Hell Let Loose (HLL) advanced RCON

An extended RCON tool for Hell Let loose, meant to replace and go WAY beyhond the official tool.

It is essentially a website that you can self host (or if you ask around the discord, some people can probably host it for you)

Included features:

• Live view on players + all expected actions: punish, kick, temporary ban (choose the time), permanent ban. Search for players, and sort by play time, punition, name etc etc
• User account and audit logs, each moderator has it's own account so you know who did what on whom and when, all the rcon actions can get forwarded to your discord (change of settings included)
• Group actions - Easily apply the same action on multiple players with one click (say you want to switch or kick a whole squad)
• Live logs + filtering by type (kill, chat, vote, etc..), filtering by players
• Discord webhooks support, so that the chat, TK and kills can be forward to your discord server
• Trigger word that when written in the ingame chat will create an alert (tag a person(s) or a role(s) on discord) such as: !admin or just anyword you want (insults if you want to chase those)
• Flag player with any emoji / icons you want + comment attached
• Auto loading of player's country from steam and displayed in live view
• History of players and player profile: All game sessions of players are recorded, all the names they used in the passed, punitions they received and by which admin, etc
• Apply actions on players even if they are not online anymore, from the player history you can flag, permaban, temp ban, lift all bans, add to VIP
• Permanent logs, a seacrh tool to look at the entire history of the game logs of your server, export logs as CSV
• Multi server support, you can host the rcon for mutliple servers and they will share the same player database, you can apply temp and perma bans to all server with only one action, synch VIP, settings, broadcast messages etc...
• Automated broadcast loops
• Automated settings based on the player count of you server (will add auto settings based on time too soon)
• Shared text for punitions and various messages that you can preset so that you never have to type the reason for the kick anymore. It also remember new text you type if you want it (to autocomplete it the next time)
• Search through bans by name, reason or steamid (for quick unbanning)
• Backup of your bans so that if you ever change your game server or add one the bans will be re-applied on the fly if the banned dude try to join your new server
• Recording of you map history, you see which map were played and how long they lasted
• Ban people even if they never set foot on your server yet
• Basic scoreboard showing you total kills / death / TK / death by TK for the last N minutes
• Backup and restore of VIPs
• All the basic settings, map rotation management, sliders for Idle kick time, max ping etc..
• For power users and coders: You can add anything you want in the cron server or in the supervisor service so it's easy to code you own plugin (I myself have a votemap plugin and a bot that verifies players), an http API to use all the features above and a CLI for a subset of those
• Put player on a watch list and be notified when they enter your server

Why a website?

• It's running 24/7 so you have A LOT features that you couldn't get with a simple desktop app (recording and forwarding of logs, discord alerts, player profile etc..)
• It's more secure / convenient, a website is centralized, meaning that all actions have to go through it, you don't need to give the real RCON password to you moderators, all activity is recorded in one place, you can share configuration with other, etc...
• It does not require any installation on the client side, you just need a browser

Yes but I don't know anything about console commands, coding and such?

It's a 2 steps installation (5 if you include the pre-requistes), many not so technical people managed so you probably can too. The community grew quite big so if you still don't understand what to do after reading this just go and ask on discord :)

There's also a Wiki made by the community (Thanks [2.Fjg]bn.hall): https://github.com/MarechJ/hll_rcon_tool/wiki

Join us on discord if you use it, for feedback, troubleshooting and informations about updates: https://discord.gg/hZx6gn3

Here's a sample:

How to install the App

Pre-requistes:

• Having some very basic shell (command prompt) skills. Feel free to ask for help on the Discord!
• Having a dedicated server - This app is meant to run 24/7 - (If you don't have that, you can just run a cheap Virtual Private Server)
• The below need to be installed on the server where the rcon will run:
  • (Otionnal but recommanded) GIT: https://git-scm.com/downloads (if you don't use git you need to download the releases)
  • Docker Engine (Community) installed: https://docs.docker.com/install/
  • Docker Compose installed: https://docs.docker.com/compose/install/

Install steps

1. Get the sources

git clone https://github.com/MarechJ/hll_rcon_tool.git
cd hll_rcon_tool

If you don't have git you can also download the latest zip release, however it's much less practical for updating.

