Far away machinery malfunctions

[Kmartinator]

So I'm sticking this post out here because its more a question of running a server, I think, than having really anything to do with Technic/Tekkit specifically.

I'm running a private server for myself and a few friends, and its been a (mostly) smooth ride for these last few weeks. We seem to have run into a hitch now, though. Some of us have built up some machinery a decent distance away from the original spawn point.

In one case, we have an infinite cobble setup with block breakers feeding into recyclers and a mass fab to make UU. When everyone is logged off of the server for a time, we come back to find a ton of cobblestone dropped around the recyclers, which tends to make the server disgruntled. However, when anyone is on and in the general vicinity, the process can run for hours without dropping a single block.

In the other case, its just a quarry powered by solar panels. The quarry seems to not make any progress while no one is logged on.

I believe it is an issue with the distance away from the spawn point because we have a sugarcane and rubber tree farm that runs perfectly fine while no one is on, which are located more near the server.

My question is: is there a way to increase the area that the server keeps running while no one is on? If not, have any other server operators run into this sort of problem and come up with a nifty solution?

Thanks in advance!

[Bmandk]

You can use chunkloading blocks from additional pipes mod.

[Kmartinator]

You can use chunkloading blocks from additional pipes mod.

It looks like the additional pipes mod was removed from Tekkit, according to the thread "[Q] ChunkLoadingBlocks and TeleportBlocks no more?" (not sure how to link to it directly). It sounds like it'd be the perfect fix, but it also sounds like it might cause the server to blow up. I might poke around to see if I can apply it, but I'd really prefer to use the current Tekkit framework and not have to add anything else.

[SimpleGuy]

How Minecraft works in general is the World only updates loaded chunks, and it only loads chunks close to Players. So if a person moves far enough away, a chunk will be unloaded into memory and kept in "stasis" until it is unloaded when a person moves close enough again.

[Kmartinator]

How Minecraft works in general is the World only updates loaded chunks, and it only loads chunks close to Players. So if a person moves far enough away, a chunk will be unloaded into memory and kept in "stasis" until it is unloaded when a person moves close enough again.

So, then, with that idea, if I were to sit by one of the fancy machines and log off, the machine would keep running because the server has stored that I exist there, so it keeps those chunks loaded for me?

Maybe the whole distance from the original spawn point is just a coincidence, but that little sort of idea sounds like a vague possibility. Unless I'm just completely out of my gourd?

[SimpleGuy]

Nope, as soon as you log off you aren't anywhere as far as the server is concerned. In fact, all your data is written to memory just like an unloaded chunk, except now you're an unloaded player.

This is why I had a friend sit afk under a dirt hole for several IRL days while he waited for 1 solar panel to fill up a MFSU.

[ErusPrime]

This is why I had a friend sit afk under a dirt hole for several IRL days while he waited for 1 solar panel to fill up a MFSU.

[MechaCrash]

Okay, I've got to ask. Why were you trying to fill a MFSU with a single solar panel?

[SimpleGuy]

I wasn't, a friend of mine named Chris did though. If you knew him you'd understand, but the general gist is that if it's free, he will exploit it. Why have a HV Solar array when you could spend 1/256 the resources and still get stuff free? That's how his mind thinks.