So, I have been working for hours and hours for the past 7 months on trying to configure PermissionsEx ranks, and I cant seem to be able to ever get prefixes to work. They have worked in the past, but not anymore. Help would be greatly appreciated. Here is what my permissions.yml folder looks like:

] Edit by Stormbow: Moved permissions.yml to Pastebin. [

No sweat. :)

The EssentialsXChat config file is in the plugins\Essentials folder (and the file is simply "config.yml"), and you'll be looking to make sections inside your file match these sections that I cut out of my file. (Do something similar for the 2nd section, to suit your server best, of course.)

It's important to note that "Essentials v2.0.1-b370" (line 27 of your console log) doesn't actually include the "EssentialsXChat-2.0.1.jar" file found right here. You'll have to download that part separately. You already have Vault, so all you'll need to do after the download is hit that config.yml mentioned above with your custom settings.

I now am having some weird issues.... I downloaded essentialsxchat and put it in the plugins folder and ran my server, now all of Pex doesn't work. I did, however look at my config.yml file in essentials and there was nothing about chat and it is only around 350 lines long, and I couldn't find anything. Here is my config.yml file.
https://pastebin.com/y4S06dxG
Also, here is my new run.bat file:
https://pastebin.com/5wGYqge2

Stop the server, delete that plugins\Essentials\config.yml file, then start the server and the server will make a new one. Check the new file to see if you've got the correct innards.

Let me see and I'm deleting the file right now....

Has anything changed recently in your plugins\PermissionsEx\permissions.yml file?

My permissions file has not changed.

Woah, the config.yml file is very different! It was like this a long time ago. Okay, I will try troubleshooting with the tips you gave me! Thanks!

You're welcome.

What exactly was not working in the PEX permissions?

I am troubleshooting as we speak, but do you mean what is not working after I downloaded chat or as of like a week ago?

Oh yeah the plugin was red in /pl

OK. That means there's an error in the permissions.yml file. Pastebin that for me and I can look for the problem.

11 minutes ago, right here you said "all of PEX doesn't work".

But it started happening right when I loaded my server after I downloaded essentials chat. I finished troubleshooting issues... lemme test my server out.

Oh yeah. LOTS of errors. Give me a couple minutes to list them all.

Oh shoot

Here is my permissions.yml file:
https://pastebin.com/89B4T3NT

Also, I was wondering if this part of my group formats in essentials config.yml is right?

  group-formats:
  #  Default: '{WORLDNAME} {DISPLAYNAME}&7:&r {MESSAGE}'
  #  Admins: '{WORLDNAME} &c[{GROUP}]&r {DISPLAYNAME}&7:&c {MESSAGE}'
  
  group-formats:
     Guest: '[&7{GROUP}&r] {DISPLAYNAME}&r: {MESSAGE}'
     Legendary: '[&7{GROUP}&r] {DISPLAYNAME}&r: {MESSAGE}'
     Mod: '[&c{GROUP}&r] {DISPLAYNAME}&r: {MESSAGE}'
     Admin: '[&4{GROUP}&r] {DISPLAYNAME}&r: {MESSAGE}'
     Owner: '[&5{GROUP}&r] {DISPLAYNAME}&r: {MESSAGE}'
     Grand Owner: '[&5{GROUP}&r] {DISPLAYNAME}&r: {MESSAGE}'
     Co-Owner: '[&5{GROUP}&r] {DISPLAYNAME}&r: {MESSAGE}'
     Dev: '[&5{GROUP}&r] {DISPLAYNAME}&r: {MESSAGE}'
     Dev-co: '[&5{GROUP}&r] {DISPLAYNAME}&r: {MESSAGE}'

Is this essentials group formats part right? https://pastebin.com/CsWWVjZj

Corrected permissions.yml file: https://pastebin.com/GVpfPBE2

Corrected EssentialsXChat file: https://pastebin.com/UX1GhyCP

Take a very close look at the permissions.yml file for very important changes that I made.

• The schema-version: 1 line should be before the users: section, so I moved that.

• All of the groups' options: sections were missing, so I added those.

• The "Guest" group was missing an inheritance: section, so I added that. (I also emptied the inheritances of the "Owner", etc. groups since they all have the "global wildcard". See below for important note about global wildcards.)

• Several groups and sections were missing colons, so I added those.

• There was a blank line in the file, so I removed that.

• Most of the users: section entries had data that has no effect at all, so I removed that.

• You changed the group name "Moderator" to "Mod" (when you configured the chat prefixes), so I changed the permissions file to reflect that change.

