kakoen / arksa-server-startup-tester

Ark: Survival Ascended - Server startup tester

Warning! Only to help the tech savvy. I'm using this for my own server, and decided to publish it to help others. But I don't have the time to make it user friendly / deliver support on it. If you're not a developer, you probably won't be able to use this. I will not be held responsible for any damage caused by this script. Use at your own risk.

What is this?

A common problem for Ark: SA is the server ending up in a crash loop. By loading up your save in Single Player Non-Dedicated, you will probably get a pop-up with a crash report (stacktrace). If that stacktrace includes loading tribe files, then there's a big chance one of your tribe files is corrupted.

This script tries to find the tribe files that are corrupt by repeatedly loading the server with a specific set of tribe files, and narrowing down to the corrupt file(s), using binary search. This means you'll need between log(n) (best case) and n server restarts to find the corrupt tribe files, where n is the number of tribes.

Usage

1. Backup any save files, as this script will delete the destination folder with every try.
2. Put the contents of your server's TheIsland_WP directory in the save_files directory (*.ark, *.arktribe, *.arkprofile, etc files).
3. Download the Ark: Survival Ascended dedicated server package from Steam.
4. Modify Main.java with the correct paths to your dedicated server installation.
5. Clear bad_tribes.txt and good_tribes.txt if needed (this is used to persist and continue a single test run)
6. Run the script. It will start the server with all tribes, and then narrow down to the corrupt ones. It will print the corrupt tribes in the end, as well as output them in bad_tribes.txt` file.
7. Remove the arktribe files that are reported as bad, and verify that your server starts up without those files again! :)