Minecraft Forums

This is totally a client side bug, error or whatever. Alright, so I change my skin on the website, did that about three or four times now, it takes effect in 1.2.5, and all the snapshots up to 12w27a, then in 12w30e, it reverts back to the previous skin, which blows my mind because I cannot figure out why it's happening.

Minecraft reads off of the minecraft.net server to get the skin file for the player, now that they've changed it, why in the heck is it still pulling my old skin off of the server?!

In short, I cannot get my skin to change in 1.3, but it works in 1.2.5.... could someone please lend a little expertise to this strange issue?

annnnd it's fixed...

how did you fix this? im having same issue.

I'm having the same issue. Actually posted about it in this forum this morning and still have no replies.

strange i wish when people find solution to their problems they explain how,

Quote from Yokimaru

annnnd it's fixed...

Please elaborate, as I'm looking at a month old skin where my new skin should be.

Quote from theFriedZombie

Think it was magically fixed on its own, amazon was having some troubles.
Or a firewall or virusscanner can be in the way sometimes

Checked after you posted this, still same old skin. Not the new one.

This is very frustrating.

I am having the same issues. I still have my old skin. Tried changing my skin a few times now. Even did it using PlanetMinecraft, and still nothing. :/ It just won't change my damn skin!

Quote from theFriedZombie

Still the issue remains that you client has to download it again, it doesn't really matter how you upload it.
Also make sure there is no firewall or virusscanner in the way.

But amazon is acting up a little bit today.

How do? Also, Minecraft is completely "Enabled" or "free" on my firewall.

EDIT: Nvm, it suddenly changed to my new skin by itself. o-O; Well then...

I'd love to hear something official on this, as mine still hasn't updated.

i would like if people elaborate, I want to use the skin i normally use but i cant

Having the same problems. Been going on for that past couple of days. The weird part is that sometimes it works, and sometimes it reverts to the old skin. I tried re-installing from scratch...deleted everything remotely Minecraft or Java-related. After that, it seemed to work. Then I logged out, created my desktop shortcuts and boom, it was back to the old skin. Tried logging in about 3 more times--still the old skin. Tried launching directly from where I downloaded the initial .exe, and it was my new skin. Logged out a few minutes later, and logged back in the same way--old skin. It's almost like it just decides to work whenever it wants to, or about every fifth attempt or so. I have NO idea. I know nothing about coding, but if minecraft.net only uses your most recent upload, HOW is it reverting to anything at all? I'm completely baffled, but it's incredibly annoying. I like The Flash, but I don't want to play is him every time I play Minecraft now (except every fifth attempt, when I finally get to play as Hush). :|

Quote from Goldenfoxx

The weird part is that sometimes it works, and sometimes it reverts to the old skin.

1.3 is downloading skins from http://skins.minecra.../<username>.png
this is an Amazon S3 server pool

1.2.5 is downloading skins from http://s3.amazonaws..../<username>.png
which is more obviously part of an Amazon S3 server pool

but they are not the same pool.

If it works intermittently, it may be that there is something wrong with the new server pool's internal data replication / distribution, or that the replication across the new pool is slower..

But the problem is server side or perhaps in an HTTP cache. A moment ago I could see that the two servers had difference images for "Stasis2" [one had much less blue] and now they are the same [both have blue].

That would have been a possibility, that the new pool just had a date specific snapshot of the data. But Goldenfoxx said it worked sometimes, and I saw Stasis2's skin change from one request to another.

Tobias tweeted about working on the skin caching...

Quote from gerbil

but they are not the same pool.

If it works intermittently, it may be that there is something wrong with the new server pool's internal data replication / distribution, or that the replication across the new pool is slower..

But the problem is server side or perhaps in an HTTP cache. A moment ago I could see that the two servers had difference images for "Stasis2" [one had much less blue] and now they are the same [both have blue].

Interesting. If it's a replication speed error, could this also explain why sometimes when transporting in or out of the Nether, the world map will randomly fail to load before it pops me in? I've suffocated in the walls or ground in blue hell like 5 or 6 times now, although only one of those instances did it happen when I popped INTO the Nether. Not intending to drag this off topic; just wondering if there could be a connection with the Minecraft client loading data too quickly?

...that's completely apples and kumquats.

Skins are fetched from Amazon servers as needed, and sometimes the server returns the wrong skin.

Replication as I'm talking about it has to do with multiple servers transparently providing the same service off distributed data.
So when you modify your skin, all the Amazon servers across the world that are part of this service have to be updated with the new skin file. Whether it's 2, 5, 10,1000, 10000 servers the changed file has to be distributed / replicated.

skins.minecraft.com can resolve to different IP addresses in different parts of the world, and even then, that IP address can have a pool of servers behind it. Each request to that IP can be sent to a different physical machine, so if there is any glitch with data replication*, some requests can end up with a stale response.

* like if 99 out of 100 servers are replicating correctly, but 1 is not.