dedicated server on linux

Post by **Lucifer** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 11:45 pm

It's on the regular site, not the wiki.

Anyway, yeah, you can just download another distribution and it'll handle the hard drive formtting for you.

-=King Crab=- · Post by **-=King Crab=-** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 11:56 pm

is there any distro that you know of that is good for hosting a tron server, but still has graphical interfaces

edit: and that can be loaded from a floppy

Post by **Lucifer** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 11:59 pm

Ubuntu is good, Mandriva is good. Don't know about others myself, but I'm sure everyone here will be more than happy to plug their favorite distribution. But you're going to have to be comfortable with the command line to run an arma server.

-=King Crab=- · Post by **-=King Crab=-** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 12:00 am

I ran a dedicated arma server before however it was on windows

kyle · Post by **kyle** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 4:22 am

installed by a floppy that is hard to find. he could use DSL to install gentoo (maybe some other) but that really is hard for someone just learning Linux.

philippeqc · Post by **philippeqc** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 8:01 am

First question:
By install by a floppy, do you mean that you have no network nor cd-rom access, or that you cannot boot from other media than a floppy?

IIRC, Mandriva (was Mandrake) installation process could be booted from a floppy, then use ~3 cd-rom (Need to verify the number of cd/dvd required. It depends on exactly what you are planning to install) OR download the required part from the net (I highly suggest this. Makes it a breeze to upgrade and install new packages as you go, provided you are not on dial-up and impatient).

I cannot tell you if Ubuntu support starting the installation process from a floppy. Some research might be in order.

Second question:
The difference between a desktop version and a server version of a distribution is often hair thin. Unless you have
a) very limited hardware,
b) are sure you will never ever want to use the computer for desktop operation (it might be because your "new" server is your old pc that you replaced with a much faster one),

I would not use the server version. If you do not meet either condition, I would suggest instead going with the desktop version. You seem relatively new to Linux, so being able to do some configuration through GUI (such as opening a port on your firewall, it is about 5 click in Mandriva's set-up GUI. It is not worth it in my opinion to try to read through the man page of what ever firewall you have. Keep your energy to make a neatly balanced server instead.) will spare you some hair pulling and get you running in no time, while always letting you come back later to learn the command line utilities when your specific need are not meet.

-ph

Post by **Lucifer** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 8:27 am

In light of philippe's post, I should go into slightly more detail about my own comment.

Philippe's absolutely right, and I wasn't trying to disparage you for wanting a gui on a server. My own server has a gui, you know....

Thing is, Linux is different in a number of ways that impact running an arma server. For one, you get to have it run as a real service that starts when the computer boots. When you do that, it runs under a different user account, but the config files are saved for the root user. Which means you can't just open them in a text editor and hack away on them. There are graphical utilities that will help you do that, but in my experience it's easiest to use the command line for most administrative tasks for arma. I'd suggest nano as a good text editor for the terminal (even though I use vim personally). Otherwise, you just need to be comfortable, not wizard. You don't have to be able to write artificial intelligences capable of conquering third world countries using bash and various other utilities.

There are also a number of very useful third-party scripts you can use in linux, and in every case the easiest way to deal with them is through the command line.

And finally, whenever you hit a bump and come here for help, an awful lot of the commands we're going to tell you to run are command line stuff.

we tend to even give stuff you can copy and paste, maybe modify some paths in what we write. Think of it as the one common factor that everyone using arma in linux has in common with each other.

So yeah, being comfortable with it doesn't mean being able to write an entire office suite using sed invocations.

edit: the requirement that you be able to load from a floppy wasn't there when I first posted. I'll see if I can dig up the link that explains how to make your dsl hard drive install into a larger debian system.

Edit2: Here you go:

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/dsl-hd-install.html

But dsl people recommend bonsai if you need to install from a small medium.

http://developer.berlios.de/projects/bonzai/

Post by **Tank Program** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 9:27 am

I think you can use about 4 floppies to boot the Slackware installer. Not that that's exactly a 'noobie' distribution...

-=King Crab=- · Post by **-=King Crab=-** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 10:32 pm

philippeqc wrote:First question:
By install by a floppy, do you mean that you have no network nor cd-rom access, or that you cannot boot from other media than a floppy?

I have a network connection but I cannot boot from my cd drive

philippeqc wrote: Second question:
The difference between a desktop version and a server version of a distribution is often hair thin. Unless you have
a) very limited hardware,
b) are sure you will never ever want to use the computer for desktop operation (it might be because your "new" server is your old pc that you replaced with a much faster one),

I would prefer a desktop over the server just for the sake of being able to "see" what I am doing

Lucifer wrote: Edit2: Here you go:

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/dsl-hd-install.html

But dsl people recommend bonsai if you need to install from a small medium.

http://developer.berlios.de/projects/bonzai/

so if I install these, I can install my arma server to my pc?

thanks for the help every one

edit: I already have Dsl installed on my hard drive, its not running off of a cd

Post by **Tank Program** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 11:41 pm

-=King Crab=- wrote:I have a network connection but I cannot boot from my cd drive

If you install Smart Boot Manager onto a floppy, it will then let you boot off of a CD.

-=King Crab=- · Post by **-=King Crab=-** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 12:38 am

Tank Program wrote:
-=King Crab=- wrote:I have a network connection but I cannot boot from my cd drive
If you install Smart Boot Manager onto a floppy, it will then let you boot off of a CD.

then i can install another distro, but will it erase my current OS because I wouldn't want to waist my resources with two OS

Post by **Lucifer** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 12:43 am

If you already have dsl on your hard drive, you can do "sudo dpkg-restore" to get dpackage, and then you should be able to do "apt-get glibc". The problem is you're going to break a bunch of things when you do that because other packages depend on the c library.

-=King Crab=- · Post by **-=King Crab=-** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 12:48 am

Lucifer wrote:The problem is you're going to break a bunch of things when you do that because other packages depend on the c library.

Will it be fatal as long as the only things I runn are the arma server and maybe a internet browser?

Post by **Lucifer** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 12:53 am

Just means you'll haveto apt-get the broken packages to get debian's version instead of the dsl version.

Edit: I haven't actually done this! So my predicted effects could be off by a large margin.

-=King Crab=- · Post by **-=King Crab=-** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 1:38 am

so type in
sudo dpkg-restore
followed by
apt-get glibc
in the terminal, then I will be square to install the arma server?