# MasterServer-Perl Repository for the 333networks MasterServer written in Perl. ========= # DESCRIPTION This repository contains software to host a MasterServer for a variety of legacy games. The software was written Darkelarious to soften the effects of GameSpy (GameSpy Industries, Inc.) shutting down their masterserver service. A masterserver is a program that maintains a list of online game servers and presents this list to clients (gamers, players) who request the list of game addresses. The 333networks Masterserver is a software framework that allows gamers/players to browse online games. More information about the masterserver and variations on the protocol by 333networks can be found online at http://333networks.com/masterserver # AUTHOR Darkelarious http://333networks.com darkelarious@333networks.com # REQUIREMENTS - Postgresql, SQLite3 - Perl 5.22 or above - The following CPAN modules: AnyEvent AnyEvent::Handle::UDP DBI DBD::Pg / DBD::SQLite Encode Exporter IP::Country::Fast; Socket Switch JSON - screen (or another terminal multiplexer, optional) # INSTALL THE MASTER SERVER IS WRITTEN ON LINUX. IF YOU WANT TO RUN THE SOFTWARE IN MICROSOFT WINDOWS OR APPLE OSX, IT WILL NOT WORK WITHOUT MODIFICATIONS. Download the masterserver files from our git repository (or zip) and extract them to your favorite server directory. The masterserver stores server addresses in the database. This database must be created manually. SQLite3 users should not forget to chmod the database file with read/write access. The tables to be created can be found in the "data/sql" folder in the tables-Pg/SQLite/mysql.sql file. Choose your preferred database driver and create the tables by importing the SQL file or by manually creating the tables with your SQL shell. SQLite users can use the included util/create-sqlite-database.sh to create their database. This repository consists of Perl modules and is run in terminal. The software utilizes UDP and TCP connections to receive and send information about game servers. Carefully read through the code and documentation before you start randomly querying other game servers and/or masterservers. # CONFIGURATION The 333networks masterserver comes with options. These options are found in configuration file "data/masterserver-config.pl". Comments in that file give a brief description. Here, the configuration is discussed in further detail. Masterserver HOST information Fill in your contact details here to be able to synchronize with other masterservers. These settings are displayed on the web interfaces and are shown to others in order to connect to your masterserver. This information is also shown when others use the \status\ query on your server: they can see who hosts this masterserver, which build you are running and which games you currently support. Filling in this information is highly recommended and much appreciated by the community. Database login information The masterserver supports different database types. In the module "lib/MasterServer/Databases" you can see which types are currently supporting out of the box. To choose a database type, specify the "dblogin" variable: # Postgresql dblogin => ['dbi:Pg:dbname=databasename', 'user', 'password'], # SQLite dblogin => ["dbi:SQLite:dbname=$ROOT/data/databasename.db",'',''], # MySQL dblogin => ["dbi:mysql:database=databasename;host=localhost;port=3306", 'user','password'], Keep in mind that the database needs to be created manually. That means that you first have to create your postgres/mysql user and grant permissions as described in the proprietary manuals that come with your database installation. After that, you have to insert the tables manually, which are provided in the "data/sql" folder. The masterserver script requires read-and-write permissions on the SQL database file(s). dump_db => "daily", It is useful to dump the database every once in a while for backup purposes. This can be done by specifying the "dump_db" option as above, with the options every day, week, month, year or not at all. Logging All events are logged by default. Every new beacon, database transaction or serverlist request is recorded in the logfile. For debugging purposes, this is very useful, but for regular use, the logfile will grow big very fast. With the "suppress" option, log messages can be suppressed from being logged. This option takes the message type, separated by spaces. To suppress a message type, use the identifier between brackets. Example: [2017-05-13 17:31:47] [debug] > Connected to the Postgres database. In this message, the timestamp of the message is shown first, followed by the identifier "debug". To suppress this type of message, the following parameter can be set: suppress => "debug" suppress => "debug beacon secure stat" More message types can be suppressed, where the types are separated by spaces as shown in the second example. If you want to log a lot of events, you could consider rotating the logs every day, week, month or year. The 'log_rotate' allows you to store events in different files with specified interval. Network settings The masterserver uses UDP and TCP networking. The default port numbers are 27900 for server beacons (UDP) and 28900 for serverlists (TCP). Home-hosters have to open those firewall ports. timeout_time => 5, Some servers and clients have slow connections or a lot of latency. If you experience issues with this, increase the time-out time for connections. Recommended: 5 seconds. Supported Games & Secure/Validate All GameSpy protocol games communicate according to a protocol that requires servers and clients to authenticate each other. As far as 333networks are concerned, the authentication ciphers (keys) are confidential and intellectual property of the individual game companies. If you have a configuration file with keys, you can simply import this list at the bottom of the configuration file as shown there. If you do not have the correct ciphers, you can choose to bypass the secure/validate challenge. This also allows hackers and opportunists to provide fake data or request the data without authorization. See option "require_secure_beacons". If you use the proper authentication ciphers, keep in mind that some games, like Deus Ex, have more than one cipher, or do not support the challenge at all. Other games may have been modified to counter the vulnerability against long queries. Some UT servers have been observed to respond with "Orange" instead of the correct response. Both situations can be in- or excluded in the "ignore_key" options. Contact 333networks for more information about obtaining ciphers. Enable settings There are three methods to add server addresses to the list: by receiving a direct beacon, by validating a pending server and by synchronization. Some of these functions