Running Multiple Servers In a Single Ubuntu Computer
Introduction
Hello everyone. This is a tutorial that I thought I should put together for those who are using Ubuntu and are struggling to grasp how to host more than one server. Before I go any further, I would like to say that this section does look similar to Running Multiple Servers on a single Linux computer ... but there is a difference. There are a couple of things that are different from the other and there are few others that have been added so people will fin them useful.
I do hope people will find this tutorial useful as I found the other one very useful but a bit confusing at times.
In the tutorial, My username is vertrex
so don't get confused. Change my username to YOUR username so everything will work the way it should.
Server Installation
Before you can think about setting up so that you can have multiple servers, firstly you need to have installed the Armagetron Advanced Dedicated Server in your computer. Now this is not specific as there are countless number of servers that the admins have either created or experiments or stable release.
The source codes for the servers can be found here: Armagetron Advanced: a Tron Clone in 3d
For the sake of this tutorial, our selection would be armagetron-sty+ct as that's a very popular selection to create servers with.
Downloading Source Files
The location where you should download your source code would be:
cd /home/vertrex
Now download the source files using the command: bzr branch
bzr branch lp:~armagetronad-ct/armagetronad/0.2.8-armagetronad-sty+ct
Configuring Source Files
Once the download completes, go into the source folder
cd /home/vertrex/0.2.8-armagetronad-sty+ct
Then run the bootstrap
./bootstrap.sh
if you get an error saying:
autom4te: cannot open autom4te.cache/requests: Permission denied aclocal: autom4te failed with exit status: 1 rm: remove write-protected regular file `aclocal.m4'? yes
then try:
sudo ./bootstrap.sh
Before taking the final steps, you need to create the folder to which your server will be installed in.
mkdir /home/vertrex/armagetronad
Now configure the server.
./configure --disable-glout --enable-authentication --prefix=/home/vertrex/armagetronad --exec_prefix=/home/vertrex/armagetronad --with-zthread
Installing Source Files
Once configuration is done, follow the next steps at installing the server
make make install
If you get an error that you were unable to install in the folder, then take the next step:
sudo make install
Now, our servers have been installed in the directory: /home/vertrex/armagetronad/
Server Preparations
Now, this is where you will have to do some thinking. You can make 7 servers as the ports list from 4534 to 4540. So, basically you have seven servers to make from. You could choose to make, Capture The Flag (S), High Rubber (S), Racing, etc...
To setup the multiple servers, please follow from next steps.
Server Directories
Go into your armagetronad installaiton folder
cd /home/vertrex/armagetronad
Create the sub directories as indicated below:
mkdir servers 'This folder will be used to store your server configurations mkdir logs 'This one will be used to save the server logs mkdir scripts 'And this one will be used to call scripts to start the servers or include with the servers
The next few steps are the fun parts. We will be making our servers. To do so, go into servers directory that you have just created.
cd /home/vertrex/armagetronad/servers
There, start creating sub folders for each of your servers. Example:
One server that I would like to create would be CTF which is capture the flag.
mkdir ctf 'this is the server that will be hosted mkdir ctf/var 'this folder where the server's ladderlog, score, players will be stored mkdir ctf/settings 'this is the folder where you place your config files such as settings_custom.cfg, settings.cfg, etc...
then copy your config files into the settings folder and the files that belong in the var folder.
You can create many more servers...
mkdir racing mkdir racing/var mkdir racing/settings
Simply put it that the server directories will be like this:
mkdir [Server Name] mkdir [Server Name]/var mkdir [Server Name]/settings
Normal Scripts
The scripts are used mainly to launch a specific server that is called using the script. The servers include Capture The Flag (S), High Rubber (S), Dogfight, Sumo
All the server scripts are to be stored in the /home/vertrex/armagetronad/scripts
directory.
