Bug with Protection Stone

[vinniefalco]

I'm having a problem with my protection stones. Azothoril invited me to build a house on a plot in his town. My residence is located at -28x, 58y, -1762z (you can get to the town using "/home Azothoril"). I built a free standing structure and then excavated below the ocean to create an underground lair. Along the way I discovered an abandoned mine. As I built, I carefully laid down protection stones of various sizes to ensure there would be no griefing.

To my dismay, someone darted into the mine tunnels as I was building. I don't want to mention their name because they are an upstanding Opticraft citizen and undeserving of smack. After I was done with many hours of careful measuring and building, I did a thorough review of all the protection stones coordinates to make sure all the permissions were set correctly and there was adjacent but non-overlapping coverage.

During my review I checked the permissions ("/ps allowed"). The top two stones correctly list Azothoril as having permissions (a town rule). However, the lowermost stones somehow are giving permission to this additional person that I never authorized via "/ps allow". When I try to "/ps remove" the name, I get this error:

You cannot disallow {name}, one of his fields is overlapping yours

After asking in chat, the server operator informed me that the server is running "PreciousStones" (and not "Protection Stones"). I did some reading. Here is the reference:

http://dev.bukkit.org/server-mods/preciousstones/

The documentation about overlapping areas is on this page:

http://dev.bukkit.org/server-mods/preciousstones/#w-allowing-others

From this page:

Overlapping Rules
As you know, if you try to place a field that overlaps someone else's field, you will see an error message telling you that you cannot place a field there...new changes in v8. The first is automatic allowing, if you allow your friend on one of your fields, and he places a field nearby overlapping yours, PS will automatically allow you into his field. This will prevent the problem of you no longer being in control of your land. You will see that plots will just work.

According to this, since I am getting an error message about removing an allowed person (for example, I cannot remove Azothoril, the town owner, from the top level stones), PS should automatically allow me into his field. Yet, I can't find any trace of extended building boundaries. Its exactly as if someone else is allowed on my field, I am not allowed on theirs, and I cannot remove them from my allowed list.

I talked to the town owner and he said this is a known problem that has happened to others. So I have some questions:

1) Does having this third person allowed on my field mean they can come down and erase my walls?

2) Has anyone else heard of this problem happening?

3) Is the server running the latest version of PreciousStones (the server seems to be running 8.3.3)?

4) Is there a way to determine if and where the other overlapping Protection Stone is located?

5) Is there any way to fix this?

I'm a little paranoid here. I built a lot of really cool and valuable stuff and it could all just disappear overnight. Help!

Thanks

[optical]

This is very interesting, we are in fact running version 8.3.3 of PreciousStones

Thanks for your research into the bug, it was very helpful. My only guess at this stage is that you placed a field after he did, and you were allowed into his fields. Could this be the case?

I will try look into it further.

[vinniefalco]

Thanks for following up.

My only guess at this stage is that you placed a field after he did, and you were allowed into his fields. Could this be the case?

I don't think that I placed a field after he did. Reason being, this bug is reproducible not only near the bedrock, but also at the town's ground floor level. Issuing "/ps remove Azothoril" from the two topmost protection stones fails with an error. There are no stones above me, two compass directions have empty space, I have one neighbor with a 11x11 field, and I have the town road that has its own series of 11x11 fields.

I took a swim underneath the road and its all pure water with no blocks. Certainly no protection stones.

If we are to interpret the Precious Stones documentation literally, it implies that there are one or more protection stones at town ground level that overlap my field (they must have been placed after), and that I have mutual access (per the "conflict-of-interest protections"). However, I am not able to build on the town road. This rules out the possibility of any larger pstone overlapping my field in the direction of the town. And since the other directions have my neighbor, air, or empty water, we have "The Case of the Missing Protection Stone."

Where is this hypothetical foreign overlapping protection stone? I don't see it on the top level, where z=63. If the Precious Stones documentation is right, then this is a bug.

One quick way to figure this out is if the person does a "/ps locations" while standing at my lowest z-valued field that lists his name (its near the bedrock). It will show his nearest protection stone, and we can compare the coordinates and field size. However, at the ground level we don't need a "/ps locations" report from Azothoril - it can be seen with the virtual eye that there is only empty space, with no protection stones.

[optical]

I tend to agree with you on this, it seems like a bug in the precious stones plugin. I have inspected your property and could only find stones owned by you. I would like to come on and have a look through it all with you to see if I am missing something however. I will also see if I can get an update on the precious stones plugin.

[vinniefalco]

It's happening all the time now. I drop a protection stone, allow someone on it, and then I can't remove them. Also, I drop a pstone near the bedrock and this other person's name shows up right away. Something is definitely wrong.

When do you want to meet in-game?

Thanks

[Dagony(Nima_ilz)]

I just read somewhere that there is a hacker client whats make the user allow to mine in others property the next version of PS stone is seald to that deadly bug

[Tree Frog]

Vinnie - I'm having the same issue.  Great post.  Thanks.

Did you try removing and replacing them?   I was going to do that buy don't want to get stuck not being able to put it back down.    I might give that a try anyway and cross my fingers...

[Spamarian]

I have found it, 2 weeks now that bug. But I dont know well the commands and I thought that I was doing it wrongly.
So, I replaced them.

[officiersmirnof]

i had a problem wich my ps and i tried to move them but they became 1 single coal so i am down 2 ps what should i do?