Most things are completely broken in the spawn chunks. Hoppers stop transporting items, furnaces stop smelting them, pistons don't change when powered and entities don't get ticked. Basically any farm based on the spawn chunks won't work anymore.
What I expected to happen was...:
In a spawn chunk (and therefore loaded), everything should continue working as if a player is nearby or the chunks are forceloaded.
What actually happened was...:
Originally, I noticed this issue in my survival world where my furnace stopped smelting items while I was in the nether.
After some testing, I found out, that this is not exclusive to furnaces. Instead it actually applies to everything except redstone (only redstone itself e.g. dust, comparators, repeaters but also command blocks). Entities do not get ticked, pistons do not extend, hoppers don't transport items etc.
This is a serious issue to anyone using the spawn chunks to keep specific farms always active.
Steps to Reproduce:
For simplicity this just describes the original problem of furnaces not smelting. With some changes you can monitor most problems described (e.g. hoppers not transporting items)
1. Create a new world
2. Place a command block and a furnace above in the chunk you spawned
3. Put some items in the furnace so it begins to smelt
4. Put the command tellraw @a {"block":"~ ~1 ~","nbt":"CookTime"} in the command block and set it to repeat and always active (or create some other clock) - the chat starts to fill with increasing numbers from 0 to 200 and restarts after that
5. Build a nether portal and go through it (or run /execute in minecraft:the_nether run teleport @s ~ ~ ~ )
6. After a few seconds the value will stop increasing and stay the same until the world is reloaded or you go back to the overworld
Linked issues
is duplicated by 1
relates to 3
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Could you please provide the world seed and the location of the furnace?
Or a world download would also be fine.
I am not sure how this could help, however I did exactly as I described in a new world and uploaded it here. Tried to attach it directly but it's a bit too big. You should be able to see that furnace and nether portal is not only in the spawn chunks but actually in the chunk with the start ticket.
Default spawn chunk radius is now 2. This means that only a square of chunks between [-2, -2] and [2, 2] is simulated when a player is away.
The actual default spawning position of the player can be outside of this area. Can you confirm that you put your furnace within your spawn chunks?
In the world I uploaded I'm actually not sure about that. I thought the spawn chunk with the start ticket is always the chunk you spawn in. In my survival world however, I am sure of that, since I explicitly moved the worldspawn to this exact chunk (setworldspawn and reloaded) and got the same issue.
Also, in the described progress you use a command block to check whether the furnace changes states (in the commands provided the CookTime). This command block is loaded and it can access data of the furnace, so the furnace should be loaded as well.
I just did some further research. I updated the issue to be more generic since it does apply to basically anything.
This issue basically makes the spawn chunks useless.
Thank you for your report!
After consideration, the issue is being closed as Working as Intended.
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Can confirm.