Thank you for this tutorial, I am using hard-links, but there are some
issues because of server writing to files therefore I had to change the
owner of base files to root, but that makes more problems :) I will
definitely look at the unionfs.
On 2012.10.29. 19:17, Lord_Jeremy wrote:
Hey all. For a while I've been operating multiple TF2 servers off the same data
files, where all each instance has is a separate /cfg and /addons directory.
I'm using a program called Unionfs-fuse, which allows you to mount directories
in layers over each other. (I'm using the FUSE variant for simplicities sake.
The kernelspace version would theoretically have better performance but I
haven't noticed any issues that would necessitate it.)
The way I've set up my directory mounts, I start with a "common" data files folder that is
essentially a complete source game install. For each server instance, I create a "config" folder
that contains just the server-specific files. So for a tf2 server that would be along the lines of
tf-config-1/orangebox/tf/addons and tf-config-1/orangebox/tf/cfg. Then I create an empty directory for the
actual server "instance". Now I use Unionfs to mount the common directory as readonly and the
corresponding config directory as readwrite for each specific instance directory. The way Unionfs works, if
the top level directory (config) doesn't contain a file, it will look in the bottom level common directory
for it. When the server writes files back to the instance directory that it's run from, they're actually put
in the config directory. So after running the server, the config directory will get populated with a bunch of
caching and log files and the like.
Unionfs-fuse is a filesystem type as recognized by mount, though the package I use also
has an actual unionfs-fuse command which is effectively an alias to mount. I use the
"copy on write" option which means that if the server tries to write back to a
file which is in the readonly common location, it will first copy it to the readwrite
config location.
For the purposes of updating, I also created another directory that I use the
steam updater on. This directory has the common directory mounted as readwrite
initially. I also mount two dummy directories over the addons and cfg paths so
that if the updater writes anything to those locations it doesn't get put back
into common.
For ease of configuration, I put several base configuration files in the common directory's cfg
location. For example, I've got a "standard-server.cfg" file which sets up all the
options for my standard servers. I've also got "mvm-server.cfg" which sets up an MvM
server. Then in each server-specific config's cfg directory I've got a server.cfg that execs one of
the common cfgs and then sets up that particular server's specific options. In practice, that's
usually just the quickplay identity and the hostname. Although it makes it easy for me to just
tweak a couple small options. E.g. for the halloween event I changed the map rotation for a couple
of my servers in their specific cfgs. I also have a maplists directory in the common tree that just
has a bunch of text files with maplists that can be loaded both via the mapcycle cvar and in the
sourcemod plugin configurations.
I've written up a few shell scripts that make my server management easier. One
of them can either mount or unmount all of the layered filesystems all at once.
I call this script from an init script so that the mounts are automatically
performed when the system boots.
http://pastebin.com/dw6FLhB8
This script is just a shortcut for using steam to update servers. I created it
before I was using the shared data mounts as it meant I could just chain all
the server folders as parameters and it would update them one at a time.
http://pastebin.com/VV6WcmHs
This script is a shortcut for updating sourcemod. Due to limitations of
sourcemod itself there has to be a separate addons folder for each server.
Therefore I created this script to untar the downloaded package and copy some
of the contents to a game server's addons directory. It leaves the configs
directory alone.
http://pastebin.com/tBzqwZQW
So I've been using this system for several months with as many as 10 servers
sharing one common data directory. It saves a TON of disk space (each config
folder ends up being about 500 MB with all the cached files) and I'm
considering replacing the physical disk in one of my servers with an SSD to see
how it performs. I also only have to run the updater once to get all the
servers on a box up to date. Adding a new server is just a matter of making a
new config and instance directory and adding its name to the mount script. Feel
free to ask me any questions. Cheers!
-Jeremy
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