I want to experiment with all the new features that will come
So, how much is left until it is released? (either a new pre-release or the final)
Next version...?
Moderators: Flumminator, Zomis
Next version...?
Just wondering how long it will take until the next version comes out? Will there be another pre-release before final 3.2.0?
I want to experiment with all the new features that will come
So, how much is left until it is released? (either a new pre-release or the final)
I want to experiment with all the new features that will come
So, how much is left until it is released? (either a new pre-release or the final)
Zomis:
> Just wondering how long it will take until the next version comes out?
It's nearly ready now!
> Will there be another pre-release before final 3.2.0?
There will be one last pre-release version, which will then be a total feature freeze for 3.2.0. That means, if nobody will find any show-stopper bugs in that pre-release, it will be identical with 3.2.0 then.
Together with this pre-release, there will be one or two updated EM/EMC level sets to finally check the new game engine against bugs.
> I want to experiment with all the new features that will come
There won't be many new features when compared to the last pre-release version (I think). Mainly bugfixes...
> So, how much is left until it is released? (either a new pre-release or the
> final)
The following things are still missing or must be checked:
- setting the focus to a certain player in the EMC engine
- also enabling this concept for the R'n'D engine
- checking if network multi-player games work with the EMC engine
Francesco:
> Mmm, maybe Holger is just refining the job of the last bugfix, I believe it
> will be ready very soon!
You're right! :-)
The unit tests for the bugfix for the bug that showed up with Master-Rocks ran fine last night, so this bug can be considered fixed now. :-)
> I must say that I'm really wishing for it. I didn't even had the time to try a
> pre-release version, as I was too busy using the last stable one...
As said, there will be one last pre-release. If you would find some time to check your stuff against it when it's released, this would be just fine! :-)
Here's a little mini-roadmap for the next steps:
1. Release of the 2005 contributions
2. Release of the 3.2.0-7 pre-release
(1. and 2. maybe in different order or at the same time...)
3. Release of the new EMC level collection
Currently I'm working a lot on the last things to do for 3.2.0 and for the final EMC conversion, while the 2005 contributions shouldn't need much work anymore to be released...
> Just wondering how long it will take until the next version comes out?
It's nearly ready now!
> Will there be another pre-release before final 3.2.0?
There will be one last pre-release version, which will then be a total feature freeze for 3.2.0. That means, if nobody will find any show-stopper bugs in that pre-release, it will be identical with 3.2.0 then.
Together with this pre-release, there will be one or two updated EM/EMC level sets to finally check the new game engine against bugs.
> I want to experiment with all the new features that will come
There won't be many new features when compared to the last pre-release version (I think). Mainly bugfixes...
> So, how much is left until it is released? (either a new pre-release or the
> final)
The following things are still missing or must be checked:
- setting the focus to a certain player in the EMC engine
- also enabling this concept for the R'n'D engine
- checking if network multi-player games work with the EMC engine
Francesco:
> Mmm, maybe Holger is just refining the job of the last bugfix, I believe it
> will be ready very soon!
You're right! :-)
The unit tests for the bugfix for the bug that showed up with Master-Rocks ran fine last night, so this bug can be considered fixed now. :-)
> I must say that I'm really wishing for it. I didn't even had the time to try a
> pre-release version, as I was too busy using the last stable one...
As said, there will be one last pre-release. If you would find some time to check your stuff against it when it's released, this would be just fine! :-)
Here's a little mini-roadmap for the next steps:
1. Release of the 2005 contributions
2. Release of the 3.2.0-7 pre-release
(1. and 2. maybe in different order or at the same time...)
3. Release of the new EMC level collection
Currently I'm working a lot on the last things to do for 3.2.0 and for the final EMC conversion, while the 2005 contributions shouldn't need much work anymore to be released...
What still needs to be done before 3.2.0 comes out?
Anything besides waiting for bug reports to come in?
I know that questions like this have been asked a lot, but still . . . I think that people like to know the answers.
