New Linux Server Guide

[eq4me]

I just commited the first part of it in the Wiki.
It is not complete yet as I a reconsidering some parts but it should help you over the most obscure part which was compiling EQEmu and getting/installing all needed software.

Since I am not an native english speaker I would be glad if someone can have a look at my spelling and grammar.

http://www.eqemulator.net/wiki/wikka.php?wakka=LinuxServerGuide

[Dr Zauis]

Spelling and grammar are fine my friend!

Ive been reading the tutorial on and off all night. I would not have suspected you do not speak English as your native language.

In fact I am so inspired by the tutorial I have decided to try it and hopefully finally I will have a server that doesnt crash all the time or at least as not as much as it does under WinXp!

Oh boy..Ive never even seen anything running on linux but I dont care how hard or how much work its gonna take. If I get it going and it runs maybe a week or so without a world.exe or zone.exe crash Im gonna jump up and down like Rumplestilskin!

EDIT>>> And Thank You Very Much!!!

[eq4me]

Spelling and grammar are fine my friend!

Ive been reading the tutorial on and off all night. I would not have suspected you do not speak English as your native language.

In fact I am so inspired by the tutorial I have decided to try it and hopefully finally I will have a server that doesnt crash all the time or at least as not as much as it does under WinXp!

Oh boy..Ive never even seen anything running on linux but I dont care how hard or how much work its gonna take. If I get it going and it runs maybe a week or so without a world.exe or zone.exe crash Im gonna jump up and down like Rumplestilskin!

EDIT>>> And Thank You Very Much!!!


You are welcome.
I would advise you to get the free VMWare Server edition to try things out. In fact the Debian and Fedora installations I based my guide on are also VMWare machines. If I didnt made a mistake somewhere in the guide and the install/compile fails you simply can copy over your exisiting eqemu_config.xml and change the database host entry to the LAN IP of your existing Windows MySQL installation.

See the older Linux guides for how to start up EQEmu.

EDIT: Oh, and thanks to the one who fixed my Wiki problem.

[Angelox]

I don't want to start a "bashing" thread here , so I'll just stop at, "Linux is just as good as Windows" - I tried a Linux server once, but was having problems and was more interested in learning the EqEmu DB than spending time solving Linux propblems.
One thing I think everyone should know especially the younger people; If you learn Linux, you'll have everything free: No more boot-legging or pirating becuase you're broke - it's all free and open source. And don't think becuause it's free, it inferior.
I want to try a Linux server again in a few days, I use Mandrake (Mandriva), but I guess I could use Ferdora so I can try out your new WikI - The old Wiki was a little "shady" in some areas, and I ended up searching for answers everywhere on occasions.

[eq4me]

With Madriva 10.2 you should be fine. It uses MySQL 4.1 and gcc 3.4 You just have to find the equivalents to the Fedora RPMs needed and install them. If thee are compile errors snap&paste me the error messages. I'll have a look into it then.

Yes, Linux is free and imho as good or better as Windows for most things.
But in the hands of someone who is careless or doesnt want to think things through it can be also a recipe for dissaster. There are virtually no "Do you really want to do that?" saveguards when you are root.

There is an old joke among Unix Sysadmins
Once upon an time in an Unix Adminstration course with ten students.
Instructor: And if you want to read mail really fast type rm -rf /*
Nine out of ten students are laughting, one of then had to reinstall his Notebook.

[wize_one]

if you want to dig deeper in the linux world, try gentoo (www.gentoo.org ) for your distro. you install only what you want-need, bo bloating of a system. just be prepared to read and re-read for installing.

[Angelox]

With Madriva 10.2 you should be fine. It uses MySQL 4.1 and gcc 3.4 You just have to find the equivalents to the Fedora RPMs needed and install them. If thee are compile errors snap&paste me the error messages. I'll have a look into it then.

Yes, Linux is free and imho as good or better as Windows for most things.
But in the hands of someone who is careless or doesnt want to think things through it can be also a recipe for dissaster. There are virtually no "Do you really want to do that?" saveguards when you are root.

There is an old joke among Unix Sysadmins
Once upon an time in an Unix Adminstration course with ten students.
Instructor: And if you want to read mail really fast type rm -rf /*
Nine out of ten students are laughing, one of then had to reinstall his Notebook.

