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Our unit originally adopted KAST because we needed a management panel that was accessible to administrators who did not necessarily want to conduct every server operation through scripts, configuration files, and ritual sacrifice.

As we began using it more extensively, however, we encountered a number of limitations. Our deployment required features more commonly associated with enterprise software, including OIDC and LDAP authentication, support for multiple administrator accounts, native service installation, more reliable update workflows, and a more robust system for downloading and managing mods.

Rather than continuing to build increasingly elaborate workarounds around the existing application, I forked KAST and began developing an expanded edition designed around those requirements.

The result is KASTED, although we generally prefer the considerably more pronounceable name CASTER.

CASTER is the enterprise-focused edition of KAST, built for communities and organisations that require stronger authentication, multi-user administration, automated deployment, and more dependable server management.

• Steam account with a valid copy of Arma 3.
• Basic understanding of Arma 3 dedicated servers.

Report issues on the GitHub repository. For general discussion, join us on Discord.

A complete documentation is available on the GitHub Wiki.

CASTER is distributed as a self-contained single-file executable — no .NET installation required on the host.

Download the latest release for your platform from the Releases page:

Extract and run the KAST.UI executable. On Linux you may need to chmod +x KAST.UI first.

Automated builds from the caster branch are published as a rolling pre-release at releases/tag/nightly.

The nightly tag always points to the latest development commit. Download URLs are stable:

Nightly builds may be unstable. Use tagged releases for production.

services:
  kast:
    image: ghcr.io/bluefield-creator/kast:latest
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    volumes:
      - kast-data:/app/data
volumes:
  kast-data:

CASTER exposes /health for basic web/database health and /ready for readiness including the active mod download count. Bulk mod downloads are queued durably; /api/downloads/state is the authoritative queue snapshot used by the UI after reconnects.

The Settings page includes a Service tab for Windows hosts. It can install CASTER as a Windows service, set startup mode after reboot, configure crash restart actions, and show recent crash reports. Service changes require running CASTER as Administrator. Non-Windows deployments should use their supervisor instead (systemd, Docker restart policies, or the hosting platform restart policy).

When running behind Caddy or another reverse proxy, keep websocket proxying enabled for Blazor Server and configure CASTER to trust only the proxy IPs that can reach it. For a local Caddy reverse proxy, the default trusted proxies are 127.0.0.1 and ::1; override with ForwardedHeaders:KnownProxies if the proxy runs elsewhere.

Example Caddy configuration:

panel.3rdshock.army {
    encode zstd gzip

    reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:5000 {
        flush_interval -1
    }
}

If the CASTER process exits during active downloads, configure Windows Service, systemd, Docker, or your supervisor to restart it. On startup CASTER reconciles interrupted queued/running download records and resets mods left in Downloading or Updating state so they can be retried safely.

CASTER uses local administrator accounts by default. OpenID Connect can be enabled through configuration or environment variables and is compatible with Authentik and other OIDC providers.

Existing CASTER administrators can also enable system account sign-in from Settings -> Accounts. Windows installs can allow local machine users or AD domain users. Linux installs can allow local Linux users from the running system. Docker installs use local users inside the CASTER container, not users from the Docker host; create or mount those container accounts before selecting them in CASTER.

Supported auth modes:

Example Docker environment:

environment:
  - Auth__Mode=LocalAndOidc
  - Auth__Oidc__Authority=https://auth.example.com/application/o/kast/
  - Auth__Oidc__ClientId=kast
  - Auth__Oidc__ClientSecret=replace-with-provider-secret
  - Auth__Oidc__DisplayName=OpenID Connect
  - Auth__Oidc__GroupClaim=groups
  - Auth__Oidc__NameClaim=preferred_username
  - Auth__Oidc__AllowedGroups__0=KAST Admins

For Authentik, configure the application/provider with:

Authentik application assignment alone is not enough for CASTER access. The OIDC user must also have at least one configured allowed group in the configured group claim. CASTER links external accounts by OIDC issuer plus sub, so email or username changes in Authentik do not break the account link.

CASTER uses MinVer to derive the version from git tags at build time.

To create a stable release, run the Promote Stable Release workflow from GitHub Actions or push an annotated tag matching vX.Y.Z from a commit reachable from caster. The release pipeline runs tests, builds native binaries for all platforms, publishes checksum assets, pushes Docker image tags, and publishes a non-prerelease GitHub Release.

Maintainer release steps are documented in docs/release-runbook.md.