[GUIDE] Minecraft Updates and Maintaining the Server

Discussion in 'Bukkit Help' started by THEK, Sep 5, 2011.

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How's your server running?

  1. Like a Pro

    33.3%
  2. Fairly Well

    33.3%
  3. Got a few issues

    33.3%
  4. Extremely Slow

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
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  1. Offline

    THEK

    Having run my own server I thought I'd share my knowledge on keeping a server up-to-date.

    Minecraft/Bukkit Updates Updates
    Having watched these forums for a while I've noticed people go haywire once a Minecraft Update is released. Server admins sitting on this site hitting F5 every few seconds waiting for a Bukkit Update. Please don't do this because then you have to wait longer for your update whilst the servers recover.

    Good things come to those who wait. Bukkit may take a few days to release a recommended build but you can see other builds here:
    http://ci.bukkit.org/job/dev-CraftBukkit/

    *****Before installing these copy your ENTIRE server folder and rename it was the new build. Then just replace the craftbukkit-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar.

    Start the server and make a note of which plugins vomit all over your console screen.

    I'd recommend installing this plugin:
    http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/mi...ious-plugin-related-additions-1001-1060.5826/

    It allows you to see a full list of your plugins including their versions in a printer-friendly format. If you want print this out and check off all the plugins that are up-to-date. Now you have your list you can go to http://plugins.bukkit.org and search for each plugin and tick off the plugins that are up to date. The ones which are not and are built for your build of CraftBukkit download and put into a folder ready to copy over.

    Once a recommended build comes out you can go through all this again. Oh the joy.

    General Maintenance
    Obviously over time servers can become sluggish, cpu-intensive and memory-hungry. Here's a few tips that can help your server run smoothly.

    Server Logs
    Your server keeps logs of everything that goes on in the console window and saves them to a file (server.log). This can be extremely helpful when reporting errors to plugin developers. However, think about the number of times you've restarted that server, or the plugins that have splattered error messages all over your screen. Well your server logs them all and over time the file sizes increase. I recommend clearing your logs every two weeks or so, maybe more times if you have a fairly popular server.

    Look our for plugin logs too. I noticed several plugins with their own logs that had grew exponentially.

    Drops
    These are items that your server should get rid of after about 5 minutes but if you have lots of people working in a relatively small area it can cause a lot of lag. Have you ever WorldEdit'd a large area with a non-block value such as signs? My advice is don't. It lags the server like hell and takes a while to clear up. If you do have WorldEdit I'd recommend occasionally typing in /remove drops -1, this removes all dropped items within an infinite area (loaded chunks).

    Redstone
    Although redstone itself doesn't cause too much lag, redstone clocks can. If you have a lot of people building things such as piston text-tickers you'll experience a little more lag than usual. Add some sort of pause mechanism for the clock.

    Login Music
    There are plugins that play music when you log in. Although this is fun, for those with slower connections it sounds horrific. Quote - "Those wasted packets could have been sending me valuable chunk data" [Friend of mine, Don't EVER use the Still Alive tune as the login tune or you'll face an earful from him].

    Hope this helps. Talking from experience.


    Have you ever experience bad lag on your server and found a

    solution? Post it here no matter how obscure!
     
  2. Offline

    THEK

    This might be very useful considering the impending 1.8 update.
     
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