Dockerized LGSM Rust Dedicated Server

This project combines Docker, Rust Dedicated Server, and Linux GSM all in one! Self-hosted Rust dedicated server management made easy.

• Play on your server
• Playing multiplayer
• Prerequisites
• Getting started
• Server power management
  • Starting the server
  • Graceful shutdown
  • Uninstallation
• Game Server Administration
  • Login shell
  • RCON: Remote Admin Console
    • RCON remote access
  • Limiting server resources
  • Backup and restore from backup
  • Log management
  • Easy Anti-Cheat
• Server Mods
  • Oxide mods
  • Custom mods
  • Troubleshooting: Mods failing to load
  • Updating mod configuration
• Customize Map
  • Generated Maps
  • Custom Maps
    • Self-hosted custom maps
    • Remotely hosted custom maps
    • Observer Island

Play on your server

By default your server is forwarding port 28015/UDP to all interfaces so that you can use router port forwarding to play multiplayer.

If you're playing on the same machine from Proton on Linux, then press F1 to open console and connect with:

client.connect 127.0.0.1:28015

You may need to enter a domain name or alternate IP address if you're playing Rust from a different computer.

Playing multiplayer

Enable port forwarding on your router for the following ports.

• 28015/udp (required for game clients)
• 8000/tcp (optional: only required if self-hosting a custom map)

Prerequisites

• 4GB of RAM if the server is remotely hosted (total memory including OS). Alternately, 16GB of RAM if you're going to host a dedicated server and play on the same machine. These memory recommendations are just estimates and minimum requirements for memory could be much lower.

• You have Git installed and cloned this repository to work with locally.

  git clone https://github.com/samrocketman/docker-compose-lgsm-rust-dedicated-server
  

• Install Docker on Linux. Docker on Windows or Mac would probably work but is entirely untested. Docker for Mac has known performance issues unrelated to Rust.

• Install docker compose. This typically comes separate from Docker.

Getting started

If you don't want to customize anything, then start the server. It will generate a 3K map using a random seed which will persist when restarting the server.

docker compose up -d

It may take 15 minutes or longer for the server to start the first time depending on your internet connection. This is because it has to download Rust among other server setup tasks. You can monitor the server logs at any time (to see progress) with the following command.

docker compose logs -f

Press CTRL+C to exit logs.

Server power management

Starting the server

docker compose up -d

It may take at 5 minutes or longer to start depending on your internet connection.

See logs with the following command (CTRL+C to cancel).

docker compose logs -f

Graceful shutdown

docker compose down

Uninstallation

To completely uninstall and delete all Rust data run the following command.

docker compose down -v --rmi all

Remove this Git repository for final cleanup.

Game Server Administration

Login shell

If you want a shell login to your server, then run the following command from the root of this repository.

./admin/shell.sh

# alternately if you need root shell access
./admin/shell.sh root

RCON: Remote Admin Console

You can access the Rust RCON interface using any RCON client. I recommend one of the following clients.

• https://facepunch.github.io/webrcon Facepunch official client
• http://rcon.io/login community RCON client

The RCON interface is password protected. Reveal the password using the following command.

./admin/get-rcon-pass.sh

The script will output your RCON password as well as additional instructions for your web browser to access the RCON console.

RCON remote access

Rust RCON connection uses ws:// websocket protocol. It does not support secure websockets (wss://). Because of this, it is not fit for secure internet communication. All of your passwords would be sent over plain text.

The recommended way to access RCON remotely from Linux is to forward the RCON port to your machine over SSH and connecting to the remote host over localhost on your own machine. The following SSH command makes RCON available on localhost.

ssh -vNL 127.0.0.1:28016:127.0.0.1:28016 [email protected]

If you still want your RCON interface to be publicy available (I don't recommend this), then you can set the RUST_RCON_INTERFACE variable before starting the server.

docker compose down
export RUST_RCON_INTERFACE=0.0.0.0
docker compose up -d

Limiting server resources

In the docker-compose.yml file, there's two settings you can adjust to limit how much CPU and memory the dedicated server is allowed. By default, it is set to dedicated server recommended values for extremly high populations:

cpu_count: 2
mem_limit: 8gb

You can adust the resources to your liking. Generally, I recommend to not set the server below 2 CPUs and 2gb of memory (RAM). These policies ensure the server can't use more than these limits.

You can inspect server resource usage with the following command.

docker stats

If you see heavy resource usage and your server is performing poorly, then you might need to allocate more resources. 100% CPU usage is fine but if you start seeing 600% usage, then that's an indicator you need to start increasing the cpu_count limit for Rust.

Backup and restore from backup

The following command is compatible with cron jobs and running from the root of the repository.

./admin/backup/create-backup.sh

If you run create-backup.sh from a cron job, then be sure to reference it by its full path.

List backups,

./admin/backup/list-backups.sh

Will show you what backup files have been created along with their date and time of creation. You could then restore a backup of your choice which would destroy the running server in order to restore it from a backup.

./admin/backup/restore-backup.sh ./backups/file.tgz

Log management

There's a few scripts to help you manage logs and log size on disk in the Rust server. The following script will create a backup of all LGSM and server logs.

./admin/logs/create-backup.sh

To list known log file backups run the following command.

./admin/logs/list-backups.sh

Logs over time can take up a lot of disk storage. To reclaim disk space and deleted unused logs, run the following command.

./admin/logs/clean.sh

Easy Anti-Cheat

By default, EAC is disabled for Linux clients. Enable EAC with the following shell variable in rust-environment.sh.

export ENABLE_RUST_EAC=1

If EAC is enabled, Linux clients will not be able to connect and your server will be listed in the in-game server browser.

