admin Application

    Great blast to the past! It brings me great joy to see Kash vigorously defending Steven like that. He always had that incredible passion for the server and its community, and I often looked up to him as a mentor during my early years as an administrator.

  • My Trip to New York City

    Last week, I took a trip to the heart of American capitalism: New York City. I loved it. I got to see things I would never see in Colorado. Unfortunately my phone was dead for a large portion of the trip but I still got some pictures of the views I had when I went up to the Empire State Building, though the image quality isn't the best because my phone's camera sucks.


    Enjoy.


    Image modified a bit to sharpen and denoise it
    Ditto

  • savnith - perm ban appeal

    Quote

    ↩  zeseryu Its honestly disgusting to see our higher level staff be so obviously biased.

    I don't disagree that in this case, my view is somewhat biased, but I will say that part of the reason I have this bias is because to be blunt, I don't trust him.


    After watching him repeat the same cycle over and over again dozens of times (apologizing, trying to gain everyone's trust, then blowing it all off by attacking the server very suddenly) for years, I have straight up lost the ability to trust him. I know it's possible for him to have actually changed, but I simply can't tell the difference between this and the many other cases of the past because of how many times I saw that cycle. This is also why I was more accepting towards Panther, because he didn't have this nearly as many times as Savnith did.

    EDIT - 1/16/2022: Reluctantly, I've changed my vote to a vouch - see above.

  • Remembering January 16

    On this date 3 years ago, TotalFreedom officially entered an ownership crisis for the first time. At approximately 6:22 PM UTC, the server was abruptly shut down by OVH after the owner at the time, Windows, failed to pay the bills for it. Windows had been missing since December 2018, and the abrupt shutdown led some to assume that Windows had abandoned the server. We didn't have an ownership policy at the time, so we didn't have a formal way of handling a crisis like this yet. However, this would soon change in the months that followed.


    The community began working on not only restoring server functionality (using a combination of a backup Seth had taken in late 2018 and schematics I had scraped on January 12th), but also ensuring that a similar situation would never happen again with what would become the ownership policy (led by veteran figures like mibbzz, Hockey, Wilee, and more).


    Without the Ownership Policy and the folks behind it, we probably wouldn't be here today.

  • savnith - perm ban appeal

    EDIT: You know what? I'm going to apologize. I've been way too heavyhanded with my biases against you, and I apologize. My vote remains a vouch, and while I still do not trust you, I am hoping to be proven wrong.


    Original remarks: