Minecraft 1.5.2 is Out

...here's the change log.  I think I'll be updating the Madlab Miners server on Saturday.

Minecraft and Minetest Update Permissions Without a Restart

Quick note to self about Minecraft and Minetest server admin tasks.

How to Update Minecraft White-List Without a Restart

This is especially needed to white-list players without shutting down the server:

1. Make the edits to the server white-list.txt
2. On the server as an op run "/whitelist reload"

More information can be found on the commands page on the Minecraft wiki.

How to Update the Minetest auth.txt Settings Without a Restart

Similar problem on Minetest: how to change the auth.txt setting on a running server without a restart:

1. The Minetest wiki page on privileges states that you should NOT edit the auth.txt file while the server is running
2. Instead us the "/grant <name> <privilege>" command to give a privilege to a player (you need the "privs" privilege to be able to do this
3. The running server will write out the update to the auth.txt file

Raspberry Pi External USB Drive

If you want to use an external USB drive with a Raspberry Pi you need to have a powered USB hub to provide power to the USB drive.  Sounds obvious when you say it out loud!

Upgrading to the Latest getmail on Cygwin

I've been trying to get a backup of GMail working on my Windows PC using getmail on Cygwin.  I've run across a couple of problems so I decided to upgrade to the latest version of getmail.  The default install of getmail on cygwin was  4.36.0.  Latest version from the developer was 4.39.1.

Installed a new version like this:

1. mkdir newgetmail
2. cd newgetmail
3. wget http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/old-versions/getmail-4.39.1.tar.gz
4.  tar xvf getmail-4.39.1.tar.gz
5. cd getmail-4.39.1
6. python setup.py install

Upgrading Debian Server to Minetest Version 0.4.6

I've just upgraded the Minetest server to version 0.4.6.  This was just a case of following the details in the README file.


For future reference, here are the steps I followed:

1. wget https://github.com/minetest/minetest/archive/0.4.6.zip
2. unzip 0.4.6.zip
3. cd minetest-0.4.6
4. cd games/
5. wget https://github.com/minetest/common/archive/0.4.6.zip -O common.zip
6. unzip common.zip
7. rm common.zip
8. mv common-0.4.6 common
9. wget https://github.com/minetest/minetest_game/archive/0.4.6.zip -O game.zip
10. unzip game.zip
11. mv  minetest_game-0.4.6 minetest_game
12. cd ..
13. cmake . -DRUN_IN_PLACE=1
14. make -j2
15. cd bin
16. ./minetestserver

 I left all that running in a screen session that I then detached from.  It is working great so far.

Starting Moving to PowerShell

I've just decided that I should move to using Windows PowerShell rather than batch scripts.  It turns out that it is quite cryptic just to get a script to run.  Here's the web page that I used to figure out how to make PowerShell scripts run from the command line.

Minetest Super-Flat World Howto

Here's some quick notes on how to create a super-flat world in Minetest.  This works on version 0.4.6 running on Windows.

1. Download Minetest and unpack the zip file somewhere
2. From the folder that you've unpacked rename the "minetest.conf.example" file to "minetest.conf"
3. Edit the minetest.conf file with your favorite text edit (or Notepad)
4. Find the line that starts "# Mapgen stuff" and create a new line beneath it
5. Add the following
   mg_flags = flat
6. Save the edited minetest.conf file
7. From the unpacked folder go into the "bin" folder and double click "minetest.exe" to start the program
8. Press "new" to create a new world
9. Give the world a new name
10. Choose the type of world you want -- perhaps "build" is the best choice here
11. Click "Create"
12. You almost certainly want to tick the "Creative Mode" box so that you have lots of stuff to build with
13. Choose your new world and click "Play"
14. You should now be in your super-flat world