I trouble shoot and repair PC's (for a hobby now days) - as a result, I have years of parts laying around, I've been able to build whole PC's from scrapped parts. I always hated spam, and years ago , there was very little spam control on the ISP's mail servers - so I started my own email server, which eventually, I could not afford under windows and went Linux (Mandrake seemed to be the easiest for a windows drop-out at the time). It's been over six years now, and I have really learned a lot -glad I made the change (and stuck with it).
Glad to see your helping out with the Linux, I forgot what my problem was when I did my install, but I'll run it by you when I get there again.

[Creylin]

I have never registered here, much less posted. But I just had to do it to say....

Thank you!

I'm a Linux novice, and your guide looks just like what I need. I've been trying to use the older guides with mixed results. Can't wait to see the finished new guide.

Thank you again.

Crey

[John Adams]

eq4me, thanks for your works here. Last time I tried Linux was Redhate 5 or so, and it was so cumbersome to setup (ipchains and all) I never went back. I now have a purchased disc set of FreeBSD that I have been wanting to setup for the Emu for weeks... but I am intimidated (100% Windows junkie here). I can't wait to try this, because if I wind up with a stable emulator, T.E.S.S. may just become public. :)

[eq4me]

I dont know if I can update the guide for a few days cause I am out of town from tomorrow to Tuesday.

But the most important thing left is making some bash scripts and setting up the mysql server. You can use http://www.eqemulator.net/wiki/wikka.php?wakka=MySQLSetup for this. The start/stop scripts from the old Linux guide are fine too.

I would recommend using Debian if you want an lean installation. The Fedora Core 4 one is much more bloated. Also Debian is imho the superior distribution for a pure server cause its much easier to manage and upgrade once installed.

Btw. Fedora doesnt start the mysql server by default. Execute this as root:

chkconfig mysqld on

Now MySQL will get started automatically on boot and stopped before shutdown.

[eq4me]

I've done some small but important updates to the Wiki. I dont think I will be able to update the Guide until Wednesday next week. I'll try to have a look in the forum once a day in case there are questions.

Important: Make sure that you use at least the below out of the start/stop stripts in the old Linux Guide
cd ~eqemu/server ; P=`pwd` ; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$P"
Without that line the EQEmu binaries wont be able to find the shared memory library. Execute the above in the same shell you are using to start ./world and ./zone.

Hint: The easiest way to get the server up and running is using Angelox database. You dont need to update tables and stuff like you have to do with the peq-luclin-rc1 database. Unfortunately Fedora doesnt have 'unrar' in the default repository. You can get it from DAG http://dag.wieers.com/packages/unrar/unrar-3.6.8-1.fc3.rf.i386.rpm

[eq4me]

Here another tidbit.

I just confirmed that it is possible to run MiniLogin.exe via wine from an text console. I first tried it with cedega and it spewed at me that it needs X11.

Here a quick howto.

Install and configure wine

For Fedora

Execute as root:
yum install wine

Execute as user eqemu:
winecfg #Will create .wine/ with the fake windows install

Hint: This will get alot faster if you do this via ssh and disabled X11 forwarding(ssh -x). winecfg cannot build the font metrics which can take quite a while. You can ignore the error messages.


For Debian

Execute as root:
apt-get install wine

Execute as user eqemu:
wine-auto


Now get Minilogin from http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/eqemulator/MiniLogin6.2.zip?download


And do



cd ~eqemu/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/
mkdir MiniLogin
cd MiniLogin
unzip ~eqemu/incoming/MiniLogin6.2.zip

wine MiniLogin.exe


With some proper start/stop scripts you never have to worry about setting up a MiniLogin server on an seperate Windows box. In time I will look if I get some of the windows only database tools to work under wine too.

I wish I had the time to properly include that in my guide but it has to wait a few days.

[Creylin]

Bah...disreguard the last post. I understand now. Nothing to see here. Move along. Move along...

Thanks,
Crey

[fathernitwit]

good work. I'd like to see the minilogin setup in there too.

I added the PEQ start/stop scripts to the page, do with them what you want. A good script to run from init for auto-start/stop would be nice, and shouldent be too hard. Could add minilogin startup in there too if minilogin.exe is in the dir or something.


make sure you put instructions to build cleanipc in utils/, not using it is a VERY common linux issue

[eq4me]

Thanks, I didnt know about cleanipc yet. I'll get it in as soon as I get a bit of spare time. Unfortunately I doubt that I can continue on the Guide before the weekend.

