I like the Herforst CTF server... my favorite so far. But I would like to consider hosting a server of my own. I have a dedicated linux server that I havent' been doing much with for the past 6 months or so, just some light webhosting.

First, I was wondering if there should be a forum here for discussing server configuration.

Second, do you know about how much bandwidth a typical Nexuiz server uses in a month?

Third, anyone have suggesions for CTF maps to try out? I'd like to try out different ones than what is on Herforst currently.

Fourth, I was watching the top 100 sexiest stars on VH1 last night and Pamela Anderson ranked pretty high on the list, above a lot of women who are more attractive. I don't think she is quite as good looking as she used to be. She is ranked high because of her past form, not her current form.

oh....and I haven't found any clear instructions on setting up a Nexuiz server...specifically a CTF flavor. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Is that guide really so bad?
http://www.forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.php?t=18

And not to forget Nexuiz/Docs/server/readme.txt

For a ctf server you just need to adjust the g_maplist variable as descriped.. (and maybe add the mapcfgs from the custommaps.

Crap

Label me an idiot.

I had skimmed through that thread before and didn't realize there was decent detail regarding the config at the bottom.

Still, do you happen to know about how much bandwidth should be allotted for a popular 24/7 dedicated server like Herforst CTF?

My dedicated account allows for 1 Terabyte per month. I would assume that would be enough, but I don't want to assume

Mine (RBI+Extra) eats about 300G a month NOT including the map download traffic.

So with 1 TB you should be safe, but do watch over your traffic.

But thanks for the idea, I will let my server count traffic for a while so I can post it here - including map download then.

ahh good someone is addressing this bandwidth issue, its been on my mind for awhile but i never got around to it because my server doesn't have a cap as such..

bandwidth? Limited total bandwith use? wtf is that about?

I think most server that are available for rent have some bandwithlimit and you have to pay for megabytes once you reach it.. So a cap to prevent making this expensive is a good idea for those servers.

what is the world coming to? all these quasi-proffesional server solutions make me ill.. I though that bandwidht limit thing was a thing of the past that died very quickly, but alas, it seems i was wrong.

Alright, I have begun setting up a Nexuiz server. I'm going to try to model it after Herforst, but I will try some different maps and keep the max players to 12 (for now).

I am running Fedora Core 4.

I have some questions on a couple of things.

1. How do I run Nexuiz as a service? Right now, I am SSHing into the server and running the server, but when I close the terminal, the Nexuiz server stops. I thought that adding & to the end of the command caused it to be a background running process, but it's still attached to the terminal session because when I close it, the process dies. Do I need to setup a script under /rc/init.d?

2. How do I get the names of the maps to setup the maplist properly. I keep getting an error on loading the maplist that I have defined in the server.cfg. So far, I've been opening up the .pk3 files and looking for the name of the .bsp file to know what to place in the maplist. I guess that is not working because I tried adding both versions of the Facing worlds (the original and the redesign) and it's not accepting the maplist. It keeps saying "Maplist is bad/messed up." Here is what I have :

Code: Select all

set "g_maplist" "'facing_worlds_nex_b1k''ctf_facing_worlds_nex'"

If I just do the first map, it works. When I add the second map to the list, or if I just put the second map by itself, it won't load. So I have the name of the second map wrong, but I don't understand why. The .pk3 file for that map is in the /data directory, and the name of the .bsp inside that .pk3 file is named ctf_facing_worlds_nex.bsp. It seems like it should work. What am I doing wrong? Is there a simpler way of finding out the names of the maps that I have available?

3. esteel suggested putting (pure) in the names of maps where certain gameplay settings are not changed. What settings are those? I noticed that Herforst has a slightly different gravity setting than what is default (or that is how it seems). I'm not sure if I want to change that or not. Would that be something that would make the server unpure?

Thanks

Hi

1. How do I run Nexuiz as a service? Right now, I am SSHing into the server and running the server, but when I close the terminal, the Nexuiz server stops. I thought that adding & to the end of the command caused it to be a background running process, but it's still attached to the terminal session because when I close it, the process dies. Do I need to setup a script under /rc/init.d?

There are several possibilities. What we are doing on delight is using the "screen" package, which provides a virtual terminal where you can detach and attach everytime. The start script then looks like

Code: Select all

nexserv@boron nexserv]$ cat startserver.sh
#!/bin/bash
cd ~/Nexuiz
screen -S NEXUIZ-SERVER -m -d ./nexuiz-dedicated +exec server.cfg +rcon_password `cat ~/.rconpass`

This creates a screen session "NEXUIZ-SERVER" and immediately detaches from it. You can reattach using "screen -r NEXUIZ-SERVER".

The rcon-Password thing allows us to have the rcon-Password in a file named ".rconpass" in the home directory of the user the server is running under. We use this from several scripts for various purposes.

With our setup, the servers don't automatically restart after a system reboot. Someone actually has to log into the box and restart the servers. But since Reboots of the machine are so infrequent, this is currently not a major concern. One possible solution to this would be a cron job which checks for running servers every hour and then restarts them (if you know eggdrop irc bots, the "botchk" script works exactly like this)

2. How do I get the names of the maps to setup the maplist properly....

Code: Select all

set "g_maplist" "'facing_worlds_nex_b1k''ctf_facing_worlds_nex'"

You need to prefix the game mode to the map, i.e. if the bsp name is "facing_worlds_nex_b1k" and the other "randomexample", use:

Code: Select all

set "g_maplist" "'ctf_facing_worlds_nex_b1k''ctf_randomexample'"

Sxen

Excellent.

