Whois Plugin - Version 3.8 - User Guide

Dealing with suspicious players

Use bbwhois <part of player name> to check on a suspicious player. If you want to record your suspicions for your fellow admins, use the bbwhois_watch command. Remember to include a reason. You may want to enforce reasons with bbwhois_requirereason on.

You can also use the bbwhois_note command to record information against a player. The difference between note and watch is that watch will alert your fellow admins when they join the server, or if the player joins when they are already present. Normally the first admin to suspect trouble will watch the player, then other admins will add notes to indicate if they agree or disagree.

Automatic Watching

When a player is detected connecting from an IP address or a subnet that has been used by another player that either is currently watched, or has previously been banned the plugin will automatically add a watch to the new player to warn administrators. If an administrator removes this watch, the plugin will not replace it on subsequent connections from the player.

LAN Servers / Bots

This plugin requires WONIDs, ValveIDs or SteamIDs for players in order to work properly. It will not work correctly on a LAN. It is compatible with servers that have a mix of Internet players and bots but will identify all bots as the same player.

"Rounds" measurements

The whois reports report the number of "rounds" played. So what about games that aren't round based? Well a "Round" is an actual round in counter-strike or anything else where logd detects the end of round, and 10 minutes in all other games. This gives a slight quirk for games such as natural selection where a round can last say 34 minutes which will be detected as 4 rounds by the plugin (3 of 10 minutes, one of 4). But the purpose of "rounds" measurements in names / IP use it just to show you the comparison of how often a name is used - e.g. If one name is used for 100 rounds and one for 2 rounds, it doesn't really matter what a round is - you still know the player normally uses the first name.

"Connections" measurements

A connection is counted each time the player reconnects to the server, or each time the map changes. The purpose of the connections count is to give an indication of how much time the player spends on your server.

"Kills" measurements

The plugin intentionally does not count deaths from world spawn when calculating death counts and kills to deaths ratios, so the figures may disagree with your stats package. This is because the purpose of the ratios is for you do judge if the player is significantly better in firefights when there is an admin present or Cheating-Death is not running, not how good they are at climbing ladders.

HL Guard

If you have configured HL Guard as explained on the install page, the following events from HLGuard will be added to players HLGuard report and to the globalnotes XML file:

• When players are kicked, banned or temp-banned by HLGuard this is recorded.
• When players use a name for which hlguard has a nameban or they are suspected of aimbotting, it will set a watch on them.

You can edit this behaviour by modifying the hlg_whois.cfg file, just like any other HLGuard config file.

Cheating-Death

If you have Cheating-Death installed, the plugin will display 2 sets of kills:deaths ratios. One set for when the player is using Cheating-Death, and one set where they are not. You can optionally configure the plugin to act as a Cheating-Death mediator. This means new players to your server will not be required to use Cheating-Death until they meet criteria specified in the plugin configuration. See the Install page for details on how to enable this feature, and the Reference page for details on how to customise the criteria for when players are required to use Cheating-Death.

Publishing reports on the web

If you setup a web server as explained on the Install page, and schedule the IndexDB.vbs file you can browse the whois database. The "Server Report" page will give a list of all notes/watches/unwatches/kicks/bans and all HLGuard events. The "Search" page will allow you to find information on particular players in the same manner as the whois command. The player reports are extensively hyperlinked to allow you to easily cross-reference.

If you wish to customise the appearance of the web pages generated to display the reports, all of the layout and colour information is in the two files player.xsl and rbbot.css in the db folder. These are the only files you need to change.

Database Maintenance

The file PruneDB.vbs can be used to remove old information from the whois database to prevent its size growing out of control. It takes 2 command line options - the first its the number of days data to keep and the second is "/delete" if you want it to actually delete files. If you do not supply the second argument the script will tell you how many records it would delete. e.g.

This will tell you how many files would be deleted if you prune to 45 days

cscript PruneDB.vbs 45

This will prune to 60 days

cscript PruneDB.vbs 60 /delete

The pruning script will not delete any players that have notes recorded against them no matter how old they are or players that have played more than 1000 rounds.

NOTE: No linux version of this script is available yet.

Report Format

The report displayed in the console shows the following information:

WONID

The player's WONID

Name

The players current name if they are playing, or most popular name if they are not.

AKA

If the current name above is the common name, then this displays the second most common name, otherwise the most common name. The frequency of name use is counted by the number of times a player has the name at the end of a round (CS) or is polled every 10 minutes (other mods).

Access Level

Indicates the player's adminmod level, or default if the players access level matches the default access level.

K/D Admined

The players kills to deaths ratio when the server is administered

K/D Unattended

The players kills to deaths ratio when the server is not administered

Connections today

The number of times the player has connected today. Each map change is counted as a new connection.

Connections 7 days

The number of times the player has connected in the last 7 days. Each map change is counted as a new connection.

Connections 30 days

The number of times the player has connected in the last 30 days. Each map change is counted as a new connection.

Connections Overall

The overall number of times the player has connected.

Name History

A list of the 10 most commonly used names for this player

IP History

A list of the 10 most commonly used IP addresses for this player

Other Players on same IP

A list of other WONIDs and the most common player name for each that have been found playing from the same IP address or same subnet.

History

A log of all notes watches, unwatches, kicks, bans and unbans on the player. For each event, the command used, the admin that used it, the date and the reason are shown.

File Layout

The initialisation script in the config folder creates the folders in which the user information database is stored. It creates 100 numbered folders in addons/whois/db and 100 numbered folders in addons/whois/ips. A number of files are created for each player within one of the db folders using the WONID as the basis for the filename. A hashing function on the WONID determines which folder is used for which player.

The following files are created for each player

Connections.xml

Lists the dates on which the player has connected and the number of connections on each date (each map change is counted as a new connection so this gives an estimation of time played)

Names.xml

Lists the number of alternate names under which the player has connected and the number of times each one has been used.

Ips.xml

Lists the number of alternate address under which the player has connected and the number of times each one has been used.

Kills.xml

Stores the number of kills and number of deaths by the player when an amdinistrator is and isn't present.

Notes.xml

Stores the record of notes, watches, kicks and bans against the player.

Summary.xml

Records whether a player should be watched

In the ips folders text files are created storing the WONIDs / SteamIDs that have logged in the IP address or subnet in the file name.