Matchmaking w/ Linux dedi server?

[korb]

Greetings!

With the excellent guidance of the gentlemen on this forum I now have my Linux (Ubuntu 8.04) dedicated Left4Dead server up and running (using the sv_steamgroup setting to limit access to my work mates).

When we start l4d now, we see my server in the "Steam Group Servers" list on the main menu page. By clicking on that server we are able to join the game, and that works fine.

However, what I'd like to do is to be able to use the lobby to matchmake a game and have it use my server. Is that possible?

Right now, I have "sv_allow_lobby_connect_only 0" - if I change that to "1" will it then allow us to set the game/campaign, difficulty level, characters, etc. from the matchmaking screen and then start the server when we start the game?

I think I've seen this referenced as a "listening server" elsewhere, but I cannot find any documentation that describes how to get the server to operate in this mode.

Thanks,
Bill

[pengy]

sv_searchkey, set that on your server, then run that exact same command on your console once you have the lobby ready and search.

[korb]

OK, I made this change, and then opened my console and set it on the client. However, when I search, it comes back after a minute and says it could not find a server matching my settings.

This leads to the next question: my server is behind a firewall. Are there additional ports that need to be opened in order to use the server in this mode (i.e., matchmaking ports)? If so, what are those ports?

Thanks much for your help!

Bill

P.S. BTW, the actual setting was sv_search_key (the second "_" is essential or the server complains that it is an unknown command).

[korb]

Some additional info.

I checked my firewall config, and some of the ports my servers were using were being blocked, so I opened them (I am currently forking six servers, and some of them were ending up out of the range I had opened, so I expanded the port range).

At this point, netstat -an shows me that I am listening on UDP ports 26901-26906, 27005-27010, 27016-27027, and TCP ports 27016-27019, 27024, & 27026. I have opened the same ranges on both TCP & UDP for good measure: 27000-27050 & 26900-26950.

Then I entered my sv_search_key command in my game console, started a lobby, and initiated the game. Same result a minute or so later: no servers matching my search were found.

Here's my current server.cfg for one of the forked servers:

Code:

hostname "My server"
z_difficulty "hard"
rcon_password "notachance"
map "l4d_hospital01_apartment"
sv_region 0
sv_lan 0
sv_contact "me@domain.com"
sv_steamgroup_exclusive 1
sv_steamgroup 000000
sv_allow_lobby_connect_only 1
sv_search_key "myKey"
log on
sv_logbans 1
sv_logecho 1
sv_logfile 1
sv_log_onefile 0

Note that I tried sv_allow_lobby_connect_only set to both 0 & 1, and it made no difference.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Bill

korb Wrote:OK, I made this change, and then opened my console and set it on the client. However, when I search, it comes back after a minute and says it could not find a server matching my settings.

This leads to the next question: my server is behind a firewall. Are there additional ports that need to be opened in order to use the server in this mode (i.e., matchmaking ports)? If so, what are those ports?

Thanks much for your help!

Bill

P.S. BTW, the actual setting was sv_search_key (the second "_" is essential or the server complains that it is an unknown command).

[korb]

I discovered the source of my problem: I had both sv_search_key and sv_steamgroup
specified, and the latter overrides the former such that the search key was then
not used.

I removed my sv_steamgroup & sv_steamgroup_exclusive cvars and restarted my servers. I was then able to specify sv_search_key myServerName in the game console (or in the autoexec.cfg file in the left4dead\cfg folder) and I did indeed connect from the lobby to my own server!

Thanks,
Bill