[Linux/Ubuntu] VPS and Server Setup for IW5

feel

READ

We will go over how to setup your VPS from the beginning and how to host a server on it. If you're experienced with Linux and have it setup to your liking you can jump over the VPS setup. On the VPS setup we will install a Desktop and Xrdp which will make it possible to connect to your VPS with Windows remote desktop connection. I'm using Ubuntu 16.04 for this tutorial and I'd recommend you installing it on your VPS. If you already have another OS installed and you're not good with linux, you should restore the vps and install Ubuntu 16.04.

Requirements

A VPS with Ubuntu
If you're experienced with Linux and have your own desired OS you don't have to use Ubuntu. But for beginners;
Preferably use Ubuntu 16.04
A clean copy of Modern Warfare 3
The PlutoniumIW5 patch installed
You install it by running the launcher in your Modern Warfare 3 folder
Some knowledge about Linux.
General knowledge about setting up a MW3 server.
An SSH client
Preferably PuTTY
FTP connection
Using vsftpd and FileZilla

Open ports and firewall

On most VPSs all of your ports are already open so you don't need to do anything there. As far as I know you don't need to allow anything inside your firewall. If this is the case, then just google it Make sure to allow "plutonium-bootstrapper-win32.exe" inside /home/"name"/.wine/drive_c/users/"name"/Local Settings/Application Data/Plutonium/bin. The port you need to open is 27016. This is the net_port but you can always change it inside server.cfg.

VPS Setup

I'm assuming you know how to connect to SSH and logging in to root.
Let's start by executing the following commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
# If you get a pink pop up called grub or something, just pick the first drive and click Yes when it's asking if you  want to continue without installing grub.
# There will pop up another window with multiple alternatives to choose from, keep the currently installed (it doesnt say that, but something along those lines)

# Create a user give it a password.
# You shouldnt use root to run the server or any other command.
sudo adduser "name"
sudo passwd "password"

# Giving sudo power to the user
sudo usermod -aG sudo "name"

# Change to your user
su "name"

# Install Ubuntu Desktop
sudo apt-get install -y ubuntu-desktop
sudo apt-get install xrdp
# Installing Xfce4 for a lighter desktop interface than GNOME
sudo apt-get install xfce4
sudo apt-get install xfce4-goodies
echo xfce4-session >~/.xsession

"name" = your desired username
"password" = your desired password

Editing Xrdp to use the same port all the time

Edit xrdp.ini by typing: sudo nano /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini
In xrdp1 change port=-1 to port=ask5910.
Save the xrdp.ini file by pressing CTRL+X>Y>Enter
Run these commands: 
sudo service xrdp stop
sudo service xrdp start
echo xfce4-session >~/.xsession

Connecting to Xrdp with Windows

Open Remote Desktop Connection by pressing Windows Key + R and type "mstsc"
Type in your VPS IP and connect. (Press "yes" on any window that may come up)
You should see a window that looks like this:

Your port might be a different value. I can connect with either 5910 or -1 so you should try both of those values.
Login like you would to an SSH connection but login with the user you made.
You should now be logged in on a desktop. Now, you can either close the connection and type in your SSH client or open a terminal in the desktop connection and continue.

Installing Wine

Type the following commands in either a terminal or in your SSH client

# If the system is x64, the x86 architecture must be enabled.
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

# Download and add the repository key.
wget -nc https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key
sudo apt-key add winehq.key

# Add the repository.
# Add the PPA.
sudo apt-add-repository 'deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ xenial main'
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wine/wine-builds

# Update the packages.
sudo apt update

# Install the Stable Wine Branch.
sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-stable

# If you get "unmet dependencies error" during installation, use the following commands to install Wine using aptitude:
sudo apt install aptitude
sudo aptitude install winehq-stable

# If everything went OK, you can check your Wine version using the following command.
wine --version

Installing Google Chrome

You might need a web browser. There are pre-installed ones but I like google chrome overall.
Type this in your terminal:

wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
sudo apt install ./google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

Chrome should be in Applications>Internet but if it isn't you can simply type google-chrome in the terminal.

How to get your server folder with Plutonium launcher

For this we will use an FTP connection with FileZilla to transfer your whole plutoserver folder to your VPS. I will explain how to ready up your folder so it doesn't take so much space.

