Half-Life Dedicated Server

From Gentoo Linux Wiki

[edit] About a Halflife Dedicated Server

A Halflife Dedicated Server is the foundation for many Steam-based games like Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike: Source, Halflife DM ...

This howto covers the creation of a secure "Counter-Strike: Source" game server.

[edit] Installation

This howto has been created with gentoo 2005.1

First, we need to install steam. There is an ebuild for this:

emerge halflife-steam

This was pretty easy ;) Now we can update steam to the newest version. Just type

cd /opt/halflife

./steam

Thats it. Now we need to install a game - the following command will install "CounterStrike: Source":

mkdir /opt/halflife/css

./steam -command update -game "Counter-Strike Source" -dir /opt/halflife/css

For Half-Life 2 Deathmatch use

mkdir /opt/halflife/hl2mp

./steam -command update -game hl2mp -dir /opt/halflife/hl2mp

You can see here that I don't use the --username and --password parameters as recommended by older ebuilds and other howtos. This is because Valve has removed the need for it. You can also specify another directory for the game - most howtos use the default steam directory, but I like a subdirectory. Now be patient...

It is possible to run the server as root, but this is a BIG security risk. The current ebuild configures steam to run as user "games". This is fine and we only need to fix some permissions later...

[edit] Configuration

Now we have a full installation of steam with "CounterStrike:Source" and we need to configure the server. Here is my - nearly default - configuration as an example. Place it in /opt/halflife/css/cstrike/cfg/server.cfg if you've chosen "css" as your game directory.

 // server name
hostname "Counter-Strike: Source"

// rcon passsword
rcon_password "" // rcon disabled

// server cvars
mp_friendlyfire 0
mp_footsteps 1
mp_autoteambalance 1
mp_autokick 9
mp_flashlight 1
mp_tkpunish 1
mp_forcecamera 0
sv_alltalk 0
sv_pausable 0
sv_cheats 0
sv_consistency 1
sv_allowupload 1
sv_allowdownload 1
sv_maxspeed 320
mp_limitteams 2
mp_hostagepenalty 5
sv_voiceenable 1
mp_allowspectators 1
mp_timelimit 25
mp_chattime 10
sv_timeout 65
sv_turbophysics 1

// round specific cvars
mp_freezetime 6
mp_roundtime 5
mp_startmoney 800
mp_c4timer 45
mp_fraglimit 0
mp_maxrounds 0
mp_winlimit 0
mp_playerid 0
mp_spawnprotectiontime 5

// bandwidth rates/settings
sv_minrate 0
sv_maxrate 0
decalfrequency 10
sv_maxupdaterate 60
sv_minupdaterate 10
sv_unlag 1

// server logging
log off
sv_logbans 0
sv_logecho 1
sv_logfile 1
sv_log_onefile 0

// operation
sv_lan 0
sv_region 3
sv_contact YOUR@E-MAIL.COM

// execute ban files
exec banned_user.cfg
exec banned_ip.cfg
 

You can change the motd.txt file for a personalized welcome screen. If you want to only use a few maps you can also edit the maplist.txt and mapcycle.txt files.

[edit] Running the server

Now its time for a test run. We want to test the server as user "games" so we need to fix some permissions:

chown -R games:games /opt/halflife

Now change user to games ...

su - games

... and start the server:

cd /opt/halflife/css

./srcds_run -console -port 27015 -game cstrike +map de_dust +maxplayers 6

For Half-Life 2 Deathmatch do

cd /opt/halflife/hl2mp

./srcds_run -console -port 27015 -game hl2mp +map dm_lockdown +maxplayers 6

This is a good time to start your Steam client and test your server. If all went well type "quit" and change back to user root:

exit

As of 2005/11/16 my rc-script found its way into portage (thanks to SpanKY!). To make it work, we need a valid pidfile:

touch /var/run/hlds.pid

chown games:games /var/run/hlds.pid

Now you can start your hlds-server by typing

/etc/init.d/hlds start

and stop it by typing

/etc/init.d/hlds stop

Of course, you can also add it to your default runlevel

rc-update add hlds default

If you use the rc-script, you may have to edit /etc/conf.d/hlds and set

HLDS_PATH="/opt/halflife/css"

HLDS_OPTS="-console -port 27015 -game cstrike +map de_dust +maxplayers 6"

or, for Half-Life 2 Deathmatch

HLDS_PATH="/opt/halflife/hl2mp"

HLDS_OPTS="-console -port 27015 -game hl2mp +map dm_lockdown +maxplayers 6"

You might also have to adjust HLDS_MT.

   ...
   touch /var/run/hlds.pid
   chown games:games /var/run/hlds.pid
   start-stop-deamon --start \
   ...

   ...
   start-stop-daemon --stop --pidfile /var/run/hlds.pid
   killall -u games
   ...

   ...
   -pidfile /var/run/hlds.pid ${HLDS_OPTS} > /var/log/hlds.log 2>/var/log/hlds.log &
   ...

--Amigafan 13:50 9 November 2005 (GMT)

--Hanu 12:51 19 July 2006 (PDT)

A good idea how to control multiply servers - moving them into "screen"

emerge screen

Mini screen howto: Create new screen: screen -S newscreenname

Detach created screen: CTRL+A, D

Restore screen: screen -r screenname

List all screen names: screen -list

For more info about "screen" utility see MAN_screen

After running your HLDS into screen, you have the possibility at anytime to get back control over the main console (not RCONed connections), so, if the server crashes you can see error output (in case of log missing)

[edit] Other method

We can install game also in a old fasion way - that is grabbing hldsupdatetool.bin and doing the rest by hand.

First you need uncompress package emerge app-arch/ncompress

Also refer to http://www.serverwiki.org/index.php/Installing_HLDS for Counter-Strike 1.6 , Condition Zero, Day Of Defeat etc servers

http://www.serverwiki.org/index.php/Installing_SRCDS for Source and Half-Life 2 game servers (mostly same manes but with Source suffix)