How to install SRCDS

If this tutorial isn't everything you need, then you may be able to find out more help from http://forums.srcds.com

Okay, I'm sorry this isn't a tutorial for eventscripts, but I feel that getting your scripts to work can be a weary job. Setting up your own server enables just a selected few to be able to join to test your scripts, or if you wish it could save you a bit of dosh rather than buying from the internet.

SRCDS Stands for Source Dedicated Server. Instead of using the GUI Programme that comes with Steam, we will be using the console, as this is less performance hoar, and is easier to customize.

Start of by downloading the latest HLDSupdatetool (half-life dedicated server update tool) from this link here. Save it to a temporary location then open the installation wizard and run through the options. When it asks you to save it to a location, I highly recommend you use your secondary partition if you have one (in this case I'll be using D:.) On that partition, install it to a folder called SRCDS. Go to Notepad and copy and paste this command into notepad (obviously changing the directories to your own needs). For example if you put it on drive E:/Srcds then change the D: to E:). If you have it on C drive (your local drive) you do not need the first line. The first line only tells the command prompt to change the directory to a different directory. If you are already in drive C, you obviously do not need to change.



Go to file -> Save as ->
“File Name -> Update.Bat”
“Save As Type -> All Files”

Go to where you saved it, and double click the file, it should bring up Command Prompt, and begin downloading lots of files. After it's finished, it should look something like this:



If it doesn't, restart the Update.bat until you have it looking like the example above.

After these files have downloaded, you'll need to go into your directory (e.g. D:\SRCDS) to see if your files have downloaded correctly. The main file is <directory>/cstrike/. You have downloaded all the files necessary for running a server onto your PC.

Open up notepad, and copy and paste this inside it.



As we stated, if you are doing this on your C drive, you do not need the first line. An example of a C drive example is as follows:

(Note, on your C drive the \ before SRCDS is required as that tells it to start from the beggining of the directory; i.e. C:\ rather than C:\Users\<username>)

You can change the map to any map you'd like, but keep the port the same as Vista / Windows 7 do not like many ports; also change the maxplayers to the amount that you want. Do the exact same as what you did before, but call it server.bat, and make sure you save it as file type “All Files.” Execute that file, and a console should appear, at the bottom of the list it should say,



Proceed to right click Steam click servers, go to the LAN tab, and you should see "Counter-Strike Source" sitting there with 0/maxplayers in. If you don't, ensure you followed the guide properly. If it still isn't working, ask a question below. You can now go inside the server, however, it is just a plain server with nothing on so we want to change that .

The most important configuration file is the server.cfg. This is the barebones to any server, hosting all your settings of the server. I am going to give you my server.cfg, and you can change it to any settings you'd like. First, again, open notepad. Copy and paste all of this inside, and change to your preference.



Save this as server.cfg and as file type as “all files”. Save it to <SRCDS directory>/cstrike/cfg/.
Load up your server.bat again, and you should see in the console that the server.cfg has been loaded. If not, then you need to make sure that it's saved in the right location, and isn't saved as server.cfg.txt.

So you've got the main part of you server working, but now you want admin access to your server. So download this file here and right click, extract to -> <SRCDS Directory>/cstrike and hit unzip. It should say "some of these files already exist, do you wish to overwrite?"; hit yes to all. Go to <SRCDS Directory>/cstrike/addons and there should be a file inside called CreateVDF.exe. Run that file, and it'll ask you what game you want to install it for, obviously if your running a Counter-Strike Source server click that and click Create VDF. Okay, Nearly done. Open up your server.cfg once again, and at the bottom of the file, just underneath exec banned_user.cfg type this..

exec mani_server.cfg

Hit save and that's done . Go to <SRCDS Directory>/cstrike/cfg/mani_server.cfg and open it up. Change all those settings to how you desire and it will be fine. Next, what you need to do is make yourself an admin. Go into any game on CSS, and access the console by hitting the ~ button (for UK users it's the button under escape.) It should bring up a black box with lots of text inside. If not, then go to options -> keyboard -> advance -> enable developers console and hit enter. Inside the console type status. Lots of text will come up and one of the lines will say # (number) “Your username” “STEAM_0:x:xxxxxxxxx 59:58 etc etc” The important bit is the STEAM number. Copy that number (an example steam number would be STEAM_0:1:17190298.) Open up notepad (yes, again.) This bit can be quite annoying, but if you follow my details hopefully you wont go wrong. Copy and paste this in.