can be disabled from the configuration. Direct beacons can be processed by adding them to the database directly after they validated. When validation is not an option (because missing ciphers), the masterserver can query the addresses individually, to determine whether they are valid game servers. Change with "beacon_checker_enabled". This also scans servers periodically to see whether they are still online, what game they are and other server information such as version/compatibility and server name. Query UCC Applets In addition, other UCC masterserver applets can be queried for more server addresses. This should not be done without permission of the UCC applet hosts, it's impolite to do so without asking. The new servers are added to the "pending" list, where they wait to be queried individually as described above. If "beacon_checker_enabled" is disabled, this function will NOT work properly. Enable/Disable with "master_applet_enabled". Synchronization settings Synchronization between masterservers allows you to receive the list from other masterservers. In return and to make this communication two-way, the masterserver sends uplinks to all other masterservers that are specified in your list. Your masterserver is then queried in the same way as if it were an ordinary game server. This also shares the information that you provided earlier in the HOST information section. If you do not wish this to happen, you should disable synchronization entirely. Change with "sync_enabled". Newly received servers are added to the "pending" list as described above. Please note that this will not prevent others from obtaining the server lists. Attempting to disable this is ambiguous, as "regular" clients do the same to get the serverlist. BY ENABLING SYNCHRONIZATION, YOU AGREE TO BE QUERIED BY OTHER 333NETWORKS BASED MASTERSERVERS AND SYNCHRONIZATION TOOLS. To us, this sounds perfectly reasonable and logical, but some newlings actually started complaining that when they leeched off masterservers, others actually queried them too. If you do not want other people querying your masterserver, then why are you running a masterserver in the first place? We do not want authorized people spamming our (or other's) masterservers with sync request to determine whether the server is online (yes, this actually happens -- use the \status\ query for that!) or to keep the list unnecessary updated. Sync requests should not be executed more than 1-2 times per hour. If you want to sync with us, please email us on info@333networks.com # RUNNING After all CPAN modules have been installed and all options have been reviewed in the configuration file, the masterserver can be started with the following command from within the util directory of this folder: screen -dmS "masterserver" ./masterserver.pl You can also choose to run the masterserver with ./masterserver without the use of a terminal multiplexer, for example for debugging purposes or a dry-run to test if your settings are properly configured. The masterserver works great in combination with one of the MasterServer Interface websites. This allows you to keep an eye on your masterserver and allows others to view directly which games you support, how many servers are available and more. The provided configuration is optimized for generic use. Keep in mind that the masterserver in this form was originally designed for use with other 333networks functions. If you want to set up your own system for any game other than Unreal Tournament, you may want to look at other repositories on 333networks HOW this is achieved. See also http://git.333networks.com 333networks is not responsible for your masterserver querying (or spamming) game servers and/or masterservers. Your configuration is YOUR responsibility! # TOOLS In the "util/tools" folder, a few handy tools are included. In general, it is not necessary to use these tools. While debugging and writing new features for the masterserver, these scripts have been very handy. Therefore, they are included in the repository. Poor documentation is included in the scripts and in the required files themselves. Do not forget to change database settings per tool. Expert knowledge required! These tools will move to a new repository on our git soon. # KNOWN ISSUES There are a few known issues that will be resolved in future versions. The following issues are listed and do not need to be reported. Memory Expansion On some operating systems and with certain CPAN module versions, the memory usages keeps increasing to the point where the entire OS crashes or freezes. For some CPAN modules has been confirmed that they contribute to this. This goes for AnyEvent::UDP::Handle v0.048 on Ubuntu Server 14.04. Try downgrading to version v0.043 to temporary solve the problem. This will reduce if not stop the memory increase. This README file is unnecessary long. Over the time we have added a lot of functions and therefore a lot of documentation. This README file becomes bloated with things everybody already knows or does not intend to use. There is an initiative to write the masterserver documentation in a single document that is more focused on comprehensively outlining the fundamentals of the masterserver, its functions and how to use it. For now, we are stuck with this in-depth, redundant and waaay too long README file. MySQL has not been tested with this masterserver version. When any database other than Postgresql or SQLite3 is selected, the masterserver may crash. Support for MySQL will follow at some point, hopefully late 2017. Differences in statistics compared to other 333networks-based masterservers. Some other masterserver interfaces may show different statistics than your own masterserver. This may have multiple reasons: servers could have gone offline before your masterserver established whether these addresses were online; servers may have missed the update moment and show offline, but may get updated in the next cycle; servers send beacons to the other masterserver directly, but have incorrect firewall settings that prevent them from being checked after synchronization. These factors can not be compensated by the 333networks masterservers. Slow database: currently, database requests are blocking. On slow hardware, these requests may take enough time to miss/deny incoming beacons and list requests. No solution available in this version. The current configuration for 333networks and affiliated servers do not suffer from this problem. No servers found after syncing with 333networks or others: the syncing protocol also requires authentication. We do not want people spamming our (or other's) masterservers with unnecessarily fast sync request. If you want to sync with us, please email us on info@333networks.com # COPYING See file COPYING