RCON (Server & Client)

[Mauler125]

This pull request contains:

• Full CNetAdr class rewrite in modern C++ (protocol agnostic)
• Full CSocketCreator rebuild (based on Valve's implementation, but protocol agnostic)
• RCON for server (dedicated only)
• RCON for client
• Non-game net console client to connect to dedicated server without needing any files of the game itself (just the netcon, link MFC static to the netconsole if maximum portability is desired, since then user doesn't need to install vc runtime)

Information regarding using RCON:
SERVER:

• The password must be at least 8 characters long (ConVar: rcon_password)
• To disable RCON, simply keep rcon_password empty.
• To send logs to connected net consoles, set sv_rcon_sendlogs to 1, or send a SERVERDATA_REQUEST_SEND_CONSOLE_LOG message
• The RCON server will bind to the same port as the hostport ConVar used by the game for UDP sockets, both IPv4 and IPv6 (dual stack)
• The server will automatically ban IP's of spammers or hackers. It will not kick them out of game, just remove access to server remote access. Game kicking/banning could be implemented if desired.
• It is recommended that the user sets a sv_rcon_whitelist_address, this will never get banned for failed attempts, or get 'cleaned' when max sockets (defined by sv_rcon_maxsockets) gets reached.
• The server will automatically close the listen socket once a net console has successfully authenticated with the server
• The listen socket gets reopened if connection to net console gets closed in any way (for example, when your game crashes or when you issued a disconnect)
• Auto executes rcon_server.cfg on launch. You can put your configs in here.

CLIENT:

• To connect to server, in the console set 'rcon_address' to the address of the RCON server you wish to connect to (default: [127.0.0.1]:37015)
• Then enter command rcon. This will try to establish a connection to address stored in rcon_address ConVar.
• To authenticate with the server: rcon PASS yourRCONpassword321.
• To send commands to server: rcon "your commands here".
• To disconnect from RCON server: rcon_disconnect.
• • Auto executes rcon_client.cfg on launch. You can put your configs in here.

NETCONSOLE:

• Same as CLIENT, but in this case you do not need to use the rcon command prefix to send queries to RCON server.
• Follow instructions in the terminal.

Additional information:

• Port forwarding is required for this to work. Its the same range as the UDP protocol (37015-37020), but it has to be opened for TCP as well (RCON ports are equal to the UDP port of the game, which you could retrieve with the 'status' command or various tools available for Windows).

[wolf109909]

I love this. Thank you Amos :D

[Vexbane]

Thanks for all your hard work Amos!

[abarichello]

Had some problems while testing this, changing convars worked fine but running server scripts gave me this error:

Left: dedicated server output | Right: NetConsole

[abarichello]

Inviting others to test/review since there's a lot of code to cover

[GeckoEidechse]

So on a new attempt I using the newest CI build at the time I now get:

Checking dedi console a (long enough) password is set:

Trying to connect on in-game client it says:

And, yes I verified I properly added the files from CI as logs say version is dev (I was running stock v1.9.1 launcher before).

Okay for some reason I cannot reproduce that issue anymore so I guess consider it solved ig :P

[Mauler125]

So on a new attempt I using the newest CI build at the time I now get:

Checking dedi console a (long enough) password is set:

Trying to connect on in-game client it says:
And, yes I verified I properly added the files from CI as logs say version is dev (I was running stock v1.9.1 launcher before).

Okay for some reason I cannot reproduce that issue anymore so I guess consider it solved ig :P

This most likely happened because the hostport of the dedi isn't 37015. By default (when no args are passed to netconsole or the rcon command in-game), the netconsole will attempt to connect to localhost::37015. If your server happens to have port 37016 or anything non 37015, which happens if you have multiple servers running, or started a game client before the dedi, or could also happen if something else uses that socket, then you need to specify the correct ip and port manually.

[cpdt]

I ran into a couple of assertion failures when running a debug build of this:

[DxsSucuk]

What exactly happends on a wrong password try?
Cause while playing around (I was using https://github.com/cpdt/northstar-rcon-client/blob/main/northstar-rcon-cli/src/main.rs) I found out that the Server does not tell me that I entered the wrong password and just continues keeping the connection normally open.

The external rcon client that I used has a check for authentication Issues unsure if that one is wrong or if Northstar even sends a rcon auth error?

[cpdt]

@DxsSucuk If you try the included netcon.exe client, it works correctly:

Northstar TCP net console [Version 2.0.0.1]
Enter <IP> <PORT>:
[22:06:26] [info] Connected to: [127.0.0.1]:37015
sv_cheats 1
[22:06:29] [info] This server is password protected for console access. Authenticate with 'PASS <password>' command.
PASS test
[22:06:31] [info] Admin password incorrect.

So that's a bug in my RCON client, presumably the auth response strings that it was checking against have changed. I've tracked that in cpdt/northstar-rcon-client#1.

[DxsSucuk]

Thanks for the response @cpdt!

[DxsSucuk]

I noticed that the server does not log that someone connected over RCON?
Is that wanted or?

[GeckoEidechse]

Before someone pings me again on Discord about RCON, the reason it's not getting merged currently is due to being flat-out broken in the sense that it causes host timescale issues.

More info can be found in this comment I left a while back that GitHub "helpfully" hides due to the amount of comments left on this PR: #100 (review)
(Just retested on latest RCON commit and it still exists)

Obviously as long as only having RCON active (no RCON clients connected) already causes timescale issues making the game unplayable there's no point in merging until fixed.

The other issue is merge conflicts but those can always be resolved once we have a working RCON implementation. ^^

[Mauler125]

Pull request has been closed due to lack of interest. The amount of work required for merging the local fixes for the time scale issue into the new code base outweighs the interest for RCON. The contributors of Northstar had also requested me to move this into a plug-in instead; this is a big task which I unfortunately no longer have time for.

[GeckoEidechse]

Pull request has been closed due to lack of interest. The amount of work required for merging the local fixes for the time scale issue into the new code base outweighs the interest for RCON.

Do note that interest for RCON support (or any protocol that allows for remotely interacting with server) is still very high. It wasn't tackled by core Northstar contributors at the time, due to higher priority tasks like codebase refactors and adding needed functionality to release new gamemodes, or lower hanging fruits that are easier to implement. There was also the assumption that this pull request was still being worked on to resolve the issues it had.

You're of course free to share your unpushed local fixes so that we can hopefully resolve the timescale issues together and push this PR over the finish line. ^^

 

As for

The contributors of Northstar had also requested me to move this into a plug-in instead; this is a big task which I unfortunately no longer have time for.

Despite the discussion, I'm not sure there was ever a definitive conclusion whether to do plugin or merge directly. The main issue was lack of a working implementation that didn't cause clients to desync due to server timescale slowing down as soon as RCON is active. An actually working version would have probably guided the way of how to implement.