Check this website to understand more about the scripts ... Running_Multiple_Servers_on_a_single_Linux_computer#The_scripts
Firstly go into the scripts folder to follow the steps below:
cd /home/vertrex/scripts
The Server Script
The first script will be called in this example: srv.sh
nano srv.sh
That creates a .sh
file called srv
in the scripts directory. Write the following lines in the file
#!/bin/bash loc="/home/vertrex/armagetronad" tron=$loc"/bin/armagetronad-dedicated" mkdir $loc/logs/$1 screen -S $1 -X logtstamp on # print timestamps in log file screen -S $1 -X logfile $loc/logs/$1/$1_%m-%d-%Y-%c.log # create a logfile in the logs subf screen -S $1 -X log on # Turn on logging for the server window while true; do # start a loop to allow server restart if it crashes #Runs the actual server. By default, the binary is called armagetronad-dedicated and is located in the prefix/bin directory. In this example, it is # in /home/vertrex/armagetronad/bin directory. $tron --vardir $loc/servers/$1/var $tron --userconfigdir $loc/servers/$1/settings # Shows the errors and indicates that the server has crashed, and then, waits 5 seconds before restarting the server, allowing you to quit with CTRL-C echo "Server has crashed. It will restart immediately..., press CTRL-C to cancel" sleep 5 done # end the loop
To save the file, press CTRL-X and Y to confirm. You have now a file called srv in /home/vertrex/armagetronad/scripts
The Global Script
Create the second script. I called it start:
nano start.sh
That creates a .sh
file called start
in the scripts directory. Write the following lines in the file
#!/bin/bash loc="/home/vertrex/armagetronad" # If you run the script with a parameter (server name), only that server will be start. Otherwise, all servers in # the /home/vertrex/armagetrnad/servers directory will be started if [ "$1" != "" ]; then screen -S $1 -X quit # Kill the window if it exists already, avoiding to run the same server twice screen -dmS $1 $loc/scripts/srv.sh $1 # start a GNU screen window with the specified server inside else for f in $(ls $loc/scripts/servers/.) # start a loop running the following command for any existing folders in the #/home/vertrex/armagetronad/servers folder do screen -S $f -X quit # Kill the window if it exists already, avoiding to run the same server twice screen -dmS $f $loc/scripts/srv.sh $f # start a GNU screen window with the server inside for each server folder done # ends the loop fi
Remember to save it in the same way as before.
Before you can run the script, you must make them executable:
chmod +x srv.sh chmod +x start.sh
Advanced Scripts
In this section, I will show you a few things that might interest you such as the rotation script, script that allows you to make your maps to change randomly. This is better than using the experimental armagetronad-0.3 version.
For the sake of this section I will be demonstrating to you how I manage my my racing server.
I got the script from a friend who made it for public so I used it to make my racing server to have it's maps randomly change.
Like before, all script are to be stored in the /home/vertrex/armagetronad/scripts
folder.
So go into the scripts folder to follow the steps shown below:
cd /home/vertrex/scripts
The Rotation Script
Now, this script is a little confusing at first but after this it should make sense on how to use the script for your own servers.
All credit goes to Kyle for writing the script.
Create the rotation script. I called it race_rotation:
nano race_rotation.php
This creates a .php
file with the name race_rotation
in the scripts folder.
#!/usr/bin/php <?php $maps=array("/path/to/map1.xml","/path/to/map2.xml"); while (1) { $line = rtrim(fgets(STDIN, 1024)); if ( preg_match( "/^ROUND_COMMENCING/", $line ) ){ $keywords = preg_split("/ /", $line); $map=rand (0 , count($maps )-1); echo "MAP_FILE ".$maps[$map]."\n"; echo "WAIT_FOR_EXTERNAL_SCRIPT 0\n"; sleep(6); echo "WAIT_FOR_EXTERNAL_SCRIPT 1\n"; } } ?>
I'm sure you are a little confused about what line 3 meant:
$maps=array("/path/to/map1.xml","/path/to/map2.xml");
Basically, the "path/to/map1.xml" is simply the path where your map file is being stored in <author>/<category>/map1.xml
My Example:
$maps=array("LoverBoy/Racing/Briston-1.0.0.aamap.xml","LoverBoy/Racing/Flexinator-1.1.0.aamap.xml","LoverBoy/Racing/Briston-1.0.1.aamap.xml","LoverBoy/Racing/Flexinator-1.1.1.aamap.xml");
As you can see in my example, I have listed my racing maps in an array. The paths to each map will be placed between " "
, to separate each map we use ","
and then we simply add );
at the end to complete the array of maps.
The Server Script
OK, The following script only for racing server but you can alter it for your own servers if you wish to.
Create the server script. I called it start:
nano race_srv.sh
This creates a .sh
file with the name race_srv
in the scripts folder.
