Gaming & Tech

RyanGaming, gta4, l4d, runes of magic, Server, steam, valve

Yeah I know,  I haven’t posted in quite a while. Have been pretty busy with all kinds of stuff lately. so here is a short update on the more technical stuff I’ve been up to in the last few weeks:

– I moved most of the services from my old server to my new server (actually to one of my vmware guests on my new server, si-ka.net is still missing, and I need to forward dopefish.de to www.dopefish.de)
– I set up a gameserver host on a separate vmware guest. While this may not be the best solution performance-wise, it is defiantly the best solution security wise since gameservers require all kinds of strange library crap. And because it is easy, I also set up a Left 4 Dead dedicated server and assigned it to the -si.ka- steam group.

I also started playing a few new games. I got talked into getting “Left 4 Dead”, which is fun in coop and multi-player (solo kind of lacks smart bots on your own team). Then I got GTA4, but haven’t had time to play it yet. And yesterday I had a look at “Runes of Magic” a free MMORPG. It is currently in open-beta, and large parts of it still require translation (in the starting areas, most of the quests are a mix of German/English, if you get in some seldom visited areas, quests and NPC are sometimes in Asian lettering).

Climbing has been coming a bit short lately, I’ll try to get back to that more regularly.

vmware is odd

Ryan1 Comment on vmware is oddlinux, vmware

I installed the final release of vmware server 2.0 on a server today. Not much has changed since the RC version I had been using. I found some quick fixes and tips in this blog: http://digital.blogsite.org/index.php/2008/10/04/review-vmware-sever-2
The authorization.xml problem was a REAL pain, so I was grateful to find a fix for that. And the tip about the VI Client laying around on the server was priceless (duh, the least they could have done could have been a link in the webinterface). Using the client to access the vmware host is finally not painful anymore. The webinterface is still Ok if I’m not at a computer of mine, or am under linux.

There are still some oddities about vmware that bug me, like the missing option to turn off the DHCP server if you set up networking to use a virtual switch (HostOnly). The VI Client allows me to do some stuff that isn’t possible with the webinterface (like priority for RAM and CPU, or CPU affinity), but it doesn’t allow me to ad virtual machines that are on the server ?!?

The Software is free, so I’m not complaining here. But theese would be a real pain in the rear end if I was using the software in a production environment.

save the forest (or something like that …)

Ryancd, install, linux, Server, USB

I can’t be the only person who finds it bothersome burning a cd just to install linux. What a waste (it’s not like you use the cd all to often afterwards, except as a coaster). So here are the quick and dirty instructions for making a debian linux install usb stick (adjust /dev/sdb accordingly, failure to do so can pretty must kill any data on a harddisk):

  • wget ftp://ftp2.de.debian.org/debian/dists/etch/main/installer-i386/current/images/hd-media/boot.img.gz
  • wget http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/4.0_r5/i386/iso-cd/debian-40r5-i386-netinst.iso
  • zcat boot.img.gz > /dev/sdb
  • mount /dev/sdb /mnt
  • cp debian-40r5-i386-netinst.iso /mnt
  • umount /mnt