So there I was, installing Windows on my nephews computer for the umpteenth time and I thought to myself : what if I do it correctly this time and see how long it will last. Usually I had just thrown windows on it, updated it, installed the bare essentials and thrown it back to the wolves.

2 months ago I decided to act on an idea that had been floating around in my cranium for a long time.  It sounded simple enough,  gather all the data pertaining to the price of oil in Iceland in one location and present it on a simple front end.  However once I started working on it and the ball was rolling I learned it wasn't as simple as I thought it would be.  So during these past weeks I have learned a lo

This is just a note to myself for configuring iptables on debian 6 (and other linux derivatives).

Flush the current configuration

#iptables --flush

Create all the chains I need

#iptables -N <NAME>

Export the current config to a new config file ...

While retasking a fairly old Windows 2003 server into a web server I ran into a weird error after installing the IIS6 service.

The errors I got when trying to start the two sites I had configured were :

"The format of the specified network name is invalid"

and

"The network location cannot be reached.  For Information about network troubleshooting see Windows Help."

Part 4 : Extras.  Host and MOTD banners, Exclusive servers and lobby.

   How do you change the banners on your server?.. How do you connect to your server if you create a new lobby ?..  Yes,  I had those same questions when my server was up and running,  the first one about the banners was an easy one.. the one about creating a new lobby and connecting to your server.. that one required some Console magic. was no problem after Valve fixed the Steamgroup servers.

Part 3: Monitoring the dedicated server.

Since the game is not run as a service or as a daemon but as a program you have to stay logged on to the server as the user while the server is running,  depending on your situation this might be bothersome. Optimally a dedicated server should be run as a service,  you start it and can go do something else on the computer,  even log outof your user. This is what I wanted to achieve from the get go, but I ran into some problems that I solved in the end.

 Part 2 : The Firewall configuration

Here we will go briefly over how to configure iptables to use with Left 4 Dead 2 (and other Steam games in general).  This is a short and basic guide

Part 1 : Setting up the environment and installing the server

Nothing is worse than high latency (lag) in online games,  especially in Left 4 Dead 2 when you're trying to have a relaxing zombie shooting session with couple of friends.  The best way to combat this is playing on a Dedicated server.  Which is exactly what I set out to do,  getting L4D2 dedicated server to run on my linux box.

I didn't find any good comprehensive guide on how to do this for linux that tackled this adequately so after lots and lots of googling and running into weird problems (mainly concerning running srcds_run using nohup) I finally have a running dedicated Left 4 Dead 2 server with easy way to run it in the background. So let's get started shall we.