Server Showing Night No Matter What Time It Is

[drgullen 593]

I have experience setting up servers, so for the most part anyway, I know what I'm doing.  I'm quite stumped on this one though, so I'm hoping this has happened to someone else who can tell me what the heck to do to fix this.  Here is what happened:

I'm setting up an Iztek Server locally here in the house for us to play on.  Everything is working fine (and still is actually) with the exception that now for some reason that I don't understand, the world loads always at nighttime.  The only thing I was changing was the cfgplayerspawnpoints values because I wanted to set some spawn points in non-default places.  On one of them, I loaded in apparently in the water and in complete darkness.  Since then, no matter what I do (changing date and time, deleting the persistence files, entering a previous value into cfgplayerspawnpoints that earlier was spawning in daytime) the server always loads dark.  I can load into other LAN servers and Official or Community servers with no problem, but this one server now always loads like it's 3am no matter what I do.  I set the time in the init.c file and it is currently set to 9:15am.  This was working fine previously, but like I say, now it loads like it's sometime long before sunrise.

I have no idea what I did wrong.  Has this ever happened to anyone else on here that figured out how to fix it?

[Riddick_2K 125]

I'm sorry but I can only give some very general suggestions:
*)
Sometimes I also make trivial and stupid mistakes, because I don't like giving up a job until I finish it and often even at the expense of the hours of sleep and often, especially when something doesn't work, I insist beyond all limits of tiredness and... from sleepy attention tends to decrease and stupid mistakes increase a lot. Try abandoning the project, disconnecting your brain for at least a day.
*)
Recheck all the files where you adjust the server time (at least 2 from memory, right?)
*)
Otherwise, save the entire configuration and reinstall the server from scratch. If it works, you can also redo the customizations by replacing file by file and thus, perhaps, you will also find the file that generates that defect.
And…
Some useful software, if you don't already know about it:
> To compare entire folders I recommend "Win Merge", standalone, with a somewhat "difficult" interface, but it does a good job.
> To compare 2 files (I always use it to see updates to "types.xml") I recommend "Text Diff", also standalone (I always prefer software without installation, if I can), great for seeing the differences between 2 versions the same file, too bad you can't edit them directly from its interface. If you change a version of the file, TextDiff doesn't always "see" the update... sometimes you have to "save" the changed version again and TextDiff will notice the difference and you will see it because the window will automatically relocate to the beginning of the file (at least on W7x64). A small flaw, but other than that, it's great.

If you find the defect, post the problem and, perhaps, the solution, it could be of interest to someone else, sooner or later.

Edited May 4, 2023 by Riddick_2K

[drgullen 593]

Thanks for the reply.

I basically did all your suggestions.  I reinstalled the whole thing and bare bones, I can run a Chernarus server normally.  I guess it has something to do with one of 3 mods: Iztek (the map itself) or Iztek_Zarge (required addons for Iztek) or CF (Community tools mod).  Iztek requires all 3 of those mods to run and as soon as I add them, I'm back in the dark.  If I take them off and run a Chernarus server with no mods, the time works correctly.

What is so strange about this is literally this morning, I was running the Iztek map on this machine with no problem.  The time was set for mid-morning and it loaded as mid-morning.  I'm now using the same setup as I had this morning, but obviously something is different because with those mods active, it's once again always night no matter what the time is set to.  Interestingly, when I mouse over the sun icon in the Server Browser, it comes up correctly as 9:15am which is what I have it set to in the init.c file.  I have also unsubscribed and resubscribed to those 3 mods to download them fresh to no avail.

I'm at a loss as to what changed.  I'll keep at it until I figure it out.

[drgullen 593]

So, I fixed it, but I really don't understand why this became a problem.  This seems like a bug to me, but I'm not even sure how to properly describe it.

It turns out it was the Favorites tab in the Server Browser screwing up.  My localhost 127.0.0.1 server was showing up in two places on the browser -- in the Favorites tab and in the LAN tab.  This morning when this was working, I was joining the server via the Favorites tab.  I have always joined it via the Favorites tab and it always worked previously.  After I apparently fell through the map earlier today on an errant spawn point, from that point forward, joining the server via the Favorites tab sent me into darkness.  It was as if the configuration of the Favorites tab still thought I was spawning in the water in darkness even though I had since changed the spawn points in the cfg file.  I was spawning where I expected to be, but the world was completely dark when it should have been mid-morning.

I had my roommate connect to the server but it wasn't listed in her Favorites tab, so she joined it via the LAN tab and for her, it was daytime.  So then for the first time today, I tried joining it via the LAN tab and sure enough, it was daytime for me to.

The fix was I deleted the following file: \AppData\Local\DayZ Launcher\FavouriteServers.xml and as soon as I started the Launcher the next time, that file got re-created and then when my server showed up on the Favorites tab from that point forward, it showed the proper time of day.

I have absolutely no idea why falling through the map would corrupt that particular XML file, but that seems to be what happened in my case because this Favorites tab bug showed up immediately after that happened.  Anyway, it's fixed now, so if you're like me and you setup servers on your local laptop or desktop, if you start having weirdness with the Favorites tab, try the LAN tab and if it works properly there, this is probably the way to fix this weird issue.

[Riddick_2K 125]

If you only used "Iztek" mods, since I've never read about a similar problem before (it's not a proof, though...) maybe it's a possible defect of the mod itself?
Try asking on the mod page or his Discord if he has one. Maybe it's a known problem, or his programmer must get to know about it.
My 5 cents, of course.