Friday Facts #330 - Main menu and File Share Shenanigans

[oi_wtf]

Sofware RAID1 - in my experience - usually does with that metadata what I'd consider the right thing for a RAID1:
It stores it in RAID1 mode, e.g. every drive contains the complete metadata.

I don't have much experience with HW-Raid though, so yeah, it seems some vendors do weird stuff... one reason to avoid them unless necessary

[BlueTemplar]

Oh, right, "RAID0 isn't RAID, more like anti-RAID", I remember now...

[kingarthur]

[...]Imagine having 3 notebooks. You write the sentence "I love pink ponies they make me happy." by striping one word in each notebook. So book 1 has "I ponies me", book 2 has "love they happy", and book 3 has "pink make". If you pulled out just notebook 2, the information wouldn't make any sense. This is why you can't pull one drive out of a RAID set (except RAID 1, sometimes) and still use it.

Wait, isn't "RAID" short for Redundant Array of Independent Drives ? That seems neither redundant, nor independent to me !

the i stands for inexpensive or independent. and it depends on the raid setup you go with as there are multiple layers that can be used. in that example its raid 0 which will spread the data across a set of drives as it can read and write the data faster by sending it to all the drives at the same time. raid 1 will mirror data between 2 drives so you will have 2 copies incase one dies.

[Itemfinder]

Idea: If a multiplayer game has been played, Make Continue a button that splits into 2 buttons when clicked, one of Singleplayer, one of Multiplayer. Put a button in the side or outside of the multiplayer button to "forget" the saved multiplayer setttings. If multiplayer settings are absent, default Continue to singleplayer continue.

[Stlyau]

I haven't read through all the replies yet, but I had something cross my mind when I read the FFF this morning. In regards to the Continue button, will it recognize if the current active mods match the last save? The reason I ask is... What happens when you play a solo save, then go onto a server with a different set of mods, then decide to go back to the solo save via the Continue? Will it prompt a mod sync much like you get when joining a server if the mods don't match? I didn't see anything mentioned in the FFF about this happening, so I had to ask when it popped into my thoughts.

[zebediah49]

FWIW, I've run a QNAP box continuously for about three years with no issues -- including doing a chassis-transplant to upgrade it. It sounds like you guys got quite unlucky there.

That said, there's no such thing as a magical perfectly working NAS. That includes spending six figures on scale-out hardware -- even Isilon has random issues that require addressing from time to time. It's just that for those prices, Dell will overnight you a replacement chassis, and your users don't notice that an entire box failed.

Just don't use RAID 5

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New menu looks great!

[PhasmaNL]

Just buy a Synology (a + model). It's great! Really.

[Quarnozian]

I'd love the Continue to be like a category, and have two buttons. One for Singleplayer, and one for Multiplayer.

Just buy a Synology (a + model). It's great! Really.

Do Not. GamersNexus went through the exact same scenario as Wube did, with the only difference being they were using Synology equipment.

[malventano]

You realize RAID 5 has been obsolete for years now?

Sorry, but no. Wube was (and likely still is) using a 4 disk array, and RAID 5 is just fine for that purpose, especially if there is a backup. RAID 5 is still typically the default for most 3-4 disk home / small business NAS solutions. Agreed on the 'LTT knowing storage' point though - even Linus would state (and has stated) that their content is more for entertainment than education.

I'd love the Continue to be like a category, and have two buttons. One for Singleplayer, and one for Multiplayer.

Just buy a Synology (a + model). It's great! Really.

Do Not. GamersNexus went through the exact same scenario as Wube did, with the only difference being they were using Synology equipment.

Honestly either is fine so long as you have multiple of them, and Wube already had a duplicate QNAP to swap over to when needed. The same need for a duplicate applies to the desktop, since any portion of the device acting as the NAS can fail (but the use of ZFS there makes things a bit more complicated as it is more sensitive to kernel versions than other software/hardware solutions).

Oh, right, "RAID0 isn't RAID, more like anti-RAID", I remember now...

In my PC Perspective circles (I was Storage Editor from 2009-2019), we called it 'deathwish raid'. I even have a few of the shirts in my closet

RAID writes the data to the hard drive in such a way that, unless you are using software mirroring (RAID 1), the data will be useless outside of the RAID set. Hardware RAID 1 would also be unreadable. The reason software RAID 1 can be read is something of a mystery to me, but I've done it enough times to know it works.

Software RAID implementations, especially RAID-1, tend to place the array metadata at the end of the disks, leaving the partition and data in their usual places. They do this so that you can start with a regular non-RAID drive and add a second drive, then create a mirrored array. Since the data is in the expected place, those disks can be mounted elsewhere without issue.
Hardware RAID tends to compartmentalize the partition data at some fixed offset, starting it *after* the array metadata, which is typically written to the beginning of the disks. This varies depending on which hardware RAID controller you use, but generally follows that formula. The data from a RAID-1 disk can still be read individually, but you'd need to create a custom partition table that pointed to the correct starting sector of the partition. That or use a data recovery app to rediscover the partition location. The easiest way is to just connect that disk to a similar RAID controller, but the data is still present regardless.

[Ghoulish]

Solid, sensible changes, as usual.

[bhaktivedanta]

They modified LVM to add some more efficient form of snapshotting

So they would be obliged to provide their sources with their device (... unless they managed to separate their additions from the open source part somehow). Should not be impossible to compile their modded LVM and get the data back? I can't judge if thats worth the effort ofc., but traditionally obscure controller hardware with non-standard write behaviour has been the bigger problem.