Note: If you have several servers, clone it multiple times in different directories like below (if you'd like your servers to share a DB for Blacklists contact us on discord)

git clone https://github.com/MarechJ/hll_rcon_tool.git hll_rcon_tool_server_number_2
cd hll_rcon_tool_server_number_2

From here all the commands assume that you are at the root of the repo you just cloned

2. Set your server informations. Edit the .env file and fill in the blanks (for all your servers) like so:

Note if you don't see the .env file you need to activate the show hidden files option on windows. On linux don't forget the -a: ls -a

# Ip address of the game server
HLL_HOST=22.33.44.55
# Rcon port (not the query one!)
HLL_PORT=20310
# Your rcon password (the one you use with your current Rcon)
HLL_PASSWORD=mypassword
# Choose a password for your Database (you probably won't need it)
HLL_DB_PASSWORD=mydatabasepassword

# The two below are the username and password that will be required to access the ronc website. 
# I recommand using a different password that the RCON one
# If you want to change it later, just change it here then run the command to start the app
RCONWEB_USERNAME=myteam
RCONWEB_PASSWORD=mynewpassword

# If you want all (important) actions to be sent to one of you discord channel, add the full webhook url below
DISCORD_WEBHOOK_AUDIT_LOG=https://discordapp.com/api/webhooks/71...515/qRfJCT...Q5T

# If you have multiple servers, also change these lines (each server must have a different port, just increment the number)
RCONWEB_PORT=8011
HLL_DB_HOST_PORT=5433
HLL_REDIS_HOST_PORT=6380

Note for power users:

You could also just export the variables in your terminal before running the docker-compose commands OR edit the docker-compose.yml and replace the ${variable} directly in there, however you might have a conflict next time you update the sources. Alternatively you can also specify them in the command line. More details

3. RUN it!

Linux

docker-compose up -d 

Windows

docker volume create redis_data
docker volume create postgres_data
docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.windows.yml up -d 

Raspberry-Pi or any ARM32v7

docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.arm32v7.yml up -d --build

The web application will be available on <your server ip>:$RCONWEB_PORT (you can use http://localhost:8010 if you test from the machine where it's installed)

Note: If you are running it on Windows prior to 10 docker runs in a virtual machine, so you have to find the IP of that VM.

4. CHANGE YOUR ADMIN PASSWORD

Using you browser go to <your server ip>:$RCONWEB_PORT/admin (8010 is default port) and login with user: admin password: admin FIRST THING YOU MUST DO IS CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD there: http://prntscr.com/u3t2ms After that you can start adding youR users with this: http://prntscr.com/u3t2u4 Make sure you specify their steam id it will be used in upcoming features: http://prntscr.com/u3t2yq Once the user is created you'll end up on that page: http://prntscr.com/u3t3to I recommend NOT CHANGING ANYTHING except for a select few of your most trusted staff members you can tick the Superuser status. Please note that users won't be able to change their password by themselves unless you tick the staff status so that they can access this admin page, however i DO NOT RECOMMEND doing as I won't be maintaining special permissions on admin models on the future (just manage password for them). To change the password of one of your user, in the users list click on him, then there: http://prntscr.com/u3ytzi

Please note that the "onlineadmins" variable in the (auto) broadcast is broken due to accounts. It will be fixed and improved later.

You're done, ENJOY!

If you feel generous you can donate, the money will be use to reward contributing developer or content creator to create video tutorial, demos, documentation, etc.

To update to the latest version:

Please join the discord and follow annoucements, sometimes the update instructions vary from standard.

In case it says your local changes the .env would be overriden when you git pull:

You can do

git stash && git pull

Then either: git stash apply edit to remove the conflit then git reset .env Or just fill the .env manually again. Then run the docker-compose commands. This won't happen for every updates.

Linux

git pull
docker-compose pull && docker-compose up -d --force-recreate --remove-orphans

Windows

git pull 
docker-compose pull && docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.windows.yml up -d --force-recreate --remove-orphans

Raspberry-Pi or any ARM32v7

git pull 
docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.arm32v7.yml up --build -d --force-recreate --remove-orphans

Or download the latest zip release

Note that it's important you get the sources every time, or at least the docker-compose files, as new dependancies might be introduced

To downgrade (in case of issue) to a previous version:

Check the availabe versions numbers on docker hub (or github releases): https://hub.docker.com/r/maresh/hll_rcon/tags https://github.com/MarechJ/hll_rcon_tool/releases

Edit you docker-compose.yml and change all the images from:

image: maresh/hll_rcon:latest
...
image: maresh/hll_rcon_frontend:latest

To the version you want (here we use v1.9)

image: maresh/hll_rcon:v1.9
...
image: maresh/hll_rcon_frontend:v1.9

Known issues and limitations

• After a sometime without being used the API will lose the connection to the game server so when you open the GUI the first time you might see an error that it can't fetch the list of players. However this will recover on its own just refresh or wait til the next auto refresh
• The game server in rare case fails to return the steam ID of a player.
• When logs are completely empty the game server will fail to respond to the request causing an error to show in the API/GUI
• The RCON api server truncates the name of players to a maximum of 20 charcheters even though, up to 32 characters are displayed in game. Bottom line you don't always see the full name

How to use

Demo video coming soon

There's a public endpoint available to anybody without password on http://:/api/scoreboard

See User Guide for more information on how to use certain features of the app.

