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Foreword

In 2018, Steam had been started a Chinese Spring Festival Selling Activity, I buy a ARK: Survival Evolved in this activity. Though I can’t play it at the moment, but I can setup a server. Luckily, I have an avaliable VPS.

Contents

Prepare

  • A 4GB RAM or higher VPS
  • CentOS 6 or higher system

Installation

Update glibc

In CentOS 6, we must update our glibc from 2.14 to 2.16. First, switch to root user or you should add sudo before every command.

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su

Then, input these commands to have prerequisites.

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yum groupinstall "Development tools"
yum install glibc-devel.i686 glibc-i686

Change directory to /tmp

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cd /tmp

Download the version 2.16.0 of glibc

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wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/glibc/glibc-2.16.0.tar.gz

Unarchive it

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tar zxvf glibc-2.16.0.tar.gz

Change directory to glibc-2.16.0

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cd glibc-2.16.0

Make a new directory to save build files

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mkdir glibc-build

Change to it

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cd glibc-build

Run configure

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../configure --prefix='/usr'

Notice: There are two . before the word configure.

Tips: --prefix='XXX' means the directory where the glibc will install.

Then,we need to have some changes in the file test-installation.pl

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vim ../scripts/test-installation.pl

To jump to 171th line, press : and type 171 and ENTER.
And replace if (/$ld_so_name/) { with if (/\Q$ld_so_name\E/) {
Then install it

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make && make install

Update gcc

Notice: This operation takes a lot of space! Be sure to have enough!

Like the last step, so I gave commands only.

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cd /tmp
wget ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/misc/gcc/releases/gcc-4.6.4/gcc-4.6.4.tar.gz
tar -xvzf gcc-4.6.4.tar.gz
cd gcc-4.6.4
./contrib/download_prerequisites
mkdir objdir
cd objdir
../configure --prefix=/opt/gcc-4.6.4
make
make install
mv /usr/lib64/libstdc++.so.6 /usr/lib64/libstdc++.so.6.bak
mv /opt/gcc-4.6.4/lib64/libstdc++.so.6 /usr/lib64/libstdc++.so.6
mv /opt/gcc-4.6.4/lib64/libstdc++.so.6.0.16 /usr/lib64/libstdc++.so.6.0.16

Install Third Party Dependency

In 64-bit system

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yum install mailx postfix curl wget bzip2 gzip unzip python binutils bc tmux glibc.i686 libstdc++ libstdc++.i686

In 32-bit system

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yum install mailx postfix curl wget bzip2 gzip unzip python binutils bc tmux libstdc++

Notice: If there’s not tmux, change your repo by inputing

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rpm -Uvh http://mirror.webtatic.com/yum/el6/latest.rpm
yum install epel-release

or input

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wget http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
rpm -ivh epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

For 32-bit user, replace x86_64 with i386.

Install arkserver

Switch to root.

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su

Create a user.

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useradd arkserver
passwd arkserver

Find where the sudoers is.

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whereis sudoers

Add it to sudoers. And you should replace /etc/sudoers with the path your whereis command found.

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chmod u+x /etc/sudoers
vim /etc/sudoers

Find the line where you can see root ALL=(ALL) ALL. It is near 90th line.
Then create a new line after this line, type

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arkserver ALL=(ALL) ALL

Switch permission and login

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chmod u-x /etc/sudoers
su - arkserver

Download and run the script

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wget -N --no-check-certificate https://gameservermanagers.com/dl/linuxgsm.sh && chmod +x linuxgsm.sh && bash linuxgsm.sh arkserver

Run the installer and follow the instructions

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./arkserver install

Usage

All Commands

A complete list of commands can be found by typing

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./arkserver

Below are the most common commands available.

Running

Start

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./arkserver start

Stop

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./arkserver stop

Restart

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./arkserver restart

Console

Console allows you to view the live console of a server as it is running and allow you to enter commands; if supported.

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./arkserver console

Notice: To exit the console press CTRL+B+D.
Pressing CTRL+C will terminate the server.

Updating

Update

Update checks for any server updates and applies them. The server will update and restart only if required.

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./arkserver update

Bypass the check and go straight to SteamCMD update.

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./arkserver force-update

Validate

You can use the SteamCMD validate option when updating the server.

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./arkserver validate

Debugging

Details

You can get all important and useful details about the server such as passwords, ports, config files etc.

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./arkserver details

Debug

Use debug mode to help you if you are having issues with the server. Debug allows you to see the output of the server directly to your terminal allowing you to diagnose any problems the server might be having.

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./arkserver debug

Logs

Server logs are available to monitor and diagnose your server. Script, console and game server (if available) logs are created for the server.

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/home/arkserver/logs

Backup

Backup will allow you to create a complete bzip2 archive of the whole server.

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./arkserver backup

Monitor

LinuxGSM can monitor the game server by checking that the proccess is running and querying it. Should the server go offline LinuxGSM can restart the server and send you an alert. You can use cronjobs to setup monitoring.

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./arkserver monitor

Configure LinuxGSM

For details on how to alter LinuxGSM settings visit LinuxGSM Config Files page.

Further Information

For more information and documentation about LinuxGSM see the wiki that will give you plenty of detail about how everything works.