@ZFS: Vanilla XFS- or EXT4-raid might have done as well, I suppose, but on the other hand: Yes, bazookas do kill flies! XD

[masa]

Since you are now reworking the main menu, could you also add a menu under Multiplayer for (only) user-added servers? Basically I would *really* like to have an equivalent Multiplayer menu to what Minecraft has. This is one of the very few things I think the game is missing anymore from being more or less flawless.

I only play on my own servers, which are not public but just for me and some friends, and they are not published to the master list. Currently I have to use the Connect To dialog, which only remembers the last address, and if I switch between different servers/world, I need to type in the IP and/or port.

So basically I would like to have a list of favorite/user-added servers in their own list, without the master list of public servers messing it up and adding "noise" to it and moving around the entries while it loads. Also the list should only show the server name (and description if there is one), not the IP address, as I don't want to advertise the server IP when I'm live streaming.

[Stargateur]

How many years have you been out of IT? You realize RAID 5 has been obsolete for years now? And you advise software raid, but not mdadm or zfs? What exactly are you trying to say?

The amount of IT 'experts' on this post make me reconsider the average factorio player...

One that confuses RAID 0 with RAID 1, one that recommends RAID 5, one that thinks LTT knows storage, others recommending unRAID, and the number of people running QNAP. Anyway, glad Wube got their NAS needs met!

At least, discussion was civil until you come.

[Merssedes]

I've quastions about Steam integration.
From what I know, there is currently 3 types of players in multiplayer:
* users with Factorio account, not lincked to Steam account (they use non-Steam version);
* users with Factorio and Steam accounts linked, who uses non-Steam version;
* users with Factorio and Steam accounts linked, who uses Steam version.
What you want to add is 4th type:
* users with Steam account, not linked to Factorio account ("mini-accounts", they will use Steam version).
So:
1) Will it be somehow checked is entered username for mini-account is already in any use (Factorio account or other mini-account)?
2) Will there be any changes for non-Steam version of the game?

I have no clue but I thought multiplayer accounts 2 and 3 are equal.

All existing ones are equal as accounts, i wrote about types of players.

[seltha]

Re "Continue"... I play a mix of SP, MP with my kid, and MP with friends. I'm not saying you have to implement 3 different 'continue' buttons, but maybe if there was a way to setup my favorites and have them all accessible from a dropdown to the right hand side of the continue button... that would be pretty great, at least for my use case

Re "NAS"... I got burned early on with RAID vendor lock-in, eg the RAID card inside my game (MUD) server broke after a few years, meaning I had to find the exact same card (which they didn't make anymore, and this was in the days before ebay). To make matters worse, I had been a bad panda and not taken recent offsite backups... so ended up losing about 6 months of data, source code, etc to the game I was running. Needless to say I wasn't popular with the players or the other devs, and basically it was game over because who wants to lose all that progress?

Personally, I use Windows (I know, boo, hiss!) but their "Storage Spaces" is somewhat ZFS-like and does a good enough job for me. Sure, it's not as fast as a dedicated RAID card, but the fact I can connect my drives to any new PC and get access to my data gives me great peace of mind. Last thing I need is to be stuck finding the exact motherboard or controller card to plug my drives back in. And I'm still a bad panda, with my last offsite backup about 6 months old now. I really should refresh that this week! Thanks for reminding...

[Yenz]

For me the continue button should only do one thing. For every other option you have the normal menu with all its possibilities.

But the continue button should really get you there were you left the last time:

• Played SP -> play sp...
• Joind a MP game -> join this server again
• Hosted a MP game to play together with a friend -> host this mp game again
• Played with a friend on his local hosted game -> join this friend's server again

A normal / casual player is doing mostly one thing over and over again after starting the game. Because of that I would not overengineer the possibilities with another selection "where to continue" with a popup or offering favorites.

https://media.giphy.com/media/3ePb1CHEj ... /giphy.gif

[matjojo]

Since you are now reworking the main menu, could you also add a menu under Multiplayer for (only) user-added servers? Basically I would *really* like to have an equivalent Multiplayer menu to what Minecraft has. This is one of the very few things I think the game is missing anymore from being more or less flawless.

I only play on my own servers, which are not public but just for me and some friends, and they are not published to the master list. Currently I have to use the Connect To dialog, which only remembers the last address, and if I switch between different servers/world, I need to type in the IP and/or port.

So basically I would like to have a list of favorite/user-added servers in their own list, without the master list of public servers messing it up and adding "noise" to it and moving around the entries while it loads. Also the list should only show the server name (and description if there is one), not the IP address, as I don't want to advertise the server IP when I'm live streaming.

I said the same this, this is a really weird missing feature.

[GottZ]

1. continue multiplayer would be awesome

2. i moved from zfs to xfs with mdadm raid "10" (combination of 1 and 0 with one metadata block per drive) and luks2 on 4x 4tb hdd's
i sure lost snapshots but rbackup / borg / ... are just enough to handle that for me.

you might want to give syncthing a try though. it can also do versioning.

also snapshots are not backups.

from reading the FFF it sure appears as if you would need to go to a harddrive recovery company if you want your data back.

ENCRYPTED OFF SITE BACKUP!

[posila]

from reading the FFF it sure appears as if you would need to go to a harddrive recovery company if you want your data back.

We do have offsite backups, but we thought it would be faster to just copy the data from the disks (or just continue using the disks) rather than having to download terabytes over the internet.

[Dixi]

Continue will be a nice menu option.

About data storage. I was using cheap old PC (with windows storage server %-) with some HDDs. Then I switched to more compact DLink Dir-320L. Soon I found that it like to corrupt my files... So I returned to my old small PC, just changed it's case so more HDD will fit, and installed OpenMediaVault on it. So far works well.
As I result I also think that custom made, PC based, file server is better then ready to use dedicated solution, until we are not speaking about enterprise level data storage.