All Weasel's Lair stuff will be down for maintenance today. Last time I did some OS maintenance (a pending Linux kernel update), it did not go well. So, taking some extra precautions and running backups before.

Cross you fingers that this does not cause a longer outage for reinstalling everything (again).😁

For the benefit of those in Weasel's Lair who play Fistful of Frags (FoF), I strongly recommend you check-out these two Steam Community Guides ASAP:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3442390182
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3446037182
More information is available below.

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I have been working-on several efforts to help keep the FoF game-community going - while the developer continues to be unavailable. I call these collected efforts project "Spittoon". So far, these include:

• A client-side patch to fix issues with "stale" (2 years out-of-date) game-server information: Guide, Download[github.com].
  
• A guide for players wanting to filter-out problematic servers from their in-game server list: Guide.
  
• A client-side patch to add many missing map preview thumbnails to the game: Guide, Download[github.com].
  
• A guide for map-authors on how to create those map preview thumbnails: Guide.

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I currently have three (3) servers up and running again for Fistful of Frags (FoF). These include:

• 162.248.88.40:6331 Quad-Faction 4-Team (shoot-out), No-Horses, Music.
  
• 162.248.88.40:6333 Team-Play Team-Play (objectives), No-Horses, Music.
  
• 162.248.88.40:6335 Horse-Play 2-Team (shoot-out), Horse-Riding!, Music.

Okay, so things really went downhill fast during yesterdays planned server-maintenance. But, much of the systems are back on-line again.

The plan was to ensure all the servers and the underlying Linux (Debian) operating system was fully up-to-date before this weekend - since there are some events planned for Fistful of Frags (FoF).

While applying the latest updates to the underlying Linux operating system (Debian 11 "Bullseye" - the now old-stable release), the last update (a "kernel update") required a reboot. At the end of that reboot, the system went into an endless "boot-loop". So, obviously, something went wrong with applying that kernel update.

The entire VPS was re-installed from scratch, using the current stable Debian release (Debian 12 "Bookworm").

This necessitates rebuilding everything afterwards, including:

• Re-installing web-server (Apache) stuff.
  
• Setting-up the various web-sites (game-server back-end stuff, home-page, SourceBans, etc.)
  
• Setting-up the database for SourceBans.
  
• Re-installing various game-servers.
  
• Restoring game-server contents from backup (where available).
  
• Lots of troubleshooting custom content downloads in-game, etc.

Here is the functionality that is already restored:

• SourceBans (web-site and database) - including previous ban history.
  
• Back-end web-site that various games use for custom content.
  
• Default WeaselsLair.com web-site.
  
• Both HL1 game-servers.
  
• All three CS1 game-servers.
  
• The CS:S game-server.
  
• The TF2 game-server.
  
• The HLDM:S testing game-server.

Here is the functionality that is NOT yet restored:

• Various scheduled automation (backups, update-checks, etc.).
  
• All three FoF game-servers.

Unfortunately and somewhat ironically, the FoF servers are the ones that probably have the greatest need to get running, but are the only ones I was not able to easily restore from backups. I will be rebuilding at least one of them manually tomorrow to have it online for the up-coming FoF-related events this weekend.

All Weasel's Lair stuff (game-servers, back-end web-site, source-bans, etc.) will be down intermittently today while I perform various maintenance.

Not sure exactly what is going-on yet. But, the Weasel's Lair system is down at the moment, including games and back-end stuff. Investigating.

UPDATE: Found the problem, everything is back up again!