Mod global.cfg files clearing in v1.7.2

[CaptainStarbuck]

With the latest 1.7.2 FML, we saw errors like this on two different systems:

 

java.lang.RuntimeException: Unknown character '' in 'C:/Users/name/AppData/Roaming/.minecraft/config/CustomSpawner/Global.cfg:1'

 

Both of these systems have the Mo'Creatures mod along with Custom Mob Spawner. Both of these systems were playing against a compatible Cauldron server with no issue, but within a couple days we got the above error.

 

On one system, as above, the CMS Global.cfg was present but was empty.

On the other system, it was the MoCreatures.cfg that was present but empty.

Or rather, editing with WordPad (only tool present on those player systems) it looks like all of the text in the files had been replaced with spaces.

I did not check the files with a binary editor, the text might have been converted to UTF16 or otherwise corrupted so that it just looked like they were cleared.

 

The issue was resolved by simply restoring the data to the files from another system and restarting the game. (Could have just replaced the files, didn't realize that on first look.)

 

A Google search for "unknown character customspawner global.cfg" returns a number of hits indicating this has happened elsewhere and that it's probably related to Forge.

 

I understand Forge is now supporting MC 1.7.10 and we'll upgrade soon (now that Cauldron supports this release as well). I just wanted to post this in case the problem occurs elsewhere, in case some other admin needs a resolution, in case the problem somehow carries into the latest releases, and/or in case a developer wants to see if there's any way that Forge would update a mod .cfg file (or in some way cause a mod to do this to itself).

 

Thanks.

[LexManos]

ZIts related to forge in the sense that the config system is in forge, the problem tho is your config files getting corrupt somehow, Forge loads in whatever encoding the file tells it to {or UTF-8 if none is specified in the file header} and saves in UTF-8.

[CaptainStarbuck]

ZIts related to forge in the sense that the config system is in forge, the problem tho is your config files getting corrupt somehow...

Exactly. So I have two different systems with two different mods, but accessed by the same config system and corrupted in the same way. Add to this that the Google search I referenced mentioned other config files getting corrupted in similar ways, while also run under Forge.

 

If a number of people in the neighborhood get food poisoning and they all ate at the same place, we tend to at least consider that this one place might have been the source. Until someone comes up with another theory, I'm just putting this one out there.

[LexManos]

Provide the files that are 'corrupt' so that I can analize them to see HOW they are corrupt.

99.9999% of the time this is caused by a user editing the script using some text editor that writes it back in there own language without the marker, as I said we have NO possible idea how to load the file unless that BOM is there.