#!/bin/bash loc="/home/vertrex/armagetronad" tron=$loc"/bin/armagetronad-dedicated" var=$loc"/servers/"$1"/var/" log=$var"console_log.txt" userconfigdir=$loc"/servers/"$1"/settings/" parser=$loc"/scripts/race_rotation.php" ladderlog=$var"ladderlog.txt" mkdir $loc/logs/$1 screen -S $1 -X logtstamp on # print timestamps in log file screen -S $1 -X logfile $loc/logs/$1/$1_%m-%d-%Y-%c.log # create a logfile in the logs subf screen -S $1 -X log on # Turn on logging for the server window while true; do # start a loop to allow server restart if it crashes #Runs the actual server. By default, the binary is called armagetronad-dedicated and is located in the prefix/bin directory. In this example, it is # in /home/vertrex/armagetronad/bin directory. tail -f $ladderlog | $parser | $tron --userconfigdir $userconfigdir --vardir $var| tee -a $log # Shows the errors and indicates that the server has crashed, and then, waits 5 seconds before restarting the server, allowing you to quit with CTRL-C echo "Server has crashed. It will restart immediately..., press CTRL-C to cancel" sleep 5 done # end the loop
To use your rotation script for other servers, change the rotation script name in the script to your rotation script's name:
parser=$loc"/scripts/[Script Name].php"
To know more commands other than userconfigdir
and vardir
, try this in the script which will give you a window with the other things you can have:
$tron --help
The Global Script
OK, The following script only to start the racing server but you can alter it for your own servers if you wish to.
Create the server script. I called it start:
nano race_start.sh
This creates a .sh
file with the name race_start
in the scripts folder.
#!/bin/bash loc="/home/vertrex/armagetronad" # If you run the script with a parameter (server name), only that server will be start. Otherwise, all servers in the /home/vertrex/armagetrnad-0.2.8/servers director$ # will be started if [ "$1" != "" ]; then screen -S $1 -X quit # Kill the window if it exists already, avoiding to run the same server twice screen -dmS $1 $loc/scripts/race_srv.sh $1 # start a GNU screen window with the specified server inside else for f in $(ls $loc/scripts/servers/.) # start a loop running the following command for any existing folders in the # /home/vertrex/armagetronad/servers folder do screen -S $f -X quit # Kill the window if it exists already, avoiding to run the same server twice screen -dmS $f $loc/scripts/race_srv.sh $f # start a GNU screen window with the server inside for each server folder done # ends the loop fi
Remember to save it in the same way as before.
Before you can run the script, you must make them executable:
chmod +x race_rotation.php chmod +x race_srv.sh chmod +x race_start.sh
Running Servers
Starting the servers shouldn't be that hard if you follow the steps given below:
Start All Servers
To start all the servers check this link to fin out just how to do it as I didn't find it very useful for my purposes: Running_Multiple_Servers_on_a_single_Linux_computer#Starting_all_servers.
Start Specific Servers
Firstly go into your scripts folder
cd /home/vertrex/armagetronad/scripts
Then simply run start.sh script using the following method
./start.sh [Server Name]
If you get a message saying:
No screen session found.
Don't panic that there is an error in the script. Try the next step:
screen -r [Server Name]
Manage Server
You don't really need to great deal lot of information on how to manage servers in a GNU but if you wish to, then try:
man screen
It'll give you many commands that you can use in your terminal but be careful with them
When the server starts, it will load with it's default settings instead of the settings in your config files. To make the server load the settings, type:
exit
and your server will reset after 5 seconds with the settings from your config files as specified in the script.
List Current Running Servers
To see what servers that are running, try this:
screen -ls
It will display the number of servers that are currently running
Access/Leave Specific Server
To access a certain server, enter:
screen -r [Server Name]
To detach from the server, do:
Hold CTRL
then hold A
and finally Press D
Installing Z-Thread
Firstly go into your user folder:
cd /home/vertrex
Downloading ZThread Compressed File
wget http://voxel.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/zthread/ZThread-2.3.2.tar.gz
Extracting File
tar -xzf ZThread-2.3.2.tar.gz
Entering into the extracted folder
cd ZThread-2.3.2
Configuring the source files
./configure CXXFLAGS="-fpermissive" --prefix=/usr/
Perform the installation of the source files
make make install
if the make install
didn't work, then try:
sudo make install