Since this has happened to at least three games in the last week, I figured I’d make a little public service announcement 
Conventional wisdom suggests keeping your servers on or close to the “current” OS version, and in general that’s good advice.
When it comes to MUSHes however, most of us are not professional server admins, and linux/ubuntu server upgrades are nowhere near as seamless as Windows updates (which can also have their share of upgrade issues). Ruby in particular gets cranky and needs to recompile stuff when you change the OS. Redis also can have config collisions when it gets upgraded.
So before deciding to do a major server upgrade, consider whether you’re in a position to deal with the inevitable headaches and server wrangling that will result.
The Ares installer will enable automatic installation of critical OS patches, including security updates. These are generally minor and targeted, so they don’t have the same impact as the major upgrades do. For most games, this should be sufficient. The current default OS version (18.04) is a long-term support release, which means it’s slated to continue receiving security updates into 2028, well beyond the lifespan of most MU*s.
If you do decide to upgrade your server OS and run into trouble, here are a few things to try:
- Use
rvm reinstall <ruby version>to reinstall ruby. You may also need to remove and reinstall RVM entirely. - Clear out your tmp and node_modules directories in the web portal.
- Check your redis config file and ensure that the password matches the one the game’s using.
If you have questions, feel free to reach out and I’ll try my best to help. But since this is all at the OS level and not really Ares-specific, my ability to help is limited.