Anything besides waiting for bug reports to come in?
I know that questions like this have been asked a lot, but still . . . I think that people like to know the answers.
The H. World levelset can be downloaded from http://www.bd-fans.com/RnD.html -- search The H. World on that page.
> What still needs to be done before 3.2.0 comes out?
> Anything besides waiting for bug reports to come in?
Unfortunately, the release date of R'n'D 3.2.0 and also of the EMC level collection is very uncertain at the moment. :-(
Some explanation: This Sunday morning (OK, it's yesterday since a few minutes), the main hard disk of my Linux box failed with LOTS of bad blocks. This hard disk contained the operating system, the /home partition and the complete R'n'D development environment. And also the whole EMC level collection data. And everything else (other projects, personal file, etc.)... And you guessed right: The last "real" backup was not only *months* old (I know, I know, please don't tell me -- I was just about installing 'rbackup' for a regular backup and just needed a new, bigger drive to store the backupped files on), but stored on a different hard disk that magically turned out to also be "infected" with lots of bad blocks. =:-o
No, it's not a virus or something like that, but a real hardware failure -- I already did a lot of tests with different computers and Knoppix CDs etc.; it was really the hardware that failed here. I have the suspicion that the hard disks were getting too hot during operation, although that computer has a well-working fan system and the BIOS temperature values are all OK. The affected drives were Maxtor drives, and I not only found quite some reports of Maxtor drives getting too hot, but also had a Maxtor 250 GB drive myself that started making strange noise after getting too hot in an external USB drive case...
Since around 12 hours I am now running dd_rhelp/dd_rescue to copy the data that is still readable from the drive, which shows a lot of drive errors and unreadable blocks. It is not sure at the moment what will be left of the resulting partition images when I run the ext3 filesystem check on it; I have never run fsck on a disk image which this number of errors ("holes" in the image which are filled with zeroes). Even if/when I will be able to access some of the data, I'm not sure about the integrity of the data that may be recoverable (zero bytes inside large files).
I also haven't checked yet if I will be able to use the (outdated) backup...
So, things don't look too good at the moment. :-(
Next week, I probably have to get a new disk drive first and start with installing Linux again. Then I have to see how much of the precious data I can get back from the broken drives. :-(
So, as always after disasters like this, I can give the advice to not only make backups, but to make them regularly (which I refused to do), and to check if you will ever be able to read them if you need them (which I also refused to do). :-(
I will keep you updated about what happens now with R'n'D, new versions and the EMC collection (which seems to be lost in big parts at least).
Oh well... :-(
(I'm writing this from my Windows 2000 test box, which I just re-installed after a total hard disk crash. Seems that I don't have much luck with hard drives at the moment... And apparently I don't learn from it... :-( )
> Anything besides waiting for bug reports to come in?
Unfortunately, the release date of R'n'D 3.2.0 and also of the EMC level collection is very uncertain at the moment. :-(
Some explanation: This Sunday morning (OK, it's yesterday since a few minutes), the main hard disk of my Linux box failed with LOTS of bad blocks. This hard disk contained the operating system, the /home partition and the complete R'n'D development environment. And also the whole EMC level collection data. And everything else (other projects, personal file, etc.)... And you guessed right: The last "real" backup was not only *months* old (I know, I know, please don't tell me -- I was just about installing 'rbackup' for a regular backup and just needed a new, bigger drive to store the backupped files on), but stored on a different hard disk that magically turned out to also be "infected" with lots of bad blocks. =:-o
No, it's not a virus or something like that, but a real hardware failure -- I already did a lot of tests with different computers and Knoppix CDs etc.; it was really the hardware that failed here. I have the suspicion that the hard disks were getting too hot during operation, although that computer has a well-working fan system and the BIOS temperature values are all OK. The affected drives were Maxtor drives, and I not only found quite some reports of Maxtor drives getting too hot, but also had a Maxtor 250 GB drive myself that started making strange noise after getting too hot in an external USB drive case...
