shinqlx

ShiN0's Quake Live eXtension, implemented in Rust. Most functionality from minqlx should work. Support for Python 3.8 and above should work out of the box.

Some limitations apply for certain minqlx functions maybe used in plugins.

• 32-bit is unsupported. Earlier versions included support for it, but after too long of being untests, we dropped support for that older CPU types.
• Some compatibility might not work, as this implementation is not yet fully tested.
• plugins that use db.zincrby, db.lrem or db.setex need to provide the value and amount parameters through keyword arguments. This might be a breaking change for some plugins, but ensures Python redis 2.0 compatibility for these calls to later versions. We stick with redis >= 5.0.

Compilation and installation

• Install rust with the default profile and the nightly toolchain and Rust's build tool cargo, and make sure to add the rust-src component:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
rustup install nightly --profile default
rustup +nightly component add rust-src
rustup default nightly

• Install Python 3.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install python3 python3-dev python3-venv python3-pip

• Make sure, that you have installed Python 3.9 or later:

python3 --version

• Now you should get Redis, Git and build utils which will be used by minqlx's plugins and for compiling shinqlx:

sudo apt-get -y install redis-server pkg-config libssl-dev git build-essential

• To avoid interference with operating system packages (and future adaptions from Debian v12 onwards for example), I recommend installing a python virtual environment to install the packges that shinqlx/minqlx or your plugins need:

python3 -m venv ~/qlds/.venv
source ~/qlds/.venv/bin/activate

If you need to install additional packages later, you can activate the virtual python environment with source ~/qlds/.venv/bin/activate anytime, and then run your pip install <library> as you like.

• Install maturin into the virtual python environment:

pip install maturin

• Install shinqlx from pypi source distribution into the virtual python environment (this may take a while):

pip install shinqlx

• Since this may take a while, if you want to see the current progress use run in verbose mode:

pip install -v shinqlx

• Copy the convenience script run_server_shinqlx.sh into ~/qlds, or whatever other directory you might have installed the quake live dedicated server files in. (Note: The remaining sections assume you installed the dedicated server into ~/qlds)

cp run_server_shinqlx.sh ~/qlds/

Note: In your server startup script, you will have to also activate the the python virtual environment where the different python libraries are installed. I recommend writing a custom script that can be started with supervisord later on, that calls run_server_shinqlx.sh, i.e.:

#!/bin/bash
basepath="$(dirname $0)"
gameport=`expr $1 + 27960`
rconport=`expr $1 + 28960`

source ~/.quakelive/$gameport/.venv/bin/activate

exec $basepath/run_server_shinqlx.sh \
+set fs_basepath $basepath \
+set net_port $gameport \
+set fs_homepath ~/.quakelive/$gameport \
+set zmq_rcon_password "<a super secret rcon password that no one will ever guess>" \
+set rmq_rcon_port $rconport \
+set zmq_stats_password "<a super secret stats password that sites like qlstats.net will need to know to gather stats from your server>" \
+set zmq_stats_port $gameport

run_server.sh 0 will start a server on port 27960, run_server.sh 1 on port 27961, and so on.

Supervisor configuration

I recommend running your ShiNQlx server through a process monitor like supervisor. Unfortunately, due to the nature Rust handles crashes with its own panic system, some crashes may not result in the server exiting properly for the supervisor daemon to proper restart your server. Until I can come up with a proper way to solve this, I recommend to add an event listener configuration to your supervisor configuration to automatically check whether your server port is still reachable, and restart the server automatically if it's not.

The supervisor_checks package provides the main means for this. However, you will have to install the package to your OS pip environment, like so:

sudo pip3 install --break-system-packages supervisor supervisor_checks

After installation, you can configure your server in the supervisor configuration. Here is an example /etc/supervisor/conf.d/quakelive.conf, running two servers on the same host, and the supervisor_checks checking every 60 seconds for connectivity to the respective port (27960 and 27961) and restarting the server in case it stopped responding to TCP connection attempts on the server port:

[program:quakelive]
command = /home/steam/bin/run_server.sh %(process_num)s
user = steam
process_name = qzeroded_%(process_num)s
numprocs = 2
autorestart = true

[eventlistener:ql_heartbeat_0]
command = /usr/local/bin/supervisor_tcp_check -N "quakelive:qzeroded_0" -n ql_heartbeat_0 -r 1 -p 27960
events = TICK_60

[eventlistener:ql_heartbeat_1]
command = /usr/local/bin/supervisor_tcp_check -N "quakelive:qzeroded_1" -n ql_heartbeat_1 -r 1 -p 27961
events = TICK_60