DasSkelett

Hey @Profiremu23, it looks like your release zips are not actually ZIPs, but RARs with incorrect file extensions. $ file *.zip Rescale.10.0x.zip: RAR archive data, v5 Rescale.10.618x.zip: RAR archive data, v5 Rescale.2.0x.zip: RAR archive data, v5 Rescale.2.5x.zip: RAR archive data, v5 Rescale.3.5x.zip: RAR archive data, v5 Rescale.5.4x.zip: RAR archive data, v5 Rescale.7.6x.zip: RAR archive data, v5 So the extension should actually be `.rar` instead of `.zip` here. RAR is a proprietary format not as widely supported, that's why there are a bunch of people in this thread mentioning that they can't open the zip files. If you stick to the de facto KSP modding standard of true ZIPs, people would have an easier time opening them. Windows 10 has built-in functionality to create zips, so you wouldn't have to use third-party software for that. Thanks!

What wrong places do you mean? CKAN only downloads the mods from the official sources, where mod authors uploaded them to. These are pretty much always SpaceDock or GitHub. The only exception is when a mod or mod version got deleted from its original source, then CKAN tries to fall back to archive.org. Please give us a list of mods you think we pull from "wrong places", so we can take a look. For which mods does CKAN pull an outdated version? Indexing is automated, so new mod releases should be indexed within 30 minutes. Same as above, if you know mods where CKAN lacks behind, please report them to us (here or even better there), so we can take a look and potentially fix them. But we can't fix what we don't know of.

Wait, now after reading your recent comments here and in the Astrogator thread, it sounds like you haven't used CKAN before, and you didn't install your current mods through CKAN? In this case you won't actually be able to export them as modpack. CKAN can only export mods you installed with it, your first comment sounded like you did. Your best bet is probably just installing the mods fresh on the new instance, going by the folders in GameData of your old instance. To answer your question, no, KSP doesn't have to be running for CKAN, actually it shouldn't run while installing mods with CKAn, otherwise files might be locked (on Windows), or KSP gets confused and scary things happen. CKAN can only detect a subset of the mods you have installed manually. They need to have a DLL whose name is similar to the identifier of the mod in CKAN. So mods that are only ModuleManager patches, textures or other config files can't be detected by CKAN.

Not even that, any disk works. However since your KSP installation is not in the default location, CKAN probably won't be able to detect it automatically, so you'll have to add it yourself. You can put ckan.exe inside your KSP directory, then it will detect it automatically again, but it's not required.

Please ask CKAN questions on the CKAN thread. Only there we can guarantee that someone of the team actually reads them. That aside, yes, stock textures should work now. Select Parallax, then select "Parallax - Stock Planet Textures". You might have to hit "Refresh" once to get the latest metadata. A necessary update to Beyond Home's metadata is still pending. Edit: Beyond Home is now also updated.

We are working on this. The metadata needs some updates to install the textures too. Unfortunately the textures are too big to fit on our CI's disk right now. Also please keep in mind to report CKAN problems on CKAN's forum thread, don't bother mod authors with it.

Yeah, the first one. CKAN has an option to export your currently installed mods as modpack. It lets you save a .ckan file, which CKAN can install mods from again later. To export, use "File > Export modpack...", and to import, once you've set up your new instance use "File > Install from .ckan...". You should export the mods as recommendations (select all, click on "Recommends"), so the installation won't fail on the new instance if one or more mods aren't compatible anymore. Yeah, unfortunately this is how it is with KSP mods. At least CKAN makes it a bit easier to check whether there are mod releases compatible with a newer version of KSP, with the "Versions" tab on the right. This still won't tell you everything, sometimes mods still work but authors didn't update the compatibility information. There you'll have to check the forum threads. Maybe you'll even have to try it out yourself, just make sure you start a new save for testing and don't touch your old one until you're confident everything works. It's tedious, but fortunately KSP doesn't update that often.

If you want to do it like that, you could export your installed mod list first, and then reinstall all mods on the new instance. Make sure "Save mod versions" is not selected when you export it, then CKAN will install the newest compatible versions on the new instance. The other, common way is to to upgrade KSP via Steam. After a restart, CKAN will automatically detect when the KSP version changed, and ask you to confirm your selection of compatible KSP version. Afterwards you can upgrade to the newest available mod versions as usual.

There's the download cache which works well for caching mods and (re-)installing them later without needing to redownload them. You can see which mods currently have one or more versions of it in the cache if you set the filter to "Cached". However on its own you can't see which version is cached in the GUI, only if you open the cache directory in a file manager. And to "update" a mod in the cache you would first have to purge the old version from the cache and then re-download it ("Right click > Download contents"). But you could combine that with a fake KSP instance (under "File > Manage KSP instances > New KSP instance > Clone or fake new instance"). When you install a mod into that fake instance, it'll also be downloaded into the cache. You can select which version of a mod to install so it's matching the KSP versions of your other, real instances. You can use CKAN's built-in update mechanism to keep your cached mods up to date. You will also have to deal with relationships this way though, so dependencies will always be downloaded too, and you can't have conflicting mods installed in the fake instance at the same time. To circumvent the second problem you could remove all mods again after you've installed and cached them once, or you create further fake instances. Make sure that the cache size is set to unlimited in the settings, otherwise CKAN will delete mods again once it hits the limit.