Server Mods

Oxide plugins and custom mods are supported. I use the term mods and plugins interchangeably.

Oxide mods are installed and updated automatically on every server start. However, if you have a custom mod that has a name conflict with an official Oxide mod, then the custom mod will be used.

Oxide mods

To automatically install mods, create a new text file: mod-configs/plugins.txt. Add what plugins you would like in your rust server; one plugin per line.

For example, let's say you want the following plugins:

• Backpacks
• Chest Stacks

The download links for both of those plugins would be Backpacks.cs and ChestStacks.cs. Your mod-configs/plugins.txt would need to have the following contents.

# example mod-configs/plugins.txt
# code comments are supported along with blank lines
Backpacks
ChestStacks

When the server boots, the mods will be automatically downloaded from uMod. If they already exist, then updates will be checked instead.

If you edit mod-configs/plugins.txt, then you can reload plugins without restarting the server. Run the following command.

./admin/get-or-update-oxide-plugins.sh

If you remove a plugin from mod-configs/plugins.txt, then it will be deleted from your server automatically.

You can also remove mods from mod-configs/plugins.txt by starting the line with a #. This allows you to delete the plugin from the server but also keep it around in case you want to re-enable it later.

Custom mods

If you're writing your own custom mod, then the file name must end with .cs. For example, MyCustomMod.cs. Place any .cs files into the custom-mods/ directory. Next time your server

You can edit your mods as much as you want without affecting the mod used by the server. You can copy and update to your custom mod to the server using the following command.

./admin/get-or-update-oxide-plugins.sh

If you delete a custom mod from custom-mods/ folder, then it will be removed from the server automatically.

Harmony mods

Add Harmony mods to harmony-mods folder. It will be available to your Rust maps such as Observer Island.

Troubleshooting: Mods failing to load

Sometimes, mods will fail to load into Oxide because of differences between Windows and Linux. An example is the following error message.

FurnaceSplitter was compiled successfully in 2345ms
Unable to find main plugin class: FurnaceSplitter
No previous version to rollback plugin: FurnaceSplitter

To fix this error run the following command.

./admin/bugfix-oxide-plugins.sh

Then, in the RCON console try reloading the oxide plugin.

oxide.reload FurnaceSplitter

Updating mod configuration

Oxide Mods automatically generate plugin config which is accessible by editing files in the mod-configs/ directory. If you edit a JSON config you can open up the web management RCON console to reload the plugin (See RCON: Remote Admin Console for how to access RCON console).

Use console command:

oxide.reload plugin_name

Or to reload all plugins:

oxide.reload *

Use the uMod download name of the plugin. For example, if you download from uMod Backpacks.cs, then you need only add Backpacks to mod-configs/plugins.txt.

Customize Map

You can have a randomly generated map with a seed or a custom map.

Generated Maps

Note: Generated Map settings are completely ignored if you've configured a Custom Map.

You can uncomment and change the following variables in rust-environment.sh.

• seed
• salt
• worldsize

If you want to wipe the map and start from another random see, then use ./admin/regenerate-map.sh. You can also reference this script by its full path from a cron job (it will not wipe blueprints.

Weekly map wipe (but not BP wipe) cron job:

@weekly /path/to/admin/regenerate-map.sh skip-prompt

# or specify time of cron; e.g. every sunday at 1am
0 1 * * 7 /path/to/admin/regenerate-map.sh skip-prompt

Custom Maps

Please note:

Your map file should be hosted on a public web-site that works 24/7, since new players of your server will download the map from that URL, not from your Rust server. If your URL link doesn't work then players that haven't downloaded the map yet won't be able to join the server.

• facepunch Wiki: Hosting a custom map

There's two ways a custom map is supported.

1. Self-hosted
2. Remotely hosted

Self-hosted custom maps

If you're playing multi-player and self hosting your Map, then there's two extra configuration items you must toggle.

• Port forward port 8000/tcp to your router.
• Set MAP_BASE_URL variable in rust-environment.sh to your public IP where clients can download the map.

Your custom map file name must end with .map. Download your custom map locally to your computer and place it in the custom-maps/ directory.

If you have more than one map, then the first map alphabetically is used. If you would like to have multiple custom maps and change the map, then it is recommended you prefix all maps with a 4 digit number. For example,

0001_custom-map.map
0002_custom-map.map
0003_custom-map.map
... etc

If you wish to use a Generated Map, then all files ending with .map must be removed from custom-maps/ directory. Just having the custom map file in that directory is what enables the Custom Map logic.

Remotely hosted custom maps

If you're using a public file serving service separate from your game server (such as Dropbox), then set CUSTOM_MAP_URL variable in rust-environment.sh. No extra configuration is required.

Observer Island

If you want to play locally for yourself only, then setup is very straight forward.

cd custom-maps/
unzip ~/Downloads/observer-island.zip

# the map should be in the current directory
ls
# next move the harmony mods to the appropriate location
mv Mods/* ../harmony-mods/

# clean up remaining files so that only the map remains
rm -r changelog.txt Mods observer-island-* Prefabs/

# go back to the root of this repository and start the dedicated server
cd ..
docker compose up -d

After about 5 minutes you should be able to connect to localhost:28015. If you want to make this map available for multiplayer within your LAN or worldwide refer to the previous sections for custom map hosting for remote play.

Road Map

• ✔️ Initial working vanilla server
• ✔️ Basic admin actions like shell login and RCON access
• ✔️ Support for adding server mods and automatic mod updates
• ✔️ Limit server resources
• ✔️ Support for customizing initial Map generation on first time startup.
• ✔️ Support for custom server mods (Oxide plugins)
• ✔️ Support for custom Maps.
• ✔️ Improve documentation