Left 4 Dead dedicated server install guide for CentOS

Gaming servers are widely searched for by the internet-savvy online gamers. L4D or the Left 4 Dead is a popular game played online. With multi and single player mode, and newer version L4D 2 in the market, available with all its online cheat codes, many a gamer find this game very compelling. Gaming servers enjoy heavy inbound traffic. Installing a gaming console on a Linux distribution server such as CentOS may seem a daunting task, for a new user to Linux systems. Listed below are steps to configure, install, update and run the L4D server on Linux distribution like CentOS.

In order to successfully install L4D gaming console in CentOS server, it must be up to date and secure. StreamCMD is the required tool for downloading and installing the same. The steps for installing should also include, creating a new user named l4d and setting up of, a strong password to provide enhanced security to it.

Updating your Server – Listed below are steps to update the server.

yum update

yum upgrade -y

Make it secure

Adding a user and secure password for a gaming console is an important necessity.

adduser gameserver

passwd gameserver

Firewall permissions and ports

In order for the gaming console to work properly, necessary firewall ports must be opened. Appropriate firewall port additions for allowing L4D access should be given in the command prompt. The following commands achieve this purpose.

firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=27015/tcp --permanent

firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=27015/udp --permanent

firewall-cmd --reload

Dependency Installation

SteamCMD may require certain system libraries for successful installation. The following command installs the dependent libraries for SteamCMD.

yum install glibc.i686 libstdc++.i686 -y

Installing Your Left 4 Dead Server

Once the system is up to date and the user name has been added, download and installation procedure for SteamCMD must be followed up in the user home directory. Use the following commands.

su gameserver

cd ~

wget https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/client/installer/steamcmd_linux.tar.gz

tar xf steamcmd_linux.tar.gz

Steps to install L4D using SteamCMD

Gaming files are installed via the following command which makes use of SteamCMD.

./steamcmd.sh +login anonymous +force_install_dir ./l4d +app_update 222840 validate +quit

On successful installation, the screen shows:

Success! App '222840' fully installed.


Customize Your server for Gaming Console

Installation of L4D onto the server does not run it in the background session. One needs to customize the configuration file and create an update file in the home directory for the gameserver user. Using this update file, a regular update must be done as and when required. Begin the customization with opening server configuration file, ''server.cfg'' in Nano editor.

nano ~/l4d/left4dead/cfg/server.cfg

In the file, edit the parameters for server name and password according to your preferences. The parameters for the same are, ServerName, RconPassword. Listed below are the commands to do the same.

hostname "ServerName"

rcon_password RconPassword

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The update file must be present in the home directory of the gameserver user. Use nano for creating and editing the file.

nano /home/ gameserver /update_l4d.txt

This file should consist of the following commands.

login anonymous

force_install_dir ./l4d

app_update 222840

quit

The command to update the server is,

cd ~ && ./steamcmd.sh +runscript update_l4d.txt

The following commands run the gaming console server in a background session on screen.

cd /home/ gameserver /l4d/

screen -dmS gameserver ./srcds_run -console -game left4dead -port 27015 +map l4d_farm04_barn +maxplayers 4 +exec server.cfg

Shutting down the server is done easily with the following command.