Minilogin with wine under Fedora isnt quite stable it seems. But it might be the particular wine version as I never had a problem running Minilogin under cedega. I wish there would be an statically compiled Linux binary of Minilogin... installing wine costs several hundreds of MB because auf the X11 dependencies.

[John Adams]

I think cleanipc is built with everything else, because when I went in to utils to make it separately, it says it is up to date. So I copied it to ./server. Still having some difficulty with the scripts, but mine is a permissions issue that I haven't worked out yet.

[cubber]

I am following your guide to try to get the emu installed on gentoo 2006.1. The problem I was having when I tried to compile was that gentoo 2006.1 uses gcc 4.1.1. After much searching I found out that you can run an earlier version of gcc parallel to gcc 4.1.1 and switch between them when you need to. Here is how I did it for those that are having the same issue:

-First get gcc-3.4.6-r1...

emerge -av =sys-devel/gcc-3.4.6-r1

-After that is done you need to tell gentoo to use gcc 3.4.6-r1 as the default compiler, do this by using gcc-config.

-Type gcc --v to see what version of gcc you are running, more than likely this will spew out gcc 4.1.1

-Type gcc-config -l to list all the versions of gcc on your system.

-Type gcc-config # where # = the number that corresponds to the version of gcc that you want to use. In my case 3.4.6-r1 was number 1 on the list. So I typed:

gcc-config 1

-Type source /etc/profile

-Type gcc --v and it should show gcc 3.4.6-r1 rather than gcc 4.1.1

run make

when you are done compiling eqemu you probably want to switch back to gcc 4.1.1 as your default copiler so type:

type gcc-config -l to find out what number gcc 4.1.1 is on the list, in my case it was number 6.

type gcc-config 6

type source /etc/profile

type gcc --v to verify that it says gcc 4.1.1

Thats it, now you can switch between the two whenever you need to compile new eqemu source code.

Now that I got it compiled I just gotta figure out how to finish the server and get it up and running!

[Dr Zauis]

The links to Angelox DB seem to be down.
Anyone have a DB that they use for something like Debian/Sarge that is they think would be highly stable and maybe have more than luclinRC1?
Im looking(hoping) for something thats already done. Proven to work with maximum stability. All the luclinRC1 zones working correctly(As intended) as priority.Aything else is just Icing.
Im using the same version of eqemu as the tutorial. If I can avoid any changelog crap Ill be satisfied no matter what.

[Angelox]

The links to Angelox DB seem to be down.
Anyone have a DB that they use for something like Debian/Sarge that is they think would be highly stable and maybe have more than luclinRC1?
Im looking(hoping) for something thats already done. Proven to work with maximum stability. All the luclinRC1 zones working correctly(As intended) as priority.Aything else is just Icing.
Im using the same version of eqemu as the tutorial. If I can avoid any changelog crap Ill be satisfied no matter what.

I just had to re-boot my connection, Links seem to be OK now.

[eq4me]

The Tutorial is also good for the latest EQEmu version. Exept some of the Makefile changes can be omitted now. Sorry for sort of abandoning the guide the last weeks but my workload was just to heavy. I had hoped that some other people took up the slack and corrected and extended the guide meanwhile...
The good news is that I will soon be able to spend some more time refining the guide while I set up an EQEmu server on my new dedicated server connected with 100 MBit/s. :)

[Dr Zauis]

Crap..I tried to source the sql from Angelox with sqlyog and I get this error.

PRIMARY KEY (`aaid`,`rank`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8

Line no.:42
Error Code: 1064 - You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8' at line 14

EDIT>>I should say Im tring to do this on windows if it dont seem obvious LOL..Im trying to get the db ready to just transfer to the server.

[Angelox]

Crap..I tried to source the sql from Angelox with sqlyog and I get this error.

PRIMARY KEY (`aaid`,`rank`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8

Line no.:42
Error Code: 1064 - You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8' at line 14

EDIT>>I should say Im tring to do this on windows if it dont seem obvious LOL..Im trying to get the db ready to just transfer to the server.

Can you try a restore with mysql-administrator? I'm using MySql 5, but I don't think that should matter.