Getting your server folder ready

Get a clean copy of MW3 from Steam and if you don't own it, get the dedicated server files.
Go to your "main" folder and delete everything except 0.dm and iw_00.iwd.
That is basically all you need to save as much space as possible. There are probably more files that is not necessary but nothing that lose you much space.

Installing vsftpd and FileZilla

Type the following in a terminal:
sudo apt-get install vsftpd
Edit vsftpd.conf so you can allow writing:
sudo nano /etc/vsftpd.conf
Find the line that says "#write_enable=YES"
uncomment it by removing the "#"
Save the file by pressing CTRL + X and press yes and then enter.
Install FileZilla Client on your PC.

Transfering files with FileZilla

Connect to your VPS with IP and the user you login to your VPS with (not root) and choose port 22 to connect with. Default (21) is not a secure connection.
Left side is your PC, right side is your VPS. Let's start by deciding where you want your server folder.
I recommend just putting it on your desktop for accessability.
Go to the right side and expand the folder that has your username and choose desktop.
Go to the left side and find your server folder. If you got it from steam and installed in the default location it should be: C:\ProgramData\Steam\steamapps\common\Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3
Right click your server folder and press "Transfer/Send". Make sure that you have opened the desktop folder on your right side.
You should have your server folder on your ubuntu desktop. I recommend you to rename it to plutoserver for the sake of the guide.

Install plutonium patch.

Download plutonium launcher from here: https://cdn.plutonium.pw/updater/plutonium.exe (download it on your VPS with google chrome)
Now move the launcher to your server folder.
Right click inside your server folder and click Open in Terminal
in the terminal type: wine plutonium.exe
It will download the patch and after that it will try to open the launcher but it can't. That doesn't matter because we don't need it.

Now you should have a Plutonium-staging folder created in local appdata which you can find by going to the next step of this tutorial.

Server key

You need a server key to get your server featured on the server list. You can get your own server key by going to this site: https://platform.plutonium.pw/serverkeys
Choose the server name in Hostname and select IW5MP in Game and then press create.
! Do not skip choosing a hostname because you think choosing a name in server.cfg is enough. Your server won't be able to run without a hostname.
You will copy paste this server key inside your .bat file.

Create your .bat file

Right now of me creating this tutorial .dsr and .dspl is not supported. So you will have to type your map rotation in your server.cfg and you will have to set with the default gamemodes. I will edit this tutorial when/if this will be supported. If you want to change time and score you can do that through rcon but that you will have to find out yourselves.

Go to your home directory click on view>Show Hidden Files.
Go to this directory: /home/"name"/.wine/drive_c/users/"name"/Local Settings/Application Data/Plutonium
Create a .bat file in here by right-click>Create Document>Empty File
Rename it to startserver.bat
Open it with gedit and copy paste the following:

@echo on
.\bin\plutonium-bootstrapper-win32.exe iw5mp "/home/"name"/Desktop/plutoserver/" +set key *key* -dedicated 
pause

Launching your server

Launching the .bat file

Right-click inside Plutonium folder and click Open in Terminal.
Type: wine cmd
It will load a windows cmd.
Now type: startserver.bat
It will spam a lot of MSVCRT stuff but you don't have to care about that. Just wait for it to be done spamming.

Your server is not running yet because you need to start a map rotation. You can set a map rotation by typing for example:

set sv_maprotation "map mp_dome dsr TDM_default map mp_seatown dsr FFA_default"

This will first run Team Deathmatch on Dome and then Free For All on Seatown.

To actually start the map rotation, simply type:

map_rotate

Unfortunately your map rotation doesn't save for now so you have to type your whole map rotation in the bootstrapper everytime. I recommend making a .txt file and create some map rotations in there which you can just copy and paste into the bootstrapper/server exe.

Change process affinity for maximum performance

By default, the plutonium bootstrapper (server exe) is running on one single core. We want to use all of our cores so we get the best performance for our server. To do this we run this command line:

taskset -cp CORENUMBER PROCESSID

The corenumbers on Linux works like this:
If you have 4 cores, core #1 has corenumber 0. Core #2 has corenumber 1 and so on.
What if you want core #2 and #4 to run the server? Then you can do:

taskset -cp 1.3 PROCESSID

If you want all of your 4 cores to run the server you can do:

taskset -cp 0-3 PROCESSID

To find the Process ID (PID) of the bootstrapper you open the Task Manager in Applications>System (while your server is running) and find plutonium-bootstrapper-win32.exe. The PID number should be the number right of the task name.

