Crash: Where did the characters go?

[Grimstax]

Everything was running smoothly for about an hour creating characters (first time running multiplayer), then the software crashed. When I brought the campaign back up all the characters were gone. I can understand crashes, but if every time it crashes, we lose all saved data, how will I ever convince them to try again? What's the use of saving a campaign if it disappears and doesn't reload next time you start up the program?

I'm using an Ultimate License and had 5 unlicensed players. We were using the Basic Roleplaying ruleset. I've run several sessions with one character on the Call of Cthulhu ruleset and had no problems with crashes or loss of data. How do I convince them to try again when I have no clue what went wrong or how to get their characters back? It doesn't save anything on their end because they don't have licenses?

Crashes I can live with. Resetting my campaign from scratch every time I can't.

[Zeus]

FGII maintains a backup of your campaign file for just this kind of scenario. Check the campaign folder for your campaign and look for a file called db.backup.xml. Compare its size to the file db.xml (also in the same folder).

If db.backup.xml is greater than file size of db.xml there's a good chance you haven't lost your data. To test, shutdown FGII and rename the db.xml to db.xml.temp or something similar i.e. anything but db.xml and db.backup.xml.

Now rename db.backup.xml to db.xml and restart FGII, with some luck you should have 99% of the campaign data.

[Grimstax]

Yeah, I kinda figured that out, but it was after I had restarted a couple times so the backup was lost too. Now I just have to convince them it won't happen again when they were brand new to trying it out and wasted 2.5 hours. I'm thinking the crash was because I was trying to look up in the background why one of the players kept losing the ability to lose dice. While figuring out that was probably because she was cruising Facebook while playing, I think my internet searching crashed my FG. :(

Having used FG before and not had any problems for hours, this took me completely by surprise. Do I need to tell everyone to not have anything else up while running FG?

[lonadar]

Off the original topic, but I was wondering if background tasks were the issue. I started having an issue or two when I started browsing the web. (She and I were running under WINE on Mac OS X 10.5.)

[Griogre]

One thing that can happen after FG crashes is the first instance is not killed completely so you can end up actually have several instances of the server process running which is unstable and can lead to a series of crashes. After you crash the server it's never a bad idea to start the task manager and check on the *Processes* tab to make sure the FG.exe process is not still running. If so kill it or reboot to get rid of it before restarting the FG server.

It does seem pretty clear Facebook will crash a client because port 1802 is in the range of ports FB or its game apps use and if FB uses that port while the player is connected to FG it will break his connection. At GM in the House of Healing also reported problems when his wife was on Facebook on another computer while he was hosting. That may be more router dependent than a general case, but its hard to tell.

As a general rule you should prevent most problems if you tell everyone to not have anything else open, but what you are really looking to prevent is them from using some other app that also uses port 1802. That port is not widely used except as in a huge range of ports like FB and some games use. I'd definitely tell you players not to use Facebook while playing, though.

[Fenloh]

In Version 2.6.5 there was a problem with the login names. If Special characters are being used like ' " ' it could lead to a total data loss on a restart. This is fixed in V. 2.7.2 ff

I guess one of your players logged in as something like 'Alex "Burpie" Shoemoaner'.

Fenloh