[Angelox]

I just downloaded to my windows setup and restored it to a MySQL 4, saw the error - give me a while and i'll make a windows MySql4 back up for you.

[Dr Zauis]

I just downloaded to my windows setup and restored it to a MySQL 4, saw the error - give me a while and i'll make a windows MySql4 back up for you.

Woot! I guess Ill spend a few hours trying to DL the maps file again..All I have for a browser is lynx. And what I know about Linux so far I can count on my hand. Thats why Im doing this DB in windows I dont how to extract a .rar file. And it would be an hour or 2 just to DL in the first place.

[Angelox]

Woot! I guess Ill spend a few hours trying to DL the maps file again..All I have for a browser is lynx. And what I know about Linux so far I can count on my hand. Thats why Im doing this DB in windows I dont how to extract a .rar file. And it would be an hour or 2 just to DL in the first place.

It's done and posted - I did it in rar format. but I guess you have winrar - You can get a unix version of rar here -
http://www.rarlab.com/download.htm
it's a command line rar, but works ok (took me a while to figure it out) - just dump all the files into your /bin directory
they say you have to pay, but i think since its beta, it's not active yet.

[Dr Zauis]

Crap..Same error..I DLed it right from the link that say its corrected for windows.Not from the top.(on your website)

[Angelox]

Crap..Same error..I DLed it right from the link that say its corrected for windows.Not from the top.(on your website)

For some strange reason, my router gets hung up when it sends files out- and freezes. I am going to change routers ( I have a spare one) see if it gets better.

EDIT;
I swapped routers - hopefully it works better now.

[Dr Zauis]

I dont think the file was changed..I get the same error. Anyway I have the DB from Aposhis Project but I dont know if that works for Dev binaries?
It was a Dark Rogue Productions Server and I know back at 6.2 version they were different. I know virtually nothing beyond 6.2 after that things got changed in a hurry! I couldnt keep up.
Anyway. Why not upload a sourced Database that you know works for the new Linux tutorial?(please) If it were in .tar.gz format it would make it really easy for me to use it. Or it can be .rar and I can use windows to decompress
Or if some one else has something they know will work Im interested in anything that will get me away from having to do it myself from the Luclin RC1 DB!

[Angelox]

Crap..Same error..I DLed it right from the link that say its corrected for windows.Not from the top.(on your website)

I just went out and bought a new router - the router I had has an "overheat and crash " bug - I hope I'm over this problem.

Dr Zauis; can you tell me what version MySQL you are using? I'm trying to find the "why" of this error - That second post I made on my web (for windows), was tested and even played on a Windows XP, MySQL 4 database - I can't see why it still would do this. There's someone else with this very same problem.

[Angelox]

I dont think the file was changed..I get the same error. Anyway I have the DB from Aposhis Project but I dont know if that works for Dev binaries?
It was a Dark Rogue Productions Server and I know back at 6.2 version they were different. I know virtually nothing beyond 6.2 after that things got changed in a hurry! I couldnt keep up.
Anyway. Why not upload a sourced Database that you know works for the new Linux tutorial?(please) If it were in .tar.gz format it would make it really easy for me to use it. Or it can be .rar and I can use windows to decompress
Or if some one else has something they know will work Im interested in anything that will get me away from having to do it myself from the Luclin RC1 DB!

I was just told that this error comes from MySql DB with versions lower than 4.1

Line no.:42
Error Code: 1064 - You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8' at line 14

Time to upgrade! :)

[bufferofnewbies]

I downloaded your windows version on an extra HD to help verify any errors.

Only things on this server that, I believe, would/ might have any influence
Windows XP,
MS Visual Studios,
Xampp Server Panal Controls,
Useing MySql 5.0.

I also get the 1064 error code.

MySQL Error Nr. 1064 - You have an error in your sql syntax... use near 'DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8' at line 14.

no clue what is doing this tho, as I havent really had much time to examine it with the changes I am makeing to my dbase on the server.

[Angelox]

I downloaded your windows version on an extra HD to help verify any errors.

Only things on this server that, I believe, would/ might have any influence
Windows XP,
MS Visual Studios,
Xampp Server Panal Controls,
Useing MySql 5.0.

I also get the 1064 error code.

