Use the In-Game Community Mods - raevn's PA Mod Manager for Linux and Mac OS X is Obsolete

Ok, I managed to install Archlinux in VirtualBox. I had to do some messing around to get PA a libcurl it likes, which you guys probably had to do to. Also I had to do the libudev.so.0 symlinking business, but no surprise there. PA gave me a black screen of course, because you can't really load it up in VirtualBox, I think, but it did show me which mods if any it was loading. I ran pamm to install some mods and then started PA again. And... it showed that it was finding and loading the mods. So I can't really reproduce it.

Now since the only difference might be in the way we handled the libcurl thing, that means that the problem could lie there. It seems rather unlikely to me, but hey. The way I fixed the libcurl thing was to just copy libcurl.so.3 from Kubuntu 13.10 and any library it depended on. I've attached them to this thread. If you unzip this zip in your PA folder, do you still have the same problem?

The libraries do not affect the loading of mods.

Still showing: "INFO Client loaded 0 mods."

Hmm. Could you run strace and sent me the output?

Code:

strace -o strace.log ./PA

I wonder if I can see where it goes wrong by comparing it with my strace, which does show the loading of the mods.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_ALvsLvtdDjeTQtb3NyWFUyaHc/edit?usp=sharing

Just looking through the log, it appears to have found the mod directory but it is outputting that there were no mods loaded... Very weird. (Now this is on a standard re-install of PA with everything at default + the libraries from your zip file and libudev.so.1 symlinked).

So, that makes no sense. My strace says:

Code:

openat(AT_FDCWD, "/home/jarno/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_DIRECTORY|O_CLOEXEC) = 8

, but yours says

Code:

openat(AT_FDCWD, "/home/nick/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_DIRECTORY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

In other words, it's claiming that your mods directory does not exist???

Your mods directory does have proper permissions, right? I kind of wonder what would happen if you were to run PA as root...

It shouldn't matter, but I'm curious as to which file system you use. Is it ext4?

Sorry, recheck the link, uploading new one now. The original strace.log did not have a mod directory. I reinstalled PA without readding back in the mods from PAMM! DERP!

My relevant section in the new file:

Code:

openat(AT_FDCWD, "/home/nick/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_DIRECTORY|O_CLOEXEC) = 15
getdents(15, /* 16 entries */, 32768)  = 592
stat("/home/nick/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods/bShowSecondaryColour", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=256, ...}) = 0
stat("/home/nick/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods/cPlanetNameThemes", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0777, st_size=256, ...}) = 0
stat("/home/nick/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods/fabulous_selections", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0777, st_size=256, ...}) = 0
stat("/home/nick/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods/hotbuild2", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0777, st_size=256, ...}) = 0
stat("/home/nick/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods/LavaSnakes_StargateBugFix", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0777, st_size=256, ...}) = 0
stat("/home/nick/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods/mods.json", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0666, st_size=515, ...}) = 0
stat("/home/nick/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods/PAMM", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0777, st_size=256, ...}) = 0
stat("/home/nick/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods/rBlueprintInfoFramework", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0777, st_size=256, ...}) = 0
stat("/home/nick/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods/rFloatFrame", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0777, st_size=256, ...}) = 0
stat("/home/nick/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods/rSettingsManager", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0777, st_size=256, ...}) = 0
stat("/home/nick/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods/sirHighlightedBuildings", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0777, st_size=256, ...}) = 0
stat("/home/nick/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods/SpacedOutDefenceTowers", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0777, st_size=256, ...}) = 0
stat("/home/nick/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods/teamBuildColor", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0777, st_size=256, ...}) = 0
stat("/home/nick/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods/transicons", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0777, st_size=256, ...}) = 0
getdents(15, /* 0 entries */, 32768)  = 0
close(15)  = 0
write(1, "[21:26:49.703] INFO Client loade"..., 41) = 41
write(12, "[21:26:49.703] INFO Client loade"..., 41) = 41

I use JFS on the particular partition. With windows friendly -O mount option for case-insensitive files (morrowind/oblivion/skyrim mods with WINE).

And by the way, Planetary Annihilation runs perfectly on my system (actually faster than my windows install on the same system) not counting this problem!

