Server INI files deleted by updates??? - WTF?

[aztechrome]

OK. So, i couldn't immediately find the thread for this issue. It should be at the top of everyone's list of things to never ever do again. If you know where the solution to my problem is, please just give me a link.

OK, so, WHY HAVE THE LAST TWO UPDATES DELETED MY .INI FILE AND LEFT ME WITH NO KNOWN BACKUP???

Basically, how did this happen. And why did it happen twice in a row. And will it happen again, and WTF?! I lost my backup of the ini file n a recent HDD crash, and now I'm looking at weeks of twiddling to get things right again. Why? Because I updated?

Who ordered this?

I spoke with one of the senior techs at my hosting service, and he told me it was a surprise to them too, and that it had been occurring to other people, and that it was a genuine update being pushed out by TWI/Steam. They could not help me restore my files. This is why there's so many *#U&)(#-ing short games right now. What a fiasco!


Please tell me I"m missing something really important here....

 

[Skillz]

Please tell me I"m missing something really important here....

Yeah, as a server administrator it's your responsibility to keep backups. This is standard practice before doing ANYTHING to any server/service/host. Backup, backup, and above all, backup.

 

[BlueFire081]

The obvious solution would've been to make a backup of the KillingFloor.ini file regardless of whether the update was scripted to delete it or not. At the moment, there isn't any explanation but still, make a backup at least once every week or so.

 

[aztechrome]

Yeah, as a server administrator it's your responsibility to keep backups. This is standard practice before doing ANYTHING to any server/service/host. Backup, backup, and above all, backup.

Wow. Thanks guys. That's a huge help. As a matter of fact I have a backup that's about a month old. I back up all my stuff on to external, and then I back that up to cloud storage for anything active about once a month. Unfortunately, I suffered total mechanical failure on my main backup drive at the end of October. Since it was at the end of the monthly backup cycle, almost a full month of everything was lost. I suppose your next piece of advice would be to run a RAID Level 5, so that this can't happen. Or perhaps backup daily to tape. Maybe hire a secondary backup service and pay a technician to help me when I'm short on time. Or, screw it, we'll just do RAID Level 2 so there's not even any down time and hire a team of data management specialists to monitor the integrity of my data like it's the Curiousity telemmetry. Yeah. I'm aware of many backup solutions, and I also know that my pocketbook isn't bottomless and my time isn't infinite. I back up often enough, and except for wildly premature hardware failure, I'd have a 3 day old backup of my ini file.

But that's not the point.

The point is, why in god's name would you want your update to go blank out everyone's config files? How is that even remotely a good idea. Straining hard, i still can't figure out a case where this would be unavoidable and entirely necessary. Maybe because of an estremely major revisioning and refining of fundamental program methods to the point where essential parts of the config file must be rewritten because they would no longer be usable or could create conflicting return data. I'm sure that's a horrible example. Nevertheless, why would you not simply warn the update user that this particular update should be preceded with a backup of config files. Or simpler still, just have the update create a renamed copy of the orginals.

Or does this seem completely acceptable to everyone else? If the update you wrote reset all of your company's clients config files, would your boss be fine with that? And why these particular updates? I've been running my server going on 6 months, and I've never had this isssue before. Why now?

It smacks of a relatively easy-to-correct oversight. Like if the update called for a reversion of several key files, which unintentianally called for a reversion of the main config file. That might make this happen.

But yeah. Remind me next time to clarify that "NO BACKUP" means the update developer didn't back up my critical originals before destroying them. I've got a backup. Just not a terribly recent one. How many other people woke up to this situation. I don't think backup practices are really the issue here.

If i sound pissed, it's because I don't see any good reason for this. I'm open to being enlightened.

Have a spiffy day.

 

[Skillz]

Well technically speaking you don't need to make daily/weekly or even monthly backups of your configuration files. You only need to make a backup before AND after you make changes to them. Since once you set them, they are good to go until you alter them again. Therefore, all those levels of backups for redundancy purposes would not be needed. Running a command to transfer important INI files to a backup directory isn't difficult and should be done during any update. We're just human and lazy and expect things to go 100% perfect each time. In the event that you're running a script to auto update the server, run some commands before the update takes place that will backup important files.

I will mention, that I've updated three KF servers and have YET to have to use a backup ini. Not saying you're problem is isolated or trying to point the fingers at you, but if you'd read around you'll see that this seems to be mostly a Windows issue and it's unofficially addressed by TWI that they needed to do that because of outdated/incorrect INIs or something, I can't remember the exact reason but they felt that was the only option to get everyone on the same page.

Should they have mentioned it to the server administrators BEFORE this occurred? Yes I think they should have, however not everyone would have got the message since I can pretty much guarantee that you didn't check the forums before updating otherwise you would have seen some posts already started before about them.

Maybe we should pressure TWI into setting up a mailing list for server administrators, so they can keep us "in the know" on things such as this.

 

[deckardblade]

There is a mailing list http://list.tripwireinteractive.com/mailman/listinfo/serveradmins_list.tripwireinteractive.com

But they haven't ever listed information like "this is going to f your ini in the a". Granted my ini files (on 8 servers) have not been effected by this. Although after reading other's issues I just copy my *.ini files to a backup directory and then update without worry. That takes about 10 at most extra seconds once the directory is created.

I completely understand the frustration some are experiencing but due to the issue not being global to server admins I'm sure TWI had no idea that it would happen. This wasn't a malicious assault on your server or anything of that nature.