It takes a while for the server to connect to VAC and start showing up in the public servers listing

[audriddax]

I've noticed that when you spin up the server (at least on a centos 8 physical instance), it can take a while to actually connect to steam. Sometimes it goes hours before if finally succeeds. Until it can connect to steam, the server will not show up in the public server listing.

[audriddax]

Using wireshark, I was at least able to catch a DNS request for cm0.steampowered.com. Overriding those requests with:

--add-host=cm0.steampowered.com:162.254.193.6

got me to a point where I at least get the server consistently visible in 5 minutes.

My current theory is srcds_run or srcds_i486 has ip's hardcoded before it tries going against DNS, but that's just a "feeling", I haven't found anything to support that. The consistent 5 minutes makes me feel confident that it's at least something like that.