Corrupted or incomplete backups

[Kjarstin 22]

I have now run into this problem twice in the past couple of weeks.  We have a server crash for some reason (once was a mod crash, once was an unknown crash), in both instances, restarting the server resulted in it loading with no mods installed at all, hence everything broken.  

 

I assumed a mod problem, which is realistic, and I cleared mod folders, Steam CMD, my cache, etc.  Restarted, still no mods.  Spent several hours going through mods, troubleshooting, etc, and no go, it wasn't just one mod or another it wouldn't load it was NONE of them.  

 

I went to the dropdown to restore a backup and noted that several backups earlier (the day before either of these crashes happened), the size of the backup was significantly smaller.  On testing restoring backups, apparently the mods quit being saved/loaded way back, before our crash happened.  When I restored the last backup with the larger save size, all the mods were back and all was well, though over 24 hours of game time etc had been lost. Regardless of the fact that the game is saved every 15 minutes, the backups are only available from a couple times a day.

 

The fact that the backups appear to be not working properly or corrupting is my concern.  I  will be copying this to a ticket, but at this point the files are what they are, I just wanted to see if anyone knows if I'm missing something or there is an issue I'm unaware of or can change to try and not lose so much play time/building/tames.

 

Thanks!
Kjarstin

[Grimm77 1]

Something I would recommend doing is when playing, maybe before you log off, do an admin command to save the server.   When you do that, go check the server file to ensure that it did save, and then simply transfer a copy of the saved file/files (You can easily transfer the saved folder too) to your desktop/laptop, so you have a copy of it.  Granted, you shouldn't have to do this, but it will save you a headache like above should that ever happen again.   

Good luck!

[Ryan Pennington 359]

Backups are not corrupted. It's possible the save world data within the backups is corrupted but the backup system itself is not.

[Kjarstin 22]

Hey Ryan, I was pretty much assuming it was a mod issue with a save, but wanted to be sure there wasn't something I was missing, or needed to change in the way I was handling it.  I'm still learning a lot about server admin

 

Thanks!