Bugging bans

[BombSki]

Soo.. what is wrong with the server ban system?

Im owning/admining 4 servers at the moment, which were recently updated from 2.5.1 to .4, and although its far more stable than 2.5.2, it has 1 big problem

2 of these servers are climb servers and the other 2 are knife only servers, both gamestyles seem to attract hackers because spawning weapons and ladderjumping has never been so much fun..

anyway, this has always been and normally i can keep my server rather hacker-free.. since the server update however, people seem to be able to rejoin right after they get banned. this could either be a bug or a hack, i only know this wasnt the case back 2 months ago (i was offline for 2 months and after that i updated servers)

heres a nice log for yall:

-20:31:04- 81.190.6.15:1251 requesting game...
-20:31:06- Zobie_PL joining game (81.190.6.15:1251)
-20:31:06- Zobie_PL has joined alpha team.
-20:31:07- Zobie_PL is cheating -Not allowed weapon
-20:31:09- Zobie_PL is cheating -Not allowed weapon
-20:31:09- Zobie_PL is cheating -Not allowed weapon
<etc>
-20:31:17- /ban 3
(gets banned, my remote admin doesnt echo this somehow)
-20:31:23- 81.190.6.15:1252 requesting game...
-20:31:25- Zobie_PL joining game (81.190.6.15:1252)

This could go on for a pretty long time, til either he or me gets bored..

the IP is the same, and it is also in banned.txt.. basicly _every_ hacker i ban is able to rejoin immediately, although ping and flood bans seem to work. this would suggest that its a hack rather than a bug, but i would still like to see some kind of fix for this, as it is _really_ irritating and it messes up the server (caplimit 1 in climb server with massflag isnt fun)

ps ive contacted another admin of a server and he claims to have the same problem on his server.

[Leo]

Your banned.txt got corrupted. Remove some IP's and restart server and it will be fixed.

[BombSki]

hmm, you think so?

there were some blank lines in it, but afaik thats rather normal..

ive removed all blank lines and re-uploaded the file, i hope this works, thanks for fast reply!

[EnEsCe]

Your banned.txt file is full, the maximum number of bans is 100.

[mar77a]

Or his ip is in remote.txt

[BombSki]

Your banned.txt file is full, the maximum number of bans is 100.

omg you must be kidding? my banned.txt is well over 1000 (yes 1000) lines

why is there a 100-ban limit? will this be more in next server version? would i be able to script more bans with some script?

[EnEsCe]

yep easily can be scripted.

[chrisgbk]

Eventually, the plan is to have the ban system redone so it doesn't have a limit; when this actually gets done is a different question altogether.

[EnEsCe]

It's already done, I posted saying I did change the ban format so it is unlimited bans last year some time.

[BombSki]

hmm thanks for the help all, i guess ill wait for next server then

Date Posted: March 31, 2007, 07:54:16 AMWell.. something is still wrong
people are still rejoining within like 10 seconds after being banned. they always have the same ip, and their ip is in the banned.txt which has less than 100 lines now. even people that get pingkicked are able to rejoin.. oh, and the ip isnt in remote.txt either..

-20:47:18- Why kick Insane joining game (83.28.199.75:2923)
-20:47:18- Why kick Insane has joined bravo team.
-20:48:46- /ban 2
-20:48:55- 83.28.199.75:2924 requesting game...
-20:48:56- Why kick Insane joining game (83.28.199.75:2924)
-20:48:56- Why kick Insane has joined bravo team.
-20:49:00- /ban 2
-20:49:22- 83.28.199.75:2925 requesting game...
-20:49:23- Insane is not hacker joining game (83.28.199.75:2925)
-20:49:23- Insane is not hacker has joined bravo team.

etc etc etc..

any idea what causes this? anyone with the same problem? any fixes?


btw, when i gmute them they will stay gmuted when they rejoin.. the gmute seems to work but the bans dont.. rather weird?

[chrisgbk]

Check the logs server side, check if anything is happening after you ban someone.

It's also possible that your banned.txt has some excess spacing in it or somesuch that is screwing it up.

[BombSki]

well, i finally fixed it. for some very weird reason the server would automaticly re-create the 'deleted' banned.txt after some time. this means the 1000+ lines file kept overwriting my 'new' banned.txt

we shut down the server, removed the file, restarted the server and now it works fine. what exactly caused this automatic-backup kind of thing remains a mystery to me. thx anyway ^^

[chrisgbk]

The server only reads from the file when it starts up, then keeps the entire list in memory, and re-writes it to disk every once in a while; if you don't shut the server down of course it will re-write it.

[BombSki]

doesnt make much sense really, i expected it to search for ip in banned.txt on join.. but i guess thats just me

[chrisgbk]

The overhead associated with opening a file, loading it into memory, and parsing it each time someone joins is very high; it's more practical to load the file into a buffer once, update the buffer as needed, and search the buffer when someone joins; then later save the buffer to file for reloading later.