Well, for comparison, I have this:

Code:

openat(AT_FDCWD, "/home/jarno/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_DIRECTORY|O_CLOEXEC) = 8
getdents(8, /* 6 entries */, 32768) = 192
stat("/home/jarno/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods/mods.json", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=134, ...}) = 0
stat("/home/jarno/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods/rSettingsManager", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
stat("/home/jarno/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods/LavaSnakes_ProfilePicFixer", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
stat("/home/jarno/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods/PAMM", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
getdents(8, /* 0 entries */, 32768) = 0
close(8) = 0
open("/home/jarno/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods/rSettingsManager/modinfo.json", O_RDONLY) = 8
read(8, "{\r\n \"context\": \"client\",\r\n "..., 8191) = 796
write(1, "[22:06:20.772] INFO Loading mod "..., 51) = 51
write(5, "[22:06:20.772] INFO Loading mod "..., 51) = 51
close(8) = 0
open("/home/jarno/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods/LavaSnakes_ProfilePicFixer/modinfo.json", O_RDONLY) = 8
read(8, "{\r\n \"context\": \"client\",\r\n "..., 8191) = 950
write(1, "[22:06:20.791] INFO Loading mod "..., 61) = 61
write(5, "[22:06:20.791] INFO Loading mod "..., 61) = 61
close(8) = 0
open("/home/jarno/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods/PAMM/modinfo.json", O_RDONLY) = 8
read(8, "{\n \"context\": \"client\",\n \""..., 8191) = 541
write(1, "[22:06:20.803] INFO Loading mod "..., 39) = 39
write(5, "[22:06:20.803] INFO Loading mod "..., 39) = 39
close(8) = 0
open("/home/jarno/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/mods/mods.json", O_RDONLY) = 8
read(8, "{\n\t\"mount_order\":\n\t[\n\t\t\"com.pa.d"..., 8191) = 134
close(8) = 0
write(1, "[22:06:20.805] INFO Client loade"..., 41) = 41
write(5, "[22:06:20.805] INFO Client loade"..., 41) = 41

As you can see, it is the same up to stat-ing all of the directories in the mods directory. After that however, it reads the modinfo.json files in each of the directories in my case, but not in your case.

I wonder what file system MCXplode uses, who also has this problem:

Strange... I'll have a go at jfs.

I am using the XFS filesystem on an old 64GB SSD which if PA doesn't like could account for the problem of loading mods. Tried playing around with chmod and the permissions to no avail. Even killed pcmanfm file manager for LXDE, but no other process seems to be blocking PA mods . can kill just about everything except openbox and still launch PA. Weird PA still writes to ~Uber**/localstore and logs ect.

Now that you mention it, I wonder if Arch itself has some problems with PA and actually reading the directories and files. My main Arch system is on a 30 GB ext4 partition, so to check if jfs is the problem I am going to create a dummy user on that partition and check if it can load mods there. My PA install is on that partition too under "/usr/local/games/"

I wounder what under Arch would cause a problem, I have compiled my own kernel so I am not using the Arch kernel, using pcmanfm as file manager which I can disable. I have PA installed to /home/jbrown/PA so it isn't in any sub dir. Mod manager can find where PA is and correctly appends files to .local/~Uber/Planetary~/mods ect. I have checked through all the json files including mods.json and they are all correct. I wonder if it could be system daemon like udev or dbus in Arch that causes PA not to read directories correctly. I haven't updated my Arch for little over a year so new libs couldn't be a problem in fact I think the old libs work better for PA. PA actually runs faster on Arch than Windows7 for me too, I have my system way cut down.

Ok, I just made a new virtual disk, formatted it as jfs and it shows it's not loading any mods... When I drop the disk and go back to ext4, it does load the mods again. It's probably similar for xfs.

I wonder if you can fix this by mounting ~/.local/Uber Entertainment as a separate ext4 disk from a local file using the -oloop option for mount. Although it's entirely possible I'm talking nonsense here.

I created a dummy account on the root partition titled "/nick2" (which is ext4, not JFS), installed PAMM, launched the PA, exited PA after it created the local files under the account, and then added mods through PAMM. And when I launched the game, SURE ENOUGH, it loads the mods.

Apparently JFS and XFS cannot handle the game with mods or the reverse for whatever reason. It works with ext4.

I found a very dirty method of doing what you just said. I have a 64mb ext2 boot partitions with just the kernel and grub in it. I created a mods folder in there, created a symlink from Uber folder to there. Now the PA mods run with top priority; same place as the kernel, very dirty.

I am wondering if just symlinking the mod folder on my root directory to where I installed PA may work as well? I love symlinks!

BTW, thanks for the help pointing in the right direction DeathByDenim!

It will probably work, but I wouldn't recommend it. The contents of the mod folder would then get shadowed by the contents of the mod folder and I can see that ending in tears.

Sure. I'm glad you guys can use mods now. Happy annihilating!
I updated the bug tracker as well.

New version 4.0.0 released. Caught up with raevn again.

you're the best!

Always opens (at least on installed mods) in random order, but the select for sort remembers it's last position, and doesn't cause a resort unless it's value changes.