I installed the screen package using Yum and I'm using that to launch the Nexuiz server.

Now I need to figure out how to successfully enable downloading of maps. It shows the default URL map downloads pointing to Nexuiz.org. Do I need to setup a web location for maps that are not on the Nexuiz server?

Am I right in thinking that the settings on this page

http://www.alientrap.org/wiki/pmwiki.ph ... GameTweaks

that begin with "sv_" are server settings?

Someone suggested that I need to set playerskins to full bright in order to use the Facing Worlds maps. How do I do that?

Anyone happen to know the gravity setting on Herforst?

The easiest way to get all the mapcfg names is to start Nexuiz, open the console and enter

Code: Select all

log_file mapcfgs.txt
dir maps/*.mapcfg
log_file ""

All the available files are then shown in the console and are written to the file data/mapcfgs.txt. You then just need to add the name without the .mapcfg to g_maplist.

The default download url is YET of no real use. Its planned to create a small databank and a mirror network so authors, admins and players have an easy way of getting maps (published). Right now you have to get some webspace were you can download the map directly and either adjust the default download url to that or create a file named data/curl_urls.txt as its descriped in Docs/mapdownload.txt. An example can be found here: http://141.2.16.3:7780/nex/maps/attic/curl_urls.txt
But as divVerents server should not get all the traffic its a good idea to setup an own download mirror if possible!!

My suggestion with 'pure' was not per map but for the server in general.. but will if help if only 2 servers do so?

For the fullbright players use g_fullbrightplayers 1 and its also shown in the example server config Docs/server/server.cfg.

An other way to start a nexuiz server is to look at how the scripts inside /etc/init.d work, to create one for Nexuiz and to link it into the runlevel dirs /etc/rcX.d..

Excellent!
I almost have a usable server.

Do I edit the mapcfg files inside the .pk3 files? Or do I place new mapcfg files in the /data/maps folder to override what is stored in the .pk3?

Dokujisan wrote:Do I edit the mapcfg files inside the .pk3 files? Or do I place new mapcfg files in the /data/maps folder to override what is stored in the .pk3?

Both will work, but placing the modified mapcfgs in data/maps is less work and makes it easier to edit them later... And you don't have to worry, that updates might replaces your mapcfgs.

I am using screen to launch the server

Code: Select all

screen -S NEXUIZ-SERVER -m -d ./server_linux.sh

and I use this command to reattach to the screen

Code: Select all

screen -r NEXUIZ-SERVER

At this point, how do I release the screen again so I can close my terminal window? I looked through the man pages on screen but couldn't figure it out.

Dokujisan wrote:At this point, how do I release the screen again so I can close my terminal window? I looked through the man pages on screen but couldn't figure it out.

Code: Select all

       C-a d
       C-a C-d     (detach)      Detach screen from this terminal.

Other useful key bindings
C-a c opens a new window
C-a [0-9] selects a window (by it's number)
C-a C-a toggles to previously displayed window

Holy crap...you all answered every single question that I asked!

I'm used to seeing "RTFM!!!" in response to questions on the internet. It's rare to see people that enjoy helping others. I appreciate it greatly.

Are you sure you guys are Linux users?

Yes, but we were too lazy to type RTFM.

We however do have a big RTFM sign we can hold up...

Seriously... here in Europe, Sunday, the 29th of October was the DOTFM - "Day of TFM". We are recovering from that... You want to know what DOTFM really is? It's an event that takes place twice a year - and on these days, you walk around in your home, hunt down clocks showing the wrong time and set the time on them. You need the manuals for some of them... that is, if you find them...

Can I run a second server on a different port by executing the server with a different cfg?
Something like...

Code: Select all

screen -S NEXUIZ-SERVER2 -m -d ./nexuiz-dedicated +exec server2.cfg

This would be for testing purposes.

Yes, you can.

Dokujisan wrote:I'm used to seeing "RTFM!!!" in response to questions on the internet. It's rare to see people that enjoy helping others. I appreciate it greatly.

Actually, we all whined loudly about you on IRC:

Olli

Yes you can but as its only for testing purposes i guess its easier to reattach your screen, type C-a c (meaning press ctrl-a and then just a c) to create a new "window" and start the second server there.. Hmm and i guess it also does this when using the same session name for both. I never really used this way of starting things inside a screen.
BTW C-a w will list all the windows in your screen.

Also as long as you just use a single screen(session) you can use the command line options -D -RR which will just do anything to get you a screen. (create a session if there is none, reattach the first found sesseion or maybe detach that one if necessary, like if you have the session already attached somewere)
I have a script ~/bin/screenn

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh

exec screen -A -D -RR "${@}"

that is imo very useful to handle screen. The $@ is replaced with command line options so you could also use the -s to name the session if needed or add other options..

Dokujisan wrote:I'm used to seeing "RTFM!!!" in response to questions on the internet. It's rare to see people that enjoy helping others. I appreciate it greatly.

"RTFM!!!" is indeed too much work to type... so i just copy-pasted from man screen

lol

Thanks esteel. I think I'll use that script. Very handy.

Well, the server is named - FUSION CTF w/grapple and new maps - US/FLorida

It was named "Awesome CTF" yesterday, as a joke.