I want to point out some changes we just deployed: Disappearing thumbnails and header images are finally fixed! If one of your mods currently has a black thumbnail and the header image disappeared mysteriously, please reupload it one last time, this time it will stay for good. Yes, even PNGs with alpha channel and other color modes will work for header images now, and the server takes care of converting them to JPEGs for the thumbnails. Also newly generated thumbnails should have a little higher quality now, more improvements to thumbnails and headers are being discussed and in the works. Chrome users will still be able to download mods in the future! As I wrote above, we fortunately became aware of the download warning, that Google plans to turn into a complete block with today's update, thanks to @ForgiLaGeord reporting the issue. We could fix the cause for those warnings, so downloads will continue to work on Chrome, now without warning. Per-version download stats, a download button on the mod thumbnail, several modpack fixes to make them usable again, and a lot more. We are slowly but surely getting this old codebase into a working and maintainable state. For a full overview of today's fixes and changes, see this pull request. Once again, thanks for the patience during the downtime today. Not a single question about what's happening from users that can't read the last comment on a thread, that's a first!

We have to thank @ForgiLaGeord for making us aware of that one. Apparently Chrome started to show those warnings in the latest version, but will start blocking downloads altogether in the next one, releasing tomorrow. This would make Chrome users that are updating early unable to download mods at all from SpaceDock. If someone is interested in the problem, here's the PR explaining the problem more detailed, but in short, we accidentally redirected downloads via HTTP. The downloads themselves were HTTPS and thus encrypted, no worries, but one step in between, after clicking the download button, wasn't. This poses an opportunity for attackers to make you download a different, manipulated file. Not really a concern for SpaceDock, but Chrome has a solid point in discouraging and preventing such situations. Just split those optional files out into a separate zip, and upload that separate zip as another mod on SpaceDock (and as additional release asset on GitHub). In the description you mention the need for the base mod to be installed. Make sure that there aren't any files with the same name and path, because CKAN can't overwrite files (and non-CKAN-users might get confused if they have to).

Good news, I finally found some time to investigate, and we got the problem resolved! Turns out, celery auto-upgraded after the server restart, and the new version only wants its command line arguments IN UPPERCASE, not lowercase. Very delicate, if you ask me. Uploading mods, downloading mods (also via CKAN), email notifications and everything else should work reliably again. Please let us now if something still doesn't behave the way it should. Sorry for the inconvenience, thanks for the patience!

Argh, I hate AV software. Especially those that come with AI detection. To be fair, CKAN downloads stuff from the Internet and puts it into other programs' folders, which can look kinda shady from the outside. Anyways, thanks for reaching out, and thanks to WoodenPlankGames (couldn't find a matching username on the forums) for reporting the false-positive. I am also positively surprised by the response time of Malwarebytes.

But not for the current release. By bumping the version CKAN and AVC no longer consider the remote version file, because the VERSION property doesn't match anymore. So CKAN has gone back to 1.8.9 as max KSP version: https://github.com/KSP-CKAN/CKAN-meta/commit/ccb01a95538d62c99145af0545fb4e5b19ad73ba You have to either decrease the VERSION again, just like my PR did, or you have to do a new release. Either one, but not keep it as is.

I took a look at the docs of the library we use, and it only supports "deflate" (and "store", which isn't a compression method though). As far as I can tell that's also what most zip utilities are limited to. On CKAN's side we just give optional packs different identifiers, and make the optional pack depend on the base mod. They can have totally different version numbers, although it would make sense to keep them in sync to not confuse everyone. For something like textures with different resolutions, that aren't really optional because you need one (and only one) of those resolutions installed for the mod to work, we use so-called "virtual modules". We make the base mod depend on some new identifier that all the texture modules provide. During the installation process, the user gets asked to choose one of the available texture modules. It's mostly SpaceDock that gets to feel the big zips, but bandwidth isn't really a problem there currently. As you mentioned above, splitting the optional extras into a separate mod is a good start to reduce the size, so is separate mods for different resolutions. Then you should also make sure that your zip only contains files really needed for the mod to work, plus a README and LICENSE file. So no documentation, or other files that are "by-products" of the modding process.

Looks like @R-T-B replaced that version shortly after the upload. Our bot already caught it and updated the metadata, just hit "Refresh" now and try again.

