This last week we managed to rock out 3 outages in a row. Over the last year we’ve had very few outages. Here is a brief rundown:

• Our first problem was with DNS. Our twilightgaming record expired but didn’t warn us. This caused downtime while we had to pay the slackers money.
• Our second problem was last night. We ran out of disk space because of bnetd’s log file. Unfortunately we couldn’t remove the file because of the way bnetd works and had to reboot the server.
• And today, the old war3 record expired. The warning email went to a defunct account.

The real sad story is that, as a result of the reboot, some Diablo II characters were lost. This is because they couldn’t be saved to disk (no space) and thus existed only as long as the server was up.

The future:

• We’ll have to keep an eye on the twilightgaming record and pre-empt this next year. Unless our DNS provider solves this for us.
• I’ve cleared enough space to serve our needs for the next 4 years (that’s how long it took us to run out the first time).
• The email address has been updated.

For what it’s worth, we do daily backups of our databases and Diablo characters. Unfortunately, this process writes to a log file. Thus, the last healthy backup we have is from May 02, which is too long ago for us to do anything meaningful with.

The server went down for 15 minutes today for planned maintenance, using the following plan-o-action:

• Announcements on Bnetd and IRC of the maintenance
• Backups of databases and Diablo characters
• Bnetd was taken down
• Software was updated (core system libraries and database – this took 5 minutes)
• Server was restarted (this took 10 minutes)
• Bnetd, Diablo servers and mumble were restored
• All databases were optimized

In addition to new software, we now have automated monitoring in place to resurrect things automatically if they fail (we’ve had the Mumble server fall over once in a while and this got annoying).

The following Operator changes have been made:

Operators  have been removed:

• Haeten has been removed from his position as Operator, effective immediately. This was due to misconduct, abuse and dishonesty in his communications with staff and users.

OptiMum has retired from his position as Operator. The Twilight Administration Team thanks him on behalf of the community for all the effort and long nights he put in. He will be missed!

Shinobi187 has also decided to resign due to personal reasons.

We would like to congratulate RiNCEw1ND on his appointment as an Operator, he has completed his trial with flying colours and has been promoted accordingly.

The following Community Activist changes have been made:

CA’s have been added:

• Brautles1
• Lostears

The inquisitors are not taking applications for the positions above, please do not send applications until you are notified of openings.

As of this moment, the server will require you to be running 1.24e.

The easiest way to update

If you have a working installation, the update should be as simple as:

• Log into Twilight
• Let the download complete
• Click restart Warcraft when prompted
• Restart Warcraft again (this is because the first restart does not launch with w3l.exe)
• Log in and continue as normal

.. and if that doesn’t work

If you encounter errors during the installation, make sure you read the details of the error (click “Show Details”) before giving up. Typically, the issue you’ll come across reads:

Registry error loading key ‘Warcraft III\InstallPath’

To fix this, either manually add the key or download this file and follow the instructions the installer gives you.

Extra resources

• Local link to the partial update from 1.24d to 1.24e
• Local link to the full update to 1.24e
• Changeset for 1.24e – only use this if the patches don’t work (coming soon)

With the recent influx of webafrica users and subsequently wage users, some rules and guidelines need to be implemented.

Clannies
Make sure all the relevant players are ready and willing to play before wage hosting your clanny.
Your game will be unhosted if you are seen to be hogging a bot. Clan games do not take preference above any other games.
The same applies for IHL games.

Hogging the bot
If you feel someone is abusing the bot, by either not starting the game, not .unhost(ing) a slow filling game or just general abuse of the bot.
You can report this to Xenophyl@tga.za.net

You need to take screenies of the following information and send it to me:
/whois wage
this returns something like:  WAGE is using Warcraft III Frozen Throne and is currently in  game “[23]sdso” (#202705)
then /gameinfo thegamenumber , in this case /gameinfo 202705
and lastly, /time
This will give us an idea of how the user has abused the bot.

The bot does not belong to a single person on the server, it is there to be shared amongst the webafrica subscribers.
This being said, TwilightGaming reserves the right to prevent users from using the bot if their actions are detrimental to other webafrica subscribers.

New WebAfrica Subscribers
To get access to the wage bot, all you have to do is logon to your webafrica ISP account.
When in Battle.net, /whois wage
If it is free, type: /hostgame level mode
e.g. /hostgame 20 apso
If it is not free, type /watch wage and wait for it to be free

Sometimes wage will be free but will fail to create a game for you, this is because the maximum number of simultaneously hosted games has been reached.
You will have to keep trying.

Once the game is hosted and you have entered it, type /w wage spoof , this command gives you control of wage.
The following commands can be used in the lobby, each followed by the number of the slot:
.open
.close
.comp     (Adds a computer slot)
e.g. .open 2

Other commands available:
.hold username (Use after closing a slot, useful for holding a spot for a friend)
.ping
.hcl (Used to set the game mode while in the game lobby, e.g. .hcl -apso)
.start
.start force
.unhost (Used for closing the game)

FUN TIMES FOR ALL.

-Xenophyl

The following staff changes have been made:

Community Activists have been removed:

• Nobodynoddy
• Creed

Crox has been added to the Community Activist team prior to the end of his trial due to good work.

We would like to congratulate Xenophyl on his appointment as an Operator, he will still perform moderator and CA duties.

The inquisitors are not taking applications for the positions above, please do not send applications until you are notified of openings.

Happy Gaming!

The following staff changes have been made:

• Storm has retired from her position as Operator. The Twilight Administration Team thanks her on behalf of the community for all the effort and long nights she put in.
• Pwn-Movie has been removed from his position as Operator, effective immediately. This was due to discrepancies and dishonesty in his communications with staff and users.

The following Community Activist have been removed:

• _-lion-_
• 1ns4n17y
• Meybru (Fired)

The inquisitors are not taking applications for the positions above, please do not send applications until you are notified of openings.

Happy Gaming!

I updated WAGE this morning (early afternoon). I’m sorry to those people whose games I killed. I meant to let them finish, but stop new games being hosted.

Firstly, the .owner command is no longer available to normal users. People were creating games for their friends, who did not have Web Africa accounts, giving them ownership and then leaving. This is clearly not a use-case the bot was intended for.

The other change was something that was just bugging me for a while. Previously users just ran the command and checked the games list and hoped, which wasn’t great. Users should now receive a whisper from the bot if their game is being hosted.

As a result of the server upgrade, we came across a bug in the new version of PHP which broke registrations on the forum. We have found a workaround while the bug is addressed. Registrations should now be working.

Thank you for your patience and for those who contacted us via the support email address.

Today I performed an OS upgrade on the server. The server was down for around 2 hours while the upgrade took place. Everything appears to be running smoothly. Other than the network outage on Friday night, this was the first time the server has been offline in over a year – and hopefully these new upgrades keep things running smoothly for many more.

Happy gaming!