CS:GO Multi Server Manager (MSM)

Launch and set up Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Dedicated Servers.

Project Status after CS2 release

After the release of Counter-Strike 2, I moved to the new repository cs2-multiserver for the development of a CS2 version. This project is archived and will no longer be updated. Thank you to everyone for using csgo-multiserver and contributing to the project.

About this project

csgo-multiserver is an administration tool for CS:GO that helps you with the setup, configuration and control of your server(s).

Being specifically designed for LAN environments, it allows you to control many servers running on multiple machines simultaneously. In addition, multiple server instances can share the same base files, saving your precious disk space and bandwidth.

csgo-multiserver started as a fork of csgo-server-launcher (which seemed to be designed for rented root servers). By now, all features have been rewritten by scratch.

Release 1.0

As all the main features of this script are finally working, I declare this as the release 1.0. As I have implemented everything I needed in csgo-multiserver, I won't work on adding more features for now. If you find any bugs or problems, I'll be happy to fix them though.

Feel free to work on csgo-multiserver yourself if you have any wishes and ideas for improvements. As an example, the configuration and customization aspect could still be improved. In addition, 'porting' csgo-multiserver for other games or applications should be not too difficult.

Currently working features

• SteamCMD and Game Installation, checking for and performing updates
• CS:GO Server instance creation
• Instance-specific server configuration (using config files)
• Running a server basically works (Including logging)! Yay!
• Copying and controlling instances over the network

The vision / planned features

The emphasis is on MULTI

• MULTIPLE USERS: An admin-client system for sharing the base installation. Thus, the same files do not have to be downloaded and stored multiple times.
• MULTIPLE INSTANCES: Each game server instance shares the base files, but has its own configuration. Multiple instances can run on a system simultaneously.
• MULTIPLE CONFIGURATIONS: Different gamemodes (like competitive/deathmatch/surfing) that can be chosen when starting the server

Additional ideas:

• While the MULTI features are the highlight, managing a single server for yourself should be just as easy.
• Sourcemod plugin management
• Game configuration upon launch with environment variables. Possible features:
  • Mapcycle generator (as MAPS variable)
  • automatic team assignment (as TEAM_T and TEAM_CT variable)

Requirements

These scripts run in bash in GNU/Linux, so it expects usual commands to be available. These include awk sed readlink wget tar git, of which all are installed by default in Ubuntu Server 16.04

Also remember that SteamCMD and your game server are 32-bit applications, so you'll have to install the respective 32-bit support libraries! (see also here, on Ubuntu/Debian 64 Bit try: sudo apt install lib32gcc1 lib32stdc++6)

Additional dependencies are:

• tmux, version 2.1+, see https://tmux.github.io/ (Installed by default in Ubuntu Server 16.04)
• inotifywait, found in the inotify-tools package for Ubuntu, used by the server control to efficiently wait for file changes
• unbuffer, to make update and server output and logging smoother (try sudo apt install expect)

Of course, you require a Steam account with the game owned to create a CS:GO dedicated server. If you wish anybody to be able to connect to your server, get your Gameserver auth tokens here (for CS:GO, use appid 730).

Configuration and Environment Variables

The main configuration file will be placed in ~/msm.d. It will set up all the important environment variables.

• ADMIN - Name of the user that 'controls' the installation
• INSTALL_DIR - The directory of the base installation. In ADMIN's control.
• DEFAULT_INSTANCE - The instance to work on if no specific is selected

The server settings themselves are instance-specific and can be configured in $INSTANCE_DIR/msm.d/cfg/server.conf. Most importantly, you should check and set the GSLT, IP and PORT variables for every new instance.

TO BE IMPLEMENTED: Support for workshop maps, GOTV Settings have to be tested/refined.

Installation

Steps for the server administrator

1. (Optional, if you want to use installation sharing) Create a separate admin user (NOT root, usually called steam) that controls SteamCMD and the base installation. You can, of course, be your own admin.
2. Use git clone https://github.com/dasisdormax/csgo-multiserver.git to clone this repository to whatever place you like (preferably within the admin's home directory ~admin). Make sure this directory and all files in it are readable to all users who will use this script.
3. For easier invocation of the main script (just by typing csgo-server in your terminal), do one of the following:
   • ln -s /home/admin/csgo-multiserver/csgo-server /usr/bin/csgo-server (create a symlink)
   • add that place to your $PATH environment variable
4. As the admin user (NOT root), try csgo-server setup. This will guide you through creating the initial configuration.
5. Install updates or the server itself as the admin user with csgo-server update (possibly automated by cron)

Steps for the individual user

Note that individual servers are called instances. These share most of the files (like maps, textures, etc.) with the base installation, but can have their own configurations. The special command @instance-name selects the instance to run the future commands on. The command @ without an instance name selects the base installation.

It is, though, not required to create a separate instance if you do not intend to run more than one server on the machine. You can simply run the base installation if you want to.

1. If this is the first time the script is used on the current account, type csgo-server setup and follow the instructions to import the configuration from the admin.
2. (If applicable) Create your own instance (a fork of the base installation) named myinstance using csgo-server @... create.

Usage, when fully set up

• csgo-server @... ( start | stop | restart ) to start/stop/restart the given server instance. The server will run in the background in a separate tmux environment. Please note that the selected admin can stop the server to perform updates without nasty effects.
• csgo-server @... exec ... to execute some command in the server's console
• csgo-server @... console to access the in-game console (= attach to the tmux environment) to manually enter commands. You can return to your original shell (detach) by typing CTRL-D, a frozen server can be killed using CTRL-K.
• csgo-server usage will display detailed usage information

License

Apache License 2.0. I chose it because I specifically want to allow others to build services based on this script. However, I would still appreciate if improvements and fixes could make it back here.

Be aware that the original csgo-server-launcher by crazy is licensed under the LGPLv3, which still applies to earlier states of this repository. The license change has been marked with the tags lgpl-until-here and apache2-from-here. Since the license change, crazy's code has been fully replaced by own code.