RP, I don't know if you said already, but was this a fresh TWGS v2 bang or was it imported from a v1 game and then cleared out at extern?

There was another bug reported about this same game, and I believe it's just an extension of the same data corruption that we're seeing here. I just need to know if the corruption came from creating new ships in a new game or from creating new ships after clearing out a bunch of old records from a v1 game imported into v2.

Ok, I see one obvious way this could be happening. When I updated the editors, I failed to account for occupied ships in the ship editor <!> delete ship command. I thought the function that deactivated the ship would automatically do that, but it does not. The result of issuing that command on a ship that's owned by a player is exactly the same as what we're seeing here. Hopefully that's what happened. That's the only change to ship activation/deactivation that I can find, and it's unlikely this is an old bug.

Correction, I just checked my update logs going back to the beginning of v2 dev and it has always been possible to delete the ship without removing it from an active user. So this isn't a new bug. It may not even be the cause of this issue, but I'll fix it anyway. And if RP doesn't have any memory of deleting any ships in the editor, I'll have to assume it's another bug.

This was a game imported from my V1 server, then banged fresh before opening it on the V2 server



I believe I've seen this happen in V1 games as well so it may not be anything you've been aware of in the past, or a result of anything you've done updating V2.
Helix would have to tell you what was going on when this happened, but I didn't do any editing at all when this happened. I did have a power outage which shut down the computer suddenly without warning, however this ship according to the date manufactured, was created AFTER I brought the server back up. I'm a little confused as he claims that the ship "dissappeared" when the power went out.



I never deleted any ship in the game. When I went to the editor, the ship shows as ship 6, but when I travel in the game to the sector the ship is listed in, it simply isn't there. I tried to toggle the cloak flag, that didn't affect it. I then edited in another ship into that same sector, and it would show. So I'm really not sure why the ship isn't in the sector it says it is.

Well, the problem is definitely data corruption. The ship is disabled, but the player record points to the ship record. That shouldn't happen. If you assign the player to another ship, that should fix it.

The only question is how the data corruption occurred. Unfortunately, it's hard to know what might happen after a hard shutdown like that. It might not have been directly related to that ship, but it could have been some other data corruption that resulted in that ship being corrupted. I think we're just going to have to keep an eye out for more examples of this issue.

We have had "ghost" ships in the earlier version. I never figured out how to duplicate it, but it usually happened when I was running a world steal script. I am guessing that Helix might have been doing the same if he was in an unlim edit. Seems like there was some discussion in a thread, maybe a year ago, on this.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

What I don't understand is his claim that it was caused by my 6am power outage when the ship build date is 7 sum thing am?

viewtopic.php?f=43&t=22263&p=187604&hilit=ghost+ship#p187604

One take on the ghost ship

And the thread on a discussion of the issue from 2007. viewtopic.php?f=44&t=20137&p=176087&hilit=ghost+ship#p176087

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

Question for JP, if you are xporting, does the code xfer you to the new ship and then clear the occupied flag from the old ship? If a system shutdown, or maybe dropped carrier, happened during the xfer would the old ship's occupied flag still be set, but also have you in the new ship. I realize this would have to be a freak timing issue. Considering the hours I've spent running wSST, I've only had this happen once or twice. Just curious on it.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

There are any number of situations like that. TradeWars has nothing like an atomic transaction you'd find in, for example, database engines. If processing is interrupted in the middle of some kind of transaction, unless it's the most basic kind that effects only one field of data, there will be data corruption resulting from it. The best way to deal with a hard crash like that is to archive your data often and restore to your most recent archive.

I should point out, though, that if a game crashes, that won't result in data corruption, because the game will close gracefully. It's only when the system just shuts down that you'll have a problem.

Considering the number of games I've played and the ones I hosted, I think it is remarkable that I have not encountered data corruption a lot more than I have. The number issues encountered vs the number of steals that I've made as a red in unlims is too small of a percentage for me to even worry about.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."