! The Process ID changes everytime you re-launch the application and changing process affinity doesn't save so, you will have to repeat this process everytime you restart your server.

Example:

taskset -cp 0-3 10550

Installing IW4MAdmin (coming soon)

Running multiple servers (coming soon)

Now you should have a server running! Good luck.
If you have any issues, dm me on discord @ feel#7777

Credits: SoyRA for letting me borrow a bit of his guide.

Mr. Android

Amazing tutorial for a non staff member. Thanks, I'm sure the community will find a great value in this.

luigistyle

great job, I wish I had this when I was making my server lol

SoyRA

Did you get that from my Wiki? because some parts are the same as mine.
* That doesn't mean you didn't have to make an effort to adapt it to PlutoIW5 and improve certain things.

feel

SoyRA I did use it for simplicity and maybe laziness I've used it before and I found your installing wine and user creation guides to be simple and beginner friendly. If you want credits I can give it to you in the post

SoyRA

If you want credits I can give it to you in the post

I accept. a,a

Kenubi

Works! Thanks for this simple tutorial!

H3X1C

Good guide mate, well done

FutureRave

A guide I still reference to this day but I recommend skipping a lot of steps.

DO NOT run the command sudo apt-get install -y ubuntu-desktop. You only need to install xrdp and xfce4 without the ubuntu-desktop package.

The Wine installation guide is extremely redundant and outdated.
According to my research which I hope is correct, you do not need to add i386 as a foreign architecture.
So please skip that step and try without it.

You can simply install Wine with apt-get install wine and that's it I never had to do anything more than that on my Linux systems when running XLabs or Plutonium clients.

Unless OP has done a meticulous profiling of the server app which I would be very interested in seeing the results of, changing the process affinity most likely does nothing to improve performance. The game runs on a few pre-programmed logical threads and will most likely completely ignore the system's offer for more threads. At least, that's my understanding of the game's behaviour.

Installing Chrome?????

Please, just use Firefox. It already comes with a desktop environment.

Xerxes

FutureRave said in [Linux/Ubuntu] VPS and Server Setup for IW5:

You only need to install xrdp and xfce4 without the ubuntu-desktop package.

Even that is overkill nowadays, Plutonium game servers work perfectly fine in a headless environment so no UI is needed at all. So no Desktop Environment, no xrdp, no chrome, and since SFTP is built in in the SSH server also no FTP server. And if you use SteamCMD also no uploading of your game files.

FutureRave said in [Linux/Ubuntu] VPS and Server Setup for IW5:

Unless OP has done a meticulous profiling of the server app which I would be very interested in seeing the results of, changing the process affinity most likely does nothing to improve performance. The game runs on a few pre-programmed logical threads and will most likely completely ignore the system's offer for more threads. At least, that's my understanding of the game's behaviour.

That actually increased the felt performance of the game servers because it would prevent the main thread from switching between cores too often which did result in minor lag spikes.

FutureRave

Yeah, that's true. We should try to write our official Plutonium tutorial for Linux. As I mentioned, I only reference this guide and the other one in this forum section when I forget how to export wine arch for example.
Pretty sure in the end I only run 10% of the commands in this tutorial .

Considering the server (game) only has two relevant logical threads: the main thread and the game thread, it still doesn't make much sense to me. If the system isn't busy it should quite never switch a process between cores. Even so, then why you are giving the game more cores if you intend to stop that behaviour?
The OP said it is to improve the performance which I am doubtful of, and you say it's for stopping a behaviour that's contradictory to giving the game more cores. But correct me if I misunderstood the comment.

Edit:
I did some Googling, it seems in the context of IW5 it's somewhat desirable to have both the main thread and the game thread running on the same physical core. So it is my opinion that the step should be skipped entirely as well. Since the main thread and game thread will be interchanging data often if they are on the same core the threads can take advantage of cache hits and so forth. Then again, without profiling the game, it's not possible to give credit to OP's theory the game will benefit from more cores. The game isn't designed for multithreading because as mentioned before a dedicated server has only two important threads.
On IW5 I think we only have one logical thread that does the work on the main and game thread.
It's a patch NTA did on IW4 devices to improve performance.