Utility: Linux Admining

[Neophyte]

Does the IP address need to be specified (in the script) if one is IP forwarding through a firewall? If so, the address needs to be the address that remote clients will be using, correct? I hope I got the terminology right.

Thank's!

[Gandalf Parker]

I understand your question but Im afraid that I dont know the answer. I dont know of any way to tell the game which IP to run on. I think that when hosting, the game only concerns itself with port. So if the clients address hits the firewall, and the firewall forwards it to the right machine, things should be transparent to the user. But Im afraid thats just guesswork on my part.

By the way, Dom3 handles both IP or domain name for the server. Thats something I have tested quite abit. So Im able to send people to either 63.199.8.158 OR dom3minions.com for a game. (also 63.199.8.157 host.dom3minions.com which I use for blitz games)

[Neophyte]

Upon reflection, the whole IP thing is probably a switch issue not a computer issue anyhow - i.e. addyXZ internally is in all ways equivalent to addyYZ externally with IP forwarding setup. Should have thought of this last night, but it was late, and my networking knowledge is sporadic.

Thank's for the reply - I'll test out your scripts once Dom3 shows up hopefully next week.

[Gandalf Parker]

PbEM scripting has been ironed out. The key is two switches which will start a game hosting automatically. The thread where this was discussed fully is at
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...270&Forum=f187

The switches are:
--uploadtime
--uploadmaxp

[Gandalf Parker]

Im rather proud of this altho it will make others cringe at its ugliness. I wanted a way for people to check which games need players. Doing an "ls" of the game directory from a CGI was easy enough but I realized that instead of using "ls" of the directorys as fact that the game exists, I should use the "ps". Then starting a game will automatically cause it to show, and if a game finishes or crashes then it will automatically not appear. I also arranged for it to pull the port from the ps display and show that.
http://host.dom3minions.com/bin/blitz_chk.cgi

Code:

---

#!/bin/bash

echo "Content-type: text/html"

echo -e "\n\n"



echo "<H2><b>Dominions 3 Blitz games</b></H2>"

echo "These are 2-player games on tiny maps<br>"

echo '<a href="http://host.dom3minions.com/how-to.html">how to join a game</a><b

r><br>'





cd /home/dom3/dominions3/savedgames

 ps ax |grep dom3|grep bl_ | \

while read n n n n n n game n port n n n n n n n n era n

do

 echo "era $era game <b>$game</b> on port <b>$port</b><br>"

  cd $game

  for fyle in `ls -1 *.2h`

    do

      echo $fyle "<br>"

    done

  cd /home/dom3/dominions3/savedgames

 echo "<br>"

done

---

[Gandalf Parker]

Not much reaction to the fancy stuff. Maybe I shoud move the other direction...

Here is the simplest way to start a game in linux text mode so that you can be the server....

dom3 -STq
(take note that is a Q as in quick, not a G like in game)
it will ask you what port to use..
it will ask you to name the game..
it will ask you what era the game should be for
it will then wait for people to join and tell you each time someone does

When one of the players hits the "start game" then it will stop to show you a list of all the maps on your machine numbered, then ask you to type in the number of the map you want to use.

What it will NOT do is tell the machine to keep running the game in the background if you hang up your connection. I will cover that next.

Gandalf Parker

[Gandalf Parker]

The simplest way to start a game in text mode on a linux server for continual running.. well there isnt one. The problem is that telling it to run continual and background tends to cut off your ability to answer the questions. I havent been able to get the answers to work coming from a text file with something like <input.txt. So you will need to provide the answers on one line.

The simplest line I can come up with is..
nohup dom3 -STq fastgame --port 9999 --mapfile eye.map --era 1 &
(again thats a Q not a G)
Of course you can change "fastgame" to any name you want, and 9999 to any port, eye.map to the map file for any map you have in the maps directory, and era to 1 2 or 3.

If you want to play with adding other settings then type
dom3 -h
which will give you a text screen of all the switches.

Gandalf Parker