SkinsRestorer Shenanigans

There was a recent major update to SkinsRestorer (15.x) which updated the API for setting the skins. Because I have previously set SkinsRestorer to auto-update on MiloAis, this update came and the plugin updated itself automatically. Unfortunately I was unaware of the major changes to the plugin at the time.

The problem with this new update is that it broke compatibility with the SkinSystem, completely breaking the page. Because of this I decided to downgrade the plugin to a last known working version. But the issues don’t end there.

Apparently the update completely restructured the SkinSystem database on the server, so even if I downgraded the plugin itself it wouldn’t be able to read its database. Luckily, the old tables containing data from the previous versions are still intact, but the tables have been renamed with a “legacy” indicator. Sounds like good news, right? All I had to do was rename them back to their original names and we’re Gucci…or so I thought.

While the plugin stopped spitting out errors about the tables being non-existent, it wasn’t able to read the data in the tables. Apparently each player was assigned a skin “signature” which I’m guessing was changed at some point and now the plugin refuses to use them because of the signature mismatch. For users with custom skins uploaded through SkinSystem, this means it will revert back to the default skin or a random skin. For users with skins from their Minecraft accounts, this will not affect you.

I could probably unpack an old backup archive and restore the database to when it was before the plugin update, but that seems like too much trouble for a single plugin.

So, long story short: SkinsRestorer updated automatically, the update broke SkinSystem and fucked up the database. If you’ve already uploaded a custom skin through SkinSystem, it’s likely gone now and you have to reupload it to the server.