• Group names like "Grand Owner" and "Co-Owner" and "Co-Dev" won't be recognized as actual groups on the server by some plugins and/or some features of popular plugins, so I renamed all of those. (I also renamed them for the users that belonged to them.)

There may be other errors that I quickly fixed too, stuff I forgot while I was writing this comment.

IMPORTANT NOTE: You have about 10 people on your server that have the "global wildcard" (see line 69 of the permissions file to see what that is) which allows them to delete the entire permissions file and do other catastrophic things to the server. This is an extremely bad idea unless all these people are people you know in real life, trust extremely, and you can go over to their house and kick their ass if they delete your server.

Ok. I just finished what you said... loading server

About half of the stuff I corrected for you (above) was "fatal error" stuff that would prevent PEX from working.

Oh, by the way, the reason I removed the [&7{GROUP}&r] type code from your EssentialsXChat configuration was because {DISPLAYNAME} = Prefix + Username + Suffix all added together.

The way you had chat configured— Guest: '[&7{GROUP}&r] {DISPLAYNAME}&r: {MESSAGE}' —the users would chat like this:

[Guest] [Guest] Stormbow: words

All good?

Thank you! It works now! Except.... I know some people on my server, is there a way I can op someone without the - '*' "global wildcard" thing? And the ranks are working :)

OP is actually intended for "Vanilla" servers that don't use any plugins at all. The best you can do with plugins is to assign the specific permission nodes that you want your Admins and Mods to have.

Or, at the very least, negate access to the PermissionsEx plugin completely. For example:

  Dev:
    options:
      build: true
      prefix: '&4[Dev]'
      suffix: '&b'
    inheritance: []
    permissions:
    - -permissions.*
    - '*'

The command is /pex group <group> add -permissions.* (/pex group Dev add -permissions.*). Be sure the negation is at the top of the list for the group. (And that's easier to accomplish by opening the file in Notepad or Notepad++ and just typing it in, with the correct indentation.)

If you don't know all the people in any other groups, remove PEX access from those groups too.

Typically, I will give PEX access directly to people who I know need it on a server— pex user Stormbow add permissions.* and not to groups since no groups actually need it. It's actually even somewhat counterproductive to give it to a group— if you move yourself out of "GrandOwner" to "Guest" to test something, you've just lost access to PEX because it was "GrandOwner" that had access, not you specifically.

You can still reply here and I'll still get emails about comments here. I'm just going to close the ticket to take it off the open tickets list.

Yep.

The global wildcard - '*' gives the group absolutely every permission node on the server, and the negation - -permissions.* removes access to anything related to PermissionsEx. That way, no one can use the PEX Commands that can remove groups (pex group Guest delete, for example), essentially destroying the whole server by removing all the groups.

You're welcome. Have fun!

(You don't have to lie about how long you've been trying to get PEX working.) ;-)

First and foremost, your permissions.yml file should follow this example as to where everything (i.e., the "options" like build: true, the prefixes, etc.) goes in each group's listing and where the schema-version: 1 line goes. As of Minecraft 1.9, all of this formatting and placement is mandatory. (You don't need every piece of that information in your file, if you don't use those features on your server.)

Next up, the display of prefixes and suffixes in-game is actually handled by a chat management plugin, not PermissionsEx. PEX only gives server owners a place to define these variables.

Since most people are running Spigot servers these days, and using EssentialsX to handle all of the basic Admin commands, they would also use EssentialsXChat (plus Vault, which is a dependency of EssentialsXChat) to handle their prefixes and suffixes.

If you still need help after reading the above, copy your server startup log— that's everything printed on the server console from the moment the server starts, through the point where text stops printing on the screen and you see a message similar to "Done!" printed on the screen —to Pastebin and I can help you out some more.

Missing link added to "this example": https://pastebin.com/8ZSHxauG

Okay. First, thanks for getting the prefixes right with the file on Pastebin (I wasn't able to do that). Next, I am fairly sure the actual ranks/permissions are working because of what the users can do in-game. (My server is in 1.11.2). I did hear about something like EssentialsXChat is associated with prefixes and suffixes. Now I was wondering if you could help me find the directory of those files (because it is probably like one setting) because I might not even have it. I couldn't find it under essentials (in plugins). If this may help, here is my startup log (I know there are some random plugin issues to fix as well): https://pastebin.com/qBhfBBGh
Thanks in advance!
(P.S. I wasn't lying, just didn't work on in every day :D)