Since around 12 hours I am now running dd_rhelp/dd_rescue to copy the data that is still readable from the drive, which shows a lot of drive errors and unreadable blocks. It is not sure at the moment what will be left of the resulting partition images when I run the ext3 filesystem check on it; I have never run fsck on a disk image which this number of errors ("holes" in the image which are filled with zeroes). Even if/when I will be able to access some of the data, I'm not sure about the integrity of the data that may be recoverable (zero bytes inside large files).
I also haven't checked yet if I will be able to use the (outdated) backup...
So, things don't look too good at the moment. :-(
Next week, I probably have to get a new disk drive first and start with installing Linux again. Then I have to see how much of the precious data I can get back from the broken drives. :-(
So, as always after disasters like this, I can give the advice to not only make backups, but to make them regularly (which I refused to do), and to check if you will ever be able to read them if you need them (which I also refused to do). :-(
I will keep you updated about what happens now with R'n'D, new versions and the EMC collection (which seems to be lost in big parts at least).
Oh well... :-(
(I'm writing this from my Windows 2000 test box, which I just re-installed after a total hard disk crash. Seems that I don't have much luck with hard drives at the moment... And apparently I don't learn from it... :-( )
Oh no!! I hope it will get well soon again! And that you can recover it!
Anyway, I have backupped all the EMC disks that were harder to get: tosec 0.03 and all those missing EMC sets I sent you recently.
So if you need them, then mail me, so that I can upload them.
All the other EMC disks are probably easier to get and you could contact Wolf for them.
Anyway, I have backupped all the EMC disks that were harder to get: tosec 0.03 and all those missing EMC sets I sent you recently.
So if you need them, then mail me, so that I can upload them.
All the other EMC disks are probably easier to get and you could contact Wolf for them.
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Watch my avatar! That orange little thing is Murphy, the Supaplex star!
http://www.bd-fans.com
Watch my avatar! That orange little thing is Murphy, the Supaplex star!
> Oh no!! I hope it will get well soon again! And that you can recover it!
I hope so, too. The rescue software is still running at the moment, though... :-/
Only a "few" Megabytes are affected, but they are spread around the whole disk at hundreds of disk positions, so there will probably be a lot of files lost.
It all depends on my two or three months old backup which I wasn't able to check yet, but from which I know that it was also stored on a disk with bad blocks.. :-(
> Anyway, I have backupped all the EMC disks that were harder to get: tosec
> 0.03 and all those missing EMC sets I sent you recently.
> So if you need them, then mail me, so that I can upload them.
This is really good to know -- thanks a lot.
In fact, I just downloaded these "missing EMC disks" archive again that you mailed me recently. Although it seems that a lot of meta-data editing is lost, at least the disks themselves are still there...
Hope to be able to recover as much as possible.
The disk image copying will probably still run a day or so...
I hope so, too. The rescue software is still running at the moment, though... :-/
Only a "few" Megabytes are affected, but they are spread around the whole disk at hundreds of disk positions, so there will probably be a lot of files lost.
It all depends on my two or three months old backup which I wasn't able to check yet, but from which I know that it was also stored on a disk with bad blocks.. :-(
> Anyway, I have backupped all the EMC disks that were harder to get: tosec
> 0.03 and all those missing EMC sets I sent you recently.
> So if you need them, then mail me, so that I can upload them.
This is really good to know -- thanks a lot.
In fact, I just downloaded these "missing EMC disks" archive again that you mailed me recently. Although it seems that a lot of meta-data editing is lost, at least the disks themselves are still there...
Hope to be able to recover as much as possible.
The disk image copying will probably still run a day or so...
> It always takes awhile to fully recover from hard disk failure.
So true... Yesterday, I stopped the recovery of the most important (/home) partition because of too many bad sectors on the disk, but I think that I at least was able to copy many important (but not all) files from my home directory, having it mounted read-only in parallel to the recovery image copy...