@Aazard good news, the bot recovered and the release has finally been indexed: https://github.com/KSP-CKAN/CKAN-meta/commit/16e327fa9973cf654b3e50900e43242eab6c165d If you refresh now, you should be able to see it in CKAN. Thanks again for the quick action, and for the patience!

Unfortunately such documentation from CKAN's side doesn't exist yet. Might make sense to add one, though, you are right. You can also add a fourth group with "BUILD". You can take a look at the schema for a complete overview of what can go into a version file. Yeah, we had a small bug in our netkan code, leading to the disk filling up after repeatedly trying to download the v1.0.5.1 zip. The bug is solved, but the disk is still full, working on it. Please stand by

Thank you @politas for safely flying the project through all these years, it's been a pleasure. You pulled CKAN out of a crisis and made it to the widely respected, much used tool it is today. It is an excellent project to take over, with a great team behind it, and I appreciate the trust and support you all give me. I will try my best to keep CKAN in a stable orbit, and am looking forward to the future of KSP and whatever may follow it. Here's the new thread:

(Download the latest release) The Comprehensive Kerbal Archive Network (CKAN) The CKAN is an Open Source, community-driven mod management solution for Kerbal Space Program and Kerbal Space Program 2. The CKAN client, available for Windows, macOS and Linux, enables easy installation, uninstallation and updates of mods. The client provides strong guarantees on consistency. It will not allow outdated mods to be installed unless you explicitly override the version awareness, nor will it allow a mod to be installed without its dependencies or alongside conflicting mods. It will never leave mods in a half-installed state. It will never overwrite a file owned by another mod, nor a mod that was installed outside of the CKAN. If you've used package managers (apt, winget, choco, pip, CPAN, ...) before, then the CKAN might be familiar for you. Like the App Store or Play Store for your phone, the CKAN knows which version of KSP you're running, which mods are compatible, and how to install, uninstall, and manage them. The CKAN has a GUI which is stable on Windows and Linux. On Windows, simply double-click the ckan.exe file. On macOS and Linux you need Mono installed, then run it with "mono ckan.exe", or look for the CKAN entry in your launcher. Users of macOS 10.15 (Catalina) and higher will launch into the ConsoleUI by default, since the GUI is no longer functional since Apple decided to stop supporting 32-bit applications. CKAN is powered by a big metadata repository, containing metadata about many mods available for KSP. Each mod release has its own .ckan file containing author, version number, relationships, installation instructions and more. They are automatically generated by template .netkan files by our NetKAN bot. You can find out more about how everything works behind the scenes here. Download (v1.33.2) Please take 3 minutes to read the user guide when downloading CKAN for the first time. Please bring virus detection to the attention of the company that produces your virus scanner. They are false positives and it's in their responsibility to fix them, we can't help you. Picture of the GUI: Notes: If you encounter problems with a mod installed via CKAN and you suspect that they're caused by incorrect installation, please report them to us first, don't bother the mod author. We encourage you to report bugs on our issue tracker instead of the forum thread. Bug reports tend to get lost here, and the nature of forum threads make communication for proper investigation complicated. You should also check whether there's an existing report of the same bug, there might already be a known workaround. Further resources: FAQ CKAN user guide Adding a mod to the CKAN (for authors and users) CKAN wiki CKAN clean & reinstall process (Solves most CKAN errors) CKAN Discord Client issues tracker (please report bugs here) Metadata issue tracker (report problems with mod availability or incorrect installation here) All releases Source Code Changelog CKAN metadata specification Old thread CKAN is licensed under the MIT licence , the source code is available in the GitHub repository.

No hurry! You don't have to give it a new version number, but it keeps things tidy and clear, and signals users that might have already stumbled upon this problem that there's now a new, fixed version. Thanks!

The compression method you changed to in v1.0.5.1 , PPMd, isn't widely supported. It prevents CKAN's NetKAN bot from indexing the newest version, and might also create troubles for other users that don't use 7z. Can you switch back to the old one? It would allow our bot to index it again. If you want to reduce the size of the zip, you could try moving the "BigPack" into a separate mod, since it's an optional package and makes up the biggest part of the zip.

Perfect! Thanks! Now that that's sorted out... Sure, more documentation is always good!

Whoops, my report might have been unclear. @Aazard didn't want the entire thread moved to Add-on Development, just the exchange with me about CKAN and AVC/the version file, and if possible, append those comments to the already existing thread for HumanStuff in Add-on Dev:

If a user has AVC (or MiniAVC) installed, it'll check all mods that contain a .version file whether they are compatible with the used KSP version. TextureReplacer also ships one, so it is checked too. If a mod is incompatible according to the version file (and the remote version file if specified with the URL property), (Mini)AVC prints a warning. AVC can't check whether a mod's dependencies are installed. However, CKAN does that, it makes sure that both ModuleManager and TextureReplacer get installed alongside HumanStuff, if a user installs HumanStuff via CKAN.