First off, thank you for reading! I hope you find the idea worth your time (which I know is valuable).
Here's the thing, running servers is great. It's all very easy and the control you have over player lists (admins.txt, banned.txt, banned-ip.txt, and players.txt) in the client and in the raw directory during a servers active run is great. However, running two or more servers draws a problem: when you ban someone you will have to manually update another servers list to ensure that they are banned from another. While some users may not find this necessary, when you run multiple servers with similar names (e.g. your guild/website name), a griefer can easily make your administration even more difficult by jumping over to another server you run and messing up work there. Basically, unless you copy banlists every time you ban someone you're going to get screwed at some point.
What I'm suggesting is having a "player list path" or "player list directory" field in server.properties to direct where each player list is or where the player lists are stored, respectfully. This would mean that the servers would be looking at the same list for their admins, banned players, banned IP addresses, and recurring players. If you ban someone on Server A, they will be banned on Server B and C as well. Or, Jimmy could be opped on Server B and be an administrator on Server A and C at the same time, without the server owner having to manually update text lists.
As griefer control gets better and better more people will find it easy to run servers over extended periods of time and may wish to run other servers, thusly this feature could preemptively solve a problem that others may experience in the future.
I'm not a programmer, and I don't know the Minecraft code like the back of my hand. Clearly there may be conflicting functions that would have to be ironed out, but I wouldn't know. In the case that there's a way to do this already, I apologize, but would like to hear about it.
It's possible to simply run a small program that checks the size of banned.txt, if it's a new size then copy that file to every other directory. While I like the idea of a unified ban list, I think it could have its problems. I want some servers to be for me, some for other people, so if I ban someone on mine I don't necessarily want them banned on another of my servers, there are times when people are banned for things other than griefing.
It's possible to simply run a small program that checks the size of banned.txt, if it's a new size then copy that file to every other directory. While I like the idea of a unified ban list, I think it could have its problems. I want some servers to be for me, some for other people, so if I ban someone on mine I don't necessarily want them banned on another of my servers, there are times when people are banned for things other than griefing.
Totally understandable. That's what I suggested it as a server property. Something that by default would be like "/banned-ip.txt" before it is changed.
You also can never wholly account for what your other administrators are doing. There is possible abuse and conflicting problems with this but in the end it's all a management problem, not a programming issue. Thanks for the reply.
Here's the thing, running servers is great. It's all very easy and the control you have over player lists (admins.txt, banned.txt, banned-ip.txt, and players.txt) in the client and in the raw directory during a servers active run is great. However, running two or more servers draws a problem: when you ban someone you will have to manually update another servers list to ensure that they are banned from another. While some users may not find this necessary, when you run multiple servers with similar names (e.g. your guild/website name), a griefer can easily make your administration even more difficult by jumping over to another server you run and messing up work there. Basically, unless you copy banlists every time you ban someone you're going to get screwed at some point.
What I'm suggesting is having a "player list path" or "player list directory" field in server.properties to direct where each player list is or where the player lists are stored, respectfully. This would mean that the servers would be looking at the same list for their admins, banned players, banned IP addresses, and recurring players. If you ban someone on Server A, they will be banned on Server B and C as well. Or, Jimmy could be opped on Server B and be an administrator on Server A and C at the same time, without the server owner having to manually update text lists.
As griefer control gets better and better more people will find it easy to run servers over extended periods of time and may wish to run other servers, thusly this feature could preemptively solve a problem that others may experience in the future.
I'm not a programmer, and I don't know the Minecraft code like the back of my hand. Clearly there may be conflicting functions that would have to be ironed out, but I wouldn't know. In the case that there's a way to do this already, I apologize, but would like to hear about it.
-PT
Totally understandable. That's what I suggested it as a server property. Something that by default would be like "/banned-ip.txt" before it is changed.
You also can never wholly account for what your other administrators are doing. There is possible abuse and conflicting problems with this but in the end it's all a management problem, not a programming issue. Thanks for the reply.
Then don't post.