Unfortunately, while the Linux system partition seem to be not affected too much of the bad sectors, the much more important /home partition was the main target of the bad sectors (5-10 bad sectors on the system partition compared to many hundred bad sectors on the home partition, which is actually a *lot*, and which must have caused a lot of damage on the file system, which I still wasn't able to check with the file system checker).
> Does any more actual development need to be done?
For the final 3.2.0? No, I don't think so. On Saturday, I was even playing around with Inno Setup to create a 'setup.exe' style installer for the Windows version, which seemed to work very fine (just before I was hit by the disk crash).
Fortunately, I'm saving the latest R'n'D source codes very frequently on several systems, so there's not too much lost here and I should be able to continue quickly here -- if my backup of the rest of the development system works, which I still wasn't able to check yet and which is stored on a hard disk with also bad sectors as I had to find out. :-o
I hope to be able to continue soon with releasing R'n'D 3.2.0, but at the moment there's still quite some recovery work to do first... :-/
So true... Yesterday, I stopped the recovery of the most important (/home) partition because of too many bad sectors on the disk, but I think that I at least was able to copy many important (but not all) files from my home directory, having it mounted read-only in parallel to the recovery image copy...
Unfortunately, while the Linux system partition seem to be not affected too much of the bad sectors, the much more important /home partition was the main target of the bad sectors (5-10 bad sectors on the system partition compared to many hundred bad sectors on the home partition, which is actually a *lot*, and which must have caused a lot of damage on the file system, which I still wasn't able to check with the file system checker).
> Does any more actual development need to be done?
For the final 3.2.0? No, I don't think so. On Saturday, I was even playing around with Inno Setup to create a 'setup.exe' style installer for the Windows version, which seemed to work very fine (just before I was hit by the disk crash).
Fortunately, I'm saving the latest R'n'D source codes very frequently on several systems, so there's not too much lost here and I should be able to continue quickly here -- if my backup of the rest of the development system works, which I still wasn't able to check yet and which is stored on a hard disk with also bad sectors as I had to find out. :-o
I hope to be able to continue soon with releasing R'n'D 3.2.0, but at the moment there's still quite some recovery work to do first... :-/
Oh no! 
That sounds really bad ...
Maybe you should think about a professional recovery service, like http://www.ontrack.de. So many bad blocks seems not to be a surface problem, but a mechanical or a head problem. Then the chances are good, that they can recover nearly all data without errors. Dependant on the importance of your (personal) data, it could really be worth the money. If you decide for this, you should immediatly stop any activity on this hdd, to avoid increasing the damage.
Good luck!
Btw: Damn, my last backup is very old, too ...
That sounds really bad ...
Maybe you should think about a professional recovery service, like http://www.ontrack.de. So many bad blocks seems not to be a surface problem, but a mechanical or a head problem. Then the chances are good, that they can recover nearly all data without errors. Dependant on the importance of your (personal) data, it could really be worth the money. If you decide for this, you should immediatly stop any activity on this hdd, to avoid increasing the damage.
Good luck!
Btw: Damn, my last backup is very old, too ...
-
HerzAusGold
- Posts: 366
- Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2005 4:41 pm
- Location: Germany
Jannik:
> Maybe you should think about a professional recovery service, like
> http://www.ontrack.de.
Very good site! In fact you are right -- if very much data was lost, it can be "cheaper" to pay some hundreds or even thousands of Euros instead of doing all the work again! :-o (In a sense of "working for 10 bucks/hour at McDonalds and pay the data recovery company can be faster than doing the work a second time"... ;-) )
> So many bad blocks seems not to be a surface
> problem, but a mechanical or a head problem.
Perfectly possible -- it was especially significant that all those bad blocks came over night! I never had a single disk error on that drive, and suddenly there were many hundreds of them! :-o
At least it is clear that this is no problem that can be fixed at home... :-o
> Then the chances are good,
> that they can recover nearly all data without errors. Dependant on the
> importance of your (personal) data, it could really be worth the money.
Definitely true!
