Problems • Re: Server crashed for problem about DB

The server failed to restart because the previous process didn't release the file lock,

Did you ever figure out what the previous process was? A Lua mod crash is not usually also a crash of the whole server process, but in dedicated server mode it will usually end the process safely. Was the server crashing with the railbuilder-related error before you started this thread?

[*] Code Fix: Patched railbuilder_ui.lua with a nil-check for player positions to prevent the specific crash from recurring.

Please post the patch so it can be reviewed and, if useful, shared.

The situation was exacerbated by a misconfiguration in minetest.conf: sqlite_synchronous = 1 (NORMAL). On a server with a large 10GB database and heavy mods like AdvTrains, this caused an I/O bottleneck. When the crash happened, the SQLite checkpoint failed, leaving a massive 8.5GB -wal file and locking the database.

[*] Config Tuning: Set sqlite_synchronous = 0` and adjusted map_save_interval to 20s to prevent future I/O deadlocks on SATA SSD storage.[/list]

Status: Server fully recovered with zero data loss.

ref. So now the database is more likely to corrupt in future. It's not a misconfiguration, it's actually a safer configuration. The default is FULL(2), a higher level.

On a multiplayer server with that size, it's time to think about moving to PostgreSQL since it will perform better.

Statistics: Posted by Blockhead — Wed Mar 18, 2026 17:24