MySQL Error Nr. 1064 - You have an error in your sql syntax... use near 'DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8' at line 14.

no clue what is doing this tho, as I havent really had much time to examine it with the changes I am makeing to my dbase on the server.

Did you try the original MySQL 5 version (it's posted up top the page)? I took the other off as it didn't help anyone.

EDIT;
What version MySql do you have?

[bufferofnewbies]

I used the ax_peq15.rar,
not sure if you changed that version or not w/o a numeric change. If so, I will reload and retry (at least after i wake up.. been up all night now haha)

[Angelox]

Here's some points of interest from the MySql site;
Taken from here
http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/4.1/unicode.html

Migrating from 4.0 to 4.1

If you have been using MySQL 4.0 as I outlined above, storing UTF-8 data in string columns regardless of the default server character set, one of the things you will want to do after upgrading to MySQL 4.1 is actually let the server know the true character set of those columns. But if you simply do an ALTER TABLE myTable MODIFY myColumn VARCHAR(255) CHARACTER SET utf8, the server will try to convert the data in the myColumn column from the server default character set to UTF-8. You need to do a two-step conversion to avoid this:

ALTER TABLE myTable MODIFY myColumn BINARY(255);
ALTER TABLE myTable MODIFY myColumn VARCHAR(255) CHARACTER SET utf8;

If you have multiple columns in the same table, you should do each step for all of the columns at the same time, to avoid having the entire table rebuilt for each step of converting each column. The "Converting 4.0 Character Columns to 4.1 Format" section of the manual provides an example of that.

If you were already using a specific server character set with MySQL 4.0, you can see how those character sets were mapped to the new character sets and collations in MySQL 4.1 in the "4.0 Character Sets and Corresponding 4.1 Character Set/Collation Pairs" section of the manual.

[Dr Zauis]

I was just told that this error comes from MySql DB with versions lower than 4.1

Line no.:42
Error Code: 1064 - You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8' at line 14

Time to upgrade! :)

OK..Yeah. It makes sense
So I guess Ill have to upgrade. Or try to.

[eq4me]

Since I decided not to invest any more time into eqemu right now I am abandoning the guide.
It was a tough decision but there is more to life than sitting in front of a computer solving other peoples problems. I have more than enough of this at work.

There are enough people who set up a working Linux Server who can fill in the gaps.

[John Adams]

:(

But you were so good at it. ;) I'll see what I can do to update. I've messed with FC4 enough to be able to set stuff up in about 30 mins now. But you are the master at finding low-level stuff I would never think of. I hope all is well, and we still see you haunting the forums, eq4me.

Take care,
J

[eq4me]

:(

But you were so good at it. ;) I'll see what I can do to update. I've messed with FC4 enough to be able to set stuff up in about 30 mins now. But you are the master at finding low-level stuff I would never think of. I hope all is well, and we still see you haunting the forums, eq4me.

Take care,
J

Sure, but my job is getting a bit hectic right now. I rather spend my little spare time away from stuff that smells like work. Of course I will have a look what people update to the guide and make corrections if needed.

And to be completely honest I am a bit miffed that important information is only floating around in the forum and not updated in the Wiki. It isnt much harder to update the appropriate wiki entry and point to it then writing the answer in an thread.

[John Adams]

You are right. I personally will make more of an effort to transfer some of the data I see when I come across it. Maybe I'll start a trend.

[gernblan]

I just commited the first part of it in the Wiki.
It is not complete yet as I a reconsidering some parts but it should help you over the most obscure part which was compiling EQEmu and getting/installing all needed software.

Since I am not an native english speaker I would be glad if someone can have a look at my spelling and grammar.

http://www.eqemulator.net/wiki/wikka.php?wakka=LinuxServerGuide

What an excellent job!!

[M3ta]

Since I am not an native english speaker I would be glad if someone can have a look at my spelling and grammar.

http://www.eqemulator.net/wiki/wikka.php?wakka=LinuxServerGuide


neccessary - necessary (2x) (amazing how the other native english speakers didn't see this one. shame on THEM, not on you)
serveradmins - server admins
an non-root - a non-root
binaries itself - binaries themselves (plural)
good advice and discoveries is floating around - are floating (again, plural)


All in all, excellent. Your english abilities are better than those from 99% of the americans/aussies/brits i know.
Kudos.