> If you decide for this, you should immediatly stop any activity on this
> hdd, to avoid increasing the damage.
I already was able to recover over 90-95% of the data from that drive by using dd_rescue/dd_rhelp, which uses an intelligent approach of copying the non-bad blocks first, before it tries hard (and very long) on the bad blocks to squeeze out some more data. I stopped the process after two days on the last 1-2% of data. (The higher percentage of lost data is due to larger files affected by the bad blocks.)
> Good luck!
Thanks a lot! So far it looks good -- the system partition was nearly intact, and about the much more damaged (and more important) /home partition: I have found a full backup of January, and a partial backup of February, and I am just copying as much leftover data from the fsck'ed image file of the damaged partition as possible...
> Btw: Damn, my last backup is very old, too ...
Then better do it now... ;-)
HerzAusGold:
> May be the cable is broken or the connector have bad contact.
Nope. Everything's fine here. It's bad blocks on the disk itself, always at the same sectors.
> I thought ext3 have journal log. So with this it should be recoverable.
Nope -- a file system journal does not help anything agains bad blocks. :(
(The journal does help you a bit in case of power failures etc., where the file system wasn't able to write to disk -- the main purpose of a journaling file system is to ensure that your file system is always in a defined state, even after sudden power failures or crashes, and to make file system checking after an unclean shutdown as fast as possible. It does not help at all when data is lost that was already stored in the file system.)
> And if you recover the data - release it - then you have a backup
Very true -- this is the best backup for source code! :-)
(In fact, I make regular backups to a remote host...)
> Good luck!
Thanks again! :-)
> Maybe you should think about a professional recovery service, like
> http://www.ontrack.de.
Very good site! In fact you are right -- if very much data was lost, it can be "cheaper" to pay some hundreds or even thousands of Euros instead of doing all the work again! :-o (In a sense of "working for 10 bucks/hour at McDonalds and pay the data recovery company can be faster than doing the work a second time"... ;-) )
> So many bad blocks seems not to be a surface
> problem, but a mechanical or a head problem.
Perfectly possible -- it was especially significant that all those bad blocks came over night! I never had a single disk error on that drive, and suddenly there were many hundreds of them! :-o
At least it is clear that this is no problem that can be fixed at home... :-o
> Then the chances are good,
> that they can recover nearly all data without errors. Dependant on the
> importance of your (personal) data, it could really be worth the money.
Definitely true!
> If you decide for this, you should immediatly stop any activity on this
> hdd, to avoid increasing the damage.
I already was able to recover over 90-95% of the data from that drive by using dd_rescue/dd_rhelp, which uses an intelligent approach of copying the non-bad blocks first, before it tries hard (and very long) on the bad blocks to squeeze out some more data. I stopped the process after two days on the last 1-2% of data. (The higher percentage of lost data is due to larger files affected by the bad blocks.)
> Good luck!
Thanks a lot! So far it looks good -- the system partition was nearly intact, and about the much more damaged (and more important) /home partition: I have found a full backup of January, and a partial backup of February, and I am just copying as much leftover data from the fsck'ed image file of the damaged partition as possible...
> Btw: Damn, my last backup is very old, too ...
Then better do it now... ;-)
HerzAusGold:
> May be the cable is broken or the connector have bad contact.
Nope. Everything's fine here. It's bad blocks on the disk itself, always at the same sectors.
> I thought ext3 have journal log. So with this it should be recoverable.
Nope -- a file system journal does not help anything agains bad blocks. :(
(The journal does help you a bit in case of power failures etc., where the file system wasn't able to write to disk -- the main purpose of a journaling file system is to ensure that your file system is always in a defined state, even after sudden power failures or crashes, and to make file system checking after an unclean shutdown as fast as possible. It does not help at all when data is lost that was already stored in the file system.)
> And if you recover the data - release it - then you have a backup
Very true -- this is the best backup for source code! :-)
(In fact, I make regular backups to a remote host...)
> Good luck!
Thanks again! :-)