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🚨 Emergency Restoration Procedures

This document outlines how to restore the Minecraft world data from Google Drive in the event of data corruption, accidental deletion, or total server migration.

1. Stop the Bleeding

Never attempt to restore files while the server is running. This will cause file conflicts and corruption.

# Stop the system service
sudo systemctl stop minecraft

# Verify it is down (should say "inactive")
sudo systemctl status minecraft

2. Locate the Backup

Use Rclone to list the available backups on the remote storage to find the correct timestamp.

# List files in the backup directory
rclone lsl gdrive:backups/minecraft_25565

Note the filename you want to restore, e.g., world_2026-01-17_04-00.zip.

3. Download the Backup

Switch to the service user and download the target zip file to a temporary location.

su - mcserver
mkdir -p ~/restore_temp
rclone copy gdrive:backups/minecraft_25565/world_2026-01-17_04-00.zip ~/restore_temp

4. Swap the Worlds

Move the current (broken) world aside instead of deleting it, just in case. Then unzip the backup.

cd ~/fabric_server

# 1. Rename the broken world folder (Safety Net)
mv world world_BROKEN_$(date +%F)

# 2. Unzip the backup
# -d specifies the destination directory
unzip ~/restore_temp/world_2026-01-17_04-00.zip -d .

# 3. Verify folder structure
# You should see a folder named "world" inside fabric_server
ls -F

5. Permission Fix (Critical)

If you unzipped files as root by mistake, the server will crash. Ensure the service user owns the new files.

# Run this as your sudo user if you are not currently mcserver
exit
sudo chown -R mcserver:mcserver /home/mcserver/fabric_server/world

6. Restart and Verify

Bring the server back online.

sudo systemctl start minecraft

# Check the console to ensure it loaded the world correctly
sudo su - mcserver
screen -r mcserver

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