[raylapa]

Hi Folks

Starting some days ago, I have a little problem on our gameserver.
I found out, that the Sourceban installation could get no connection to the gameserver. After checking some logs, I found this in the gameservers console (hlsw), sometimes every two or three minutes, sometimes even twice a second:

Addip: "<><><>" was banned by IP "permanently" by "Console" (IP "xx.xxx.xx.xxx")

The IP shown is the one from the sourcebans machine, which is the same root from the gameservers.
When I´m running a "naked" gameserver without any plugins, there is no problem, but as soon as I activate sourcemod - zooomm, there it is.

Does anybody know, which plugin causes this automatic ban? Can I add the IP to a kind of whitelist? Is there another possibility to stop the bans?

Any hints would be nice!

[thetwistedpanda]

It took me forever to figure out what caused that! Whenever SourceBans can't connect to the game server, it seems to convert into "local" mode, and it saves all of your bans in a sql database. However, there seems to be an issue with it because those bans remain and are never checked again!

To fix this issue, power down your server. Load up your FTP and navigate to /addons/sourcemod/data/sqlite/ and delete sourcebans-queue.sq3. Once you turn your server back on, the constant rebanning will be gone. Just be sure to removeip <affected ips>.

[raylapa]

I found the "sourcebans-queue.sq3", including some of the last bans. Unfortunately the IP-Ban I was looking for is not inside.

Anyway, I deleted the file, I deleted the IP in banned_ip.cfg and started the server again.
And it happened again...

So which plugin can add an IP ban? Where can I configure it? Can I add an "IP-whitelist"?

[thetwistedpanda]

I'm pretty sure that your issue is still coming from SourceBans; perhaps you need to try deleting everything (.sq3, banned_ips, etc). But for shittles and giggles, please post a rcon sm plugins list so we can see what other plugins you're running.

[raylapa]

here is my list:

22:41:18 [SM] Listing 42 plugins:
           01 "Sammy's Afker Kicker" (1.0.1) by NBK - Sammy-ROCK!
           02 "Basic Info Triggers" (1.2.0) by AlliedModders LLC
           03 "Say Sounds (including Hybrid Edition)" (3.1.3) by Hell Phoenix, -=|JFH|=-Naris, W]M[D FernFerret, LAMDACORE, Uberman, gH0sTy, Woody
           04 "Rock The Vote" (1.2.0) by AlliedModders LLC
           05 "Fun Votes" (1.2.0) by AlliedModders LLC
           06 "Advertisements" (0.5.5) by Tsunami
           07 "HLSW Nextmap & Timeleft" (1.0) by Tsunami
           08 "SourceMod Radio" (1.0.0.12) by dubbeh
           09 "SQL Admins (Prefetch)" (1.2.0) by AlliedModders LLC
           10 "Teamspeak join command" (1.2) by Berni
           11 "SQL Admin Manager" (1.2.0) by AlliedModders LLC
           12 "Players Votes" (1.3.2) by pZv!, The Resident
           13 "Map Nominations" (1.2.0) by AlliedModders LLC
           14 "SQL Admins (Threaded)" (1.2.0) by AlliedModders LLC
           15 "Nextmap" (1.2.0) by AlliedModders LLC
           16 "Killer info display" (0.9) by Berni
           17 "MapChooser" (1.2.0) by AlliedModders LLC
           18 "Reserved Slots" (1.2.0) by AlliedModders LLC
           19 "Anti-Flood" (1.2.0) by AlliedModders LLC
           20 "Player Commands" (1.2.0) by AlliedModders LLC
           21 "Fun Commands" (1.2.0) by AlliedModders LLC
           22 "Basic Comm Control" (1.2.0) by AlliedModders LLC
           23 "Auto Name Changer" (3.0) by MoggieX
           24 "RandomCycle" (1.2.0) by AlliedModders LLC
           25 "Maplister" (1.4) by theY4Kman
           26 "Quake Sounds" (1.8) by dalto
           27 "Admin Help" (1.2.0) by AlliedModders LLC
           28 "Basic Commands" (1.2.0) by AlliedModders LLC
           29 "Basic Chat" (1.2.0) by AlliedModders LLC
           30 "Advanced Client Redirect" (1.0) by Olly/Tobi
           31 "Cheat Control" (1.4) by Berni
           32 "Name Checker" (1.3) by Silent_Water
           33 "Basic Votes" (1.2.0) by AlliedModders LLC
           34 "Admin File Reader" (1.2.0) by AlliedModders LLC
           35 "Sound Commands" (1.2.0) by AlliedModders LLC
           36 "Name Changer" (1.3) by bl4nk
           37 "Admin Menu" (1.2.0) by AlliedModders LLC
           38 "Client Preferences" (1.2.0) by AlliedModders LLC
           39 "HLstatsX CE Ingame Plugin" (1.5.6) by psychonic
           40 "Show Damage" (1.0.3) by exvel
           41 "Get Location" (0.5) by The-Killer
           42 "SourceBans" (1.4.2) by InterWave Studios Development Team

By the way, I just have installed a brand new server, similar plugins - guess what? No automatic ban of the Sourcebans-IP...

[bl4nk]

Maybe you configured the rcon password wrong on SourceBans and it's getting autobanned for bad attempts?

[Antithasys]

Latest version of sourcebans is 1.4.5, you are at 1.4.2

[raylapa]

@bl4nk: no wrong rcon, this is what I have checked first. And the new set up server works fine, with the same rcon. I did even copy and paste the rcon from the old one to the new one in Sourcebans server-list.

@Antithasys: the connection to the new set up server works fine. Why not with the existing server? Something else must cause the IP-ban.

Which plugin or other serverside module can do such a ban? Except of Sourcebans?
My problem is, I do not find any reason for this ban, just the ban itself.

[Antithasys]

Originally Posted by raylapa @Antithasys: the connection to the new set up server works fine. Why not with the existing server? Something else must cause the IP-ban.

Being part of the team.... I can tell you that a lot changed between 1.4.2 and 1.4.5... mostly the way the game server connects to the mysql database. It used to not use 1 connection and now it does.

I am not saying that this is the issue... but it would help the sb devs(me and others) to find the reason if you were on the same version as us. In other words.... update sb and see if it still happens. If so... unload all your plugins and just run the basic version like you mentioned... then add 1 plugin at a time until you find the cause.

[InflatableSoulmate]

We have had this problem before. It's not just SourceBans.

Any plugin that also has a web interface generally uses logaddress_add and tends to send a lot of rcon commands to the server. SourceBans does this very rarely (only when updating the admin cache after adding an admin or changing an admin's privileges, and a few other instances). HLStatsX CE, however, has a perl daemon going on the web server that is sending huge amounts of rcon commands to the server at any given time.

Any time you ever change an rcon password for your game server, you have to update the rcon password config entries in the SourceBans and HLStatsX CE web configurations. What happened with us is that we updated the rcon passwords for the servers correctly in SourceBans, but since the HLStatsX CE perl deamons were running on the same webserver as SourceBans is, it was causing the webserver to get banned for failed rcon attempts. This, of course, also borked SourceBans. Once we figured out that you have to stop the HLStats daemonds and update the rcon password for them before restarting it, we were able to get things running properly again. After you've updated those website configs with the rcon passwords and restarted them, you simply delete the ips in the banned_ips.cfg file and everything should work fine.