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You should now be able to actually delete logs that ended up empty due to problems with the file system. I had to fix two problems to make this work. First, there was a Catch-22 of ending the script prematurely when the log and its backup were both empty even when you were trying to delete them. I had to add an exception in for that. Second, it couldn't tell from an empty log who the player and opponent were. So, when these values are no longer available from the log, it now gets them from the database. With these changes made, I emptied a log of a game with myself, and I emptied its backup too, and without using the account that gives me special deletion privileges, I was able to delete it from the other account I was playing it with.

Before even writing the backups, Game Courier will check how much free disk space is left. Although it is unlikely that it will ever run out of actual free disk space, the file system sometimes reports this erroneously, and when it does, it ends up writing an empty file. To prevent the writing of empty files, Game Courier will now stop before writing any files if it is reported that there is no free disk space left.

Because of the possibility that problems with the file system could cause a log or a backup to be written as an empty file, I have now programmed Game Courier to use the backup in place of the log if the log is empty or to use the backup's backup if both the log and its backup are empty. In the event that everything is empty, or the file to be used doesn't exist, it will give an error message and recommend deletion of the log. So, if you have lost both the log and its backup, you can now find out and take action to delete it.

I have now made the backup procedure more robust, as described in the previous comment.

Due to the danger of writing both an empty log and an empty backup, the backup procedure needs to be made more robust. I plan to make it more robust by adding in some redundancy and error checking. It should work like this. First, it should make a backup of the backup. It should check this against the backup. If they are not the same, it should stop with an error message indicating that logs cannot be saved right now, and it would be best to come back and try again later. If it successfully makes a faithful copy of the backup, it should then copy the log to the backup and check whether the two files are the same. If not, it should stop with a similar error message. If these two backups succeed, it should then update the log and check whether it is empty. If it is empty, it should report an error message that the log was not successfully saved and to try again later. If it did save to a non-empty file, it should proceed to report its success and to send an email to the other player.

Thanks to some technical difficulties having to do with erroneous reports of the disk space being full, Game Courier wrote some empty logs and backups yesterday and maybe earlier too. When both the log and its backup are empty, there is no more record of the game unless it can be recontructed from the emails sent to both players. If you are unable to do this, it would be best to delete your log using the Delete link provided on this page. You can delete your log as long as you are one of the players, or I can do it if need be. It is important to go through Game Courier to delete logs, because it will also handle deleting database entries for those logs.

It seems that I cannot make a challenge in the game named Crab Chess. Anyone any idea why?

Thanks Fergus

I finished that game as I had wished to, and it has also been rated by Game Courier.

That's now fixed, Kevin. The won command ended with a colon instead of a semicolon. Now it ends with a semicolon.

Note to Fergus:

There appears to be a bug in the rules enforcing Chess preset. When I try to play ...Qd1 (with checkmate) in the following game, I get a long error message:

/play/pbm/play.php?game=Chess&log=panther-tim_olena-2018-71-812

Thank Fergus :)!

You appear to be playing Mortal Shogi without a settings file. In fact, it looks like Mortal Shogi doesn't even have a settings file. I should be able to make one by modifying the one used for Kamikaze Mortal Shogi.

In one case towards the end of the game it did not :)! Here is a link to the game in question : /play/pbm/play.php?game=Mortal+Shogi&log=catugo-cvgameroom-2018-82-677

Please post a link to the game log and I will take a look.  The pieces should change when captured.  A knight becomes a pawn.  Every time a piece is captured it becomes one step weaker.

@fergus, Catugo and I just attempted to play Mortal Shogi, something seems to be a bit off.  Either I do not understand the rules, or there might be a bug.   If you review the our recent game, can you see if there is something off?  During my knight capture it seemed to me the knight did not go into the capture tray, but in the next turn after that, it seemed to be there.    @catugo said a knight capture became a pawn.  If you want we could play a game together as a way to debug the game.  If you are willing to do that.  Maybe everything is working right, but the game felt off. 

@Fergus @ wdtr2

wdtr2, I hope you see this :)!

I think I see what went one, you had promoted your bishop to a dragon horse which I caputred. And it demoted to bishop. You on the other hand, wdtr2 have captured a bishop which has been demoted to GG. I guess that is it, no bug.

Sorry Fergus, for botherring you. It is my first such game and I still have trouble with tactics .

@Fergus,

Hello,

I am playing a mortal shogi game against wdtr2. There seems to be a bug as with an bishop exchance he seems to have got a GG in hand where I a bishop :)!

For the following game's log, my opponent was indicated to have lost on time under 'Your Games on Game Courier' (under that sub-menu item under my name in the main menu), but the log didn't show up or count as a finished game (i.e. with me winning on time) until after I had clicked on the log's link, under 'Your Games on Game Courier'. Not sure that's exactly how games that are wins on time are properly put into & stored in the database, so I thought maybe it was worth mentioning - otherwise all's well that ends well, I suppose:

/play/pbm/play.php?game=Backlash&log=panther-cvgameroom-2017-349-290

Ok, good.  That means it isn't showing up because it's connected to you (so it can't affect your rating.)  It is showing up because, since it is missing a player, it is getting caught by the query to find invitations.  The query could probably be modified, but since this game shouldn't have entered this state to begin with, I'm inclined to just delete it.

Yes, that mysterious log does disappear when setting to only finished games for me.

Somehow this game has no one assigned as playing black.  Not sure how that happened.  When you pick the Your Games, by default, it shows open invitations also.  Basically, including invitations adds a "where opponent is null" criteria to the query which is probably why this log is getting pulled in.  I bet if you set it to only show finished games, this one will no longer show up (even though it is indeed a finished game.)

I don't know why the following log of a finished played game by one/two people (that are not me) is included in the list of my logs as listed by 'Your Games on Game Courier' (as found in the sub-menu under my name in the CVP main menu). An anomoly? I've seen that current open invitations by other people (besides my own invites issued), and recent finished game logs of games played by me are sometimes (but not always, for some reason) included. Anyway, I don't know if the log I'm referring to (see below) has affected my GC rating in any way:

/play/pbm/play.php?game=General+Chess&log=olbog-cvgameroom-2006-25-442

Fergus,

Here is another game with a problem:

/play/pbm/play.php?game=Latrunculi+XXI&log=j_carrillo_vii-cvgameroom-2017-345-008

I was White, and I won the game. (I used the "won" command to end the game).

Somehow the colors were switched between the players, and I ended up being Black and losing the game.

Please correct it. Thanks.

Thanks Nick.

I never noticed before.

Fergus, there is definitely something wrong with the "won" command and how it assigns the winner in the finished games log.

Here is another example:

/play/pbm/play.php?game=Latrunculi+XXI&log=j_carrillo_vii-wolff-2016-339-951

I won the game as Black, but in the finished games log it shows Nick (White) as the winner.