I recently purchased a cloud SSD server from Digital Ocean for a couple projects I’ve been working on. (If your in the market for a budget cloud server, don’t look any further.) I decided I would set up a CS:GO server to mess around with. It was surprisingly easy, so in this post I’ll explain how I set up my own CS:GO dedicated server in about 5 minutes.

1) Download and Start the Steam Command Line Tool:

You don’t need root to run the server, so it’s recommended you do the installation with a regular user.

wget http://media.steampowered.com/client/steamcmd_linux.tar.gz tar -xvzf steamcmd_linux.tar.gz ./steamcmd.sh

2 ) Install the CSGO Dedicated Server:

At the Steam> prompt:

Login to Steam: (anonymous is fine for installing CS:GO)

login anonymous

NOTE: If you see “Login Failure: No Connection”, run these commands (outside of steamcmd) to open up the ports that steam uses:

iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --sport 27000:27030 --dport 1025:65355 -j ACCEPT iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --sport 4380 --dport 1025:65355 -j ACCEPT

Choose an Install Directory:

force_install_dir ./csgoserver/

Install and validate CS:GO:

app_update 740 validate

3) Configure and Start the Server

Create the file server.cfg in /csgo/cfg/ and add these lines:

hostname "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Dedicated Server" rcon_password "<password>"

You can now start the server with the ./srcds_run command.

The command below will start a deathmatch server on de_dust2 (be sure to fill in your IP address before running it):

./srcds_run -game csgo -console -usercon +ip xxx.xxx.xx.xx -port 27015 +game_type 1 +game_mode 2 +mapgroup mg_bomb +map de_dust2

That’s it, you’re done!

You can now open CS:GO and run “connect xxx.xxx.xx.xx” in the console. You can run rcon commands from within the game by first running “rcon_password <password>”, and then “rcon <command>”. Here is a short list of commands to get you started.

Have Fun!

P.S. If you use this link you’ll get your first two months at Digital Ocean for free!

Follow @ksgsloan