Features to come

More or less in order of priorities

• Individual moderators accounts
• Audit trail
• Players sessions history (with records of actions applied to players)
• Deferred bans (from a blacklist)
• Custom preset punish/kick/ban messages
• Performance improvements for the player list view
• Auto randomisation of map rotation (scheduling of the endpoint: /api/do_randomize_map_rotation)
• Full log history (stored permanently)
• Action hooks on chat messages and players connect / disconnect
• Integration with Discord

USAGE of the CLI with docker

Build the image

$ docker build . -t rcon

Set your server info as environement variables and run the cli

$ docker run -it -e HLL_HOST=1.1.1.1 -e HLL_PORT=20300 -e HLL_PASSWORD=mypassword rcon python -m rcon.cli
 
 Usage: cli.py [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

 Options:
   --help  Show this message and exit.

 Commands:
   get_admin_ids
   get_autobalance_threshold
   get_logs
   get_map
   get_map_rotation
   get_name
   get_permabans
   get_players
   get_team_switch_cooldown
   get_temp_bans
   set_broadcast
   set_map
   set_welcome_message
   ...

$ docker run -it -e HLL_HOST=1.1.1.1 -e HLL_PORT=20300 -e HLL_PASSWORD=mypassword rcon python -m rcon.cli get_maps

  [2020-05-03 17:15:00,508][DEBUG] rcon.commands commands.py:_request:90 | get mapsforrotation
['foy_warfare', 'stmariedumont_warfare', 'hurtgenforest_warfare', 'utahbeach_warfare', 'omahabeach_offensive_us', 'stmereeglise_warfare', 'stmereeglise_offensive_ger', 'foy_offensive_ger', 'purpleheartlane_warfare', 'purpleheartlane_offensive_us', 'hill400_warfare', 'hill400_offensive_US']

Development environment

First a quick overview of how the software is structured:

The backbone of the application is HLLConnection + ServerCtl it is what binds the HLL Server rcon commands to the application. The Rcon and RecordedRcon provide some wrapping around the raw results of the game server. And expose some new commands that are a combination of basic commands. The Rcon class also adds a caching layer using Redis (or falling back to in-memory) in order to go easy on the server. The RecordedRcon is an additional wrapping where all the commands that should be saved, or use the Database should go. I made the choice of separating the ServerCtl, Rcon and RecorededRcon into serparated layers to leave the possiblity to choose the right level of abstraction for what you need.

The API in django is a very thin layer that basically loops over all the methods available in RecorededRcon (and therefore all those of ServerCtl and Rcon) and binds them to a route see /rconweb/api/views.py. This is a bit hackish, but it saved me a lot of time a the begining, it also removes a lot of boilerplate, but it should probably change at some point to provide a cleaner set of endpoints.

Start a development instance

First boot up the dependancies. I use docker for that but you can also install Redis and Postgres natively if you prefer

docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.dev.yml up -d redis postgres

This will make redis and postgres available on you localhost with their default ports. If you need different port bindings refer to the docker-compose-dev.yml file

Then run an API using Django's development server:

Note: remember that you need to define some environment variables:

export HLL_PASSWORD=<fill in yours>
export HLL_PORT=<fill in yours>
export HLL_HOST=<fill in yours>
export HLL_DB_PASSWORD=developmentpassword
export DJANGO_DEBUG=True

export DB_URL=postgres://rcon:developmentpassword@localhost:5432
export REDIS_URL=redis://localhost:6379/0

Run a server

# from the root of the repo
pip install -r requirements.txt
PYTHONPATH=$PWD  DJANGO_DEBUG=true ./rconweb/manage.py runserver

This will run a development server on http://127.0.0.1:8000/ it auto refreshes on code changes If you change the port rember that you will also need to change it in rcongui/.env for the frontend to know where to talk to the API

Hitting http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/ with Django DEBUG set to true will show you all the available endpoints. They are basically named after the methods of the Rcon class All endpoints accept GET querystring parameters OR (not both at the same time) a json payload. The parameters are the same as the parameter names of the Rcon methodds (all that is auto generated remember). It is not best practice to have endpoints that do write operations accept a GET with query string parameters but it was just easier that way.

Now start the frontend:

# from the root of the repo
cd rcongui/
npm install
npm start

The GUI should now be available on http://localhost:3000/ it auto refreshes on code changes

To test your changes will work with the prod setup, start the whole stack

docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.dev.yml build
docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.dev.yml up -d

Now test on http://localhost:8010

General notes:

If you have problems with dependancies or versions of python or nodejs please refer to the respective Dockerfile that can act as a guide on how to setup a development environment. If you need a refresher on which process needs what variables have a look at the docker-compose file.