Re: Counter Strike

INTRODUCTION:

With this howto you should be able to install, configure and set up you own counterstrike server under linux. It should support the lastest version cs 1.5. If you want another version of counterstrike the howto may not work! Installing a server shouldn't be that hard if you have little experience with -nix.

REQUIREMENTS:

All you need is 1 linux machine with tcp connection to the clients. It can be a LAN only server or a server that is accessable from the internet. The server machine shouldn't be that bad. I run a linux server too. It's an amd k6/2 500Mhz, 64 MB of RAM, a limit of 8 players and it works great though a quake3 server and a pvpgn server with mysql are installed and running all the time.

INSTALLING THE SERVER PACKAGES BY TAR FILE:

Let's starting with downloading and installing the server software on linux based machines. You need the native Half-life dedicated server package and the Counter-strike server package if you want to run a CS server. So this two files are needed for CS 1.5:

hlds_l_3110_full.tar.gz
cs_15_full.tar.gz (can be found at www.counter-strike.net)

(search www.google.com for the files, I'm too lazy to add mirrors ;))

I expect now you have the files in usr/local. Unpack and install them right to usr/local with the commands

cd /usr/local
tar xvzf hlds_l_3110_full.tar.gz
mv cs_15_full.tar.gz hlds_l
cd hlds_l
tar xvzf cs_15_full.tar.gz

GIVE'EM THE FIRST TRY:

Ok so lets try to run the server for the first time as native Half-life server. There is no need for extra configuration 'til now...

cd /usr/local/hlds_l
./hlds_run +map boot_camp +maxplayers 6 -nomaster

This will start the Half-life dedicated server with the map boot_camp, a maximum limit of 6 players and without a connection to the WON master servers. Something like this should come back as echo:

Host_Init
Added packfile /home/halflife/hlds_l/valve/pak0.pak (985 files)
Protocol version 43
Exe version 3.1.0.7
Exe build: 16:45:18 Sep 12 2002 (1716)
WON Auth Server
couldn't exec language.cfg
Server IP address 10.1.1.1:27015

If something like this is coming back it's a good signal. Type "quit" to shutdown the server...

STARTING THE COUNTER-STRIKE DEDICATED SERVER

Now let's start our ready installed CS server. Run

./hlds_run -game cstrike +map cs_assault +maxplayers 8 -nomaster +sv_lan 1 +ip 192.168.0.1

This will start the CS server with the map cs_assault, a playerlimit of 8, no WON masterserver connection, as LAN only server and sets the servers IP to 10.1.1.1. Add the correct server-IP for +ip! The IP addy should be typed everytime you start the server 'cause it can be that the servers ip is not detected correctly.

Now try to connect to your server from the LAN with Counter-strike 1.5, it should work.

If you want the server to allow connections from outside the LAN and with WON server authentification just delete the -nomaster, the +sv_lan 1 and type for +ip the correct external internet ip.