Question About Ban Files

helvetica · Post by **helvetica** » Wed May 03, 2006 4:31 am

We've been having issues with keeping people banned. Whenever people decided they needed to break out the hax and suck, they would be added to a ban list, but the next day, they'd still be able to connect even though their Steam ID was still included in the ban file. I tried including the banned.cfg file in the autoexec as noted here: http://rentalforums.nuclearfallout.net/ ... php?t=2874, and it worked! Yay!

However, now I'm curious as to why we had to include the ban file in the autoexec to make the bans stick. We run Mani, so I'm wondering if that has something to do with it...?

We have four ban files:
banned.cfg
banned_ip.cfg
banned_user.cfg
bans.cfg

I believe banned_ip is from Mani recording IPs, banned_user is from Mani recording their Steam ID, but I'm not sure what banned.cfg or bans.cfg is from. banned.cfg and bans.cfg have the same information. Why do we need to include the banned.cfg files in the autoexec for the bans to stick?

Post by **Edge100x** » Wed May 03, 2006 4:59 am

banned_user.cfg and banned_ip.cfg are used by the game itself in that they are written to when the commands "writeid" and "writeip" are used, respectively. Generally you will want to execute both of these in your server.cfg, along with "writeip" and "writeid", so that bans are refreshed with each map change (this assumes you have server.cfg set to execute with each new map).

banned.cfg and bans.cfg are unknown to me in the context of CSS. Since they are not used by the game directly, it should be safe to ignore them.

helvetica · Post by **helvetica** » Thu May 04, 2006 9:51 am

Informative, thanks!

I have question about this bit:

Edge100x wrote:...Generally you will want to execute both of these in your server.cfg, along with "writeip" and "writeid", so that bans are refreshed with each map change (this assumes you have server.cfg set to execute with each new map)...

In the server.cfg, I have:

Code: Select all

exec banned_ip.cfg
exec banned_user.cfg

with the banned_user.cfg looking like:

Code: Select all

banid 0 <Steam ID>

Do I have to worry about the "writeip" or "writeid" bits? They're not included anywhere in the files. Are those commands just used when the ban is added? Do I need to include them somewhere?

Post by **Edge100x** » Thu May 04, 2006 10:39 am

Strictly speaking you do not need to include them, but I would do it just in case an admin forgets to execute the command after banning someone. This may be a non-issue if you exclusively use mani to ban people.