NB: If you don't want to create your own clients.txt, There is a tool that can automatically create the clients.txt find it here (Note. Requires you to have an account to download the file, It's free to register)



Okay... Copy and paste all of that into notepad... change the Real Name and SteamID and save it as clients.txt in D:/SRCDS/cstrike/cfg/mani_admin_plugin/ Okay.. Hopefully that'll be it. Load up your server. It should now look something similar to this.




go in game and to test if your admin, go into your console again (hit the ~ button or the button under escape for UK users.) Now type this exactly.



Hit enter and go back into game. If you press v it should say 1 of 2 things. 1, a popup menu comes up and says things like 1. Player management etc. This means that you have installed it correctly and you are an admin. On the other hand, it could say “You are not authorised to run this command.” If this happens, it means Mani admin installed correctly, but your clients.txt is wrong. Please run through my tutorial again to make sure you did it correctly. If it says nothing at all it means you've either bound the key wrongly in the console, or mani admin is not installed correctly. Please, go back and take a closer look.

So now your server is perfect, you want to get people to join? Okay, here's where it can get confusing. Are you being a router? If not then ctrl + f and type --non-router.

Okay, if you're reading this you're behind a router. A little bit of advise before we begin. Routers protect incoming traffic, and prevents people from accessing the internal network, so we open special doorways called ports, for the traffic to get through.

However, first priority is to get a static internal IP, so the routers ports stay assigned to your PC. Click "Start" and go to "Run" (On windows 7, Run is the simple bar at the bottom of the Start menu). Type in ncpa.cpl which will bring up your PC network “Local Area Connection”. Right click that, and select properties. Once inside properties, select “internet Protocol version 4 (TCP/IPv4)" and click properties. Once Inside that new popup You'll face a popup that asks you for options of:



Go to Command Prompt once again (run -> cmd), type ipconfig /all and hit enter. Read down till you find “Ipv4 Address,” “Default Gateway” “Subnet Mask” and “DNS Server.” Okay, write them all down, and simply insert them into the correct places inside the Internet Protocol version 4 (TCP/Ipv4) settings. Hit enter, and attempt to connect to the internet. If you can, then everything is fine. If not, just go back into your settings, and select Obtain IP address automatically and re-try again later.

So now that you have a static internal IP address, go to portforward and select your router. Click games and go to Counter-Strike. So say your router page is http://192.168.2.1 go to that and go to your ports page. Now, don't listen to Port Forwards port, I'll tell you the correct ports to open.



That's it. Save changes. Now, go to this link, and at the top-right of the page will be your external IP. Copy that and go back into your server.cfg. Above the "hostport" line at the top of the page add this. IP <your ip here> so for me the code would be.



But obviously your IP would be there instead.

*Tip for advanced users. Sign up an account at http://www.no-ip.org and then put your IP in and choose your domain name. So if you want your IP to be myclanserver.no-ip.org then put in myclanserver. Now instead of putting IP 81.108.194.81 in put IP myclanserver.no-ip.org in or whatever you put in as your name. All this does is make sure that if your IP changes, your friends will still connect to the same IP, rather than having to put in a different IP.

If you are behind a --non-router setup start here. If you are then go back up and do the steps above if not already done. So know you have your ports open, you now only have one more thing to do. This step is how to customize your Windows Firewall. (If you are running a different firewall such as ZoneAlarm, you'll have to figure out how to configure it on your own; I'm only explaining how to configure Windows Firewall.) Hit start for the last time, and in the "run" box, type in firewall.cpl. On the left hand side will be an option to “Allow a programme through Windows Firewall.” Click that and view the window. At the bottom of that window will be a button that says “Add a port” so click that. For the name call it CSS1 and add port 27015 to UDP. Okay, now click The “Open Port” button 1 more time, and call it CSS2, and add port 27015 to TCP. Now click finish. Close everything, and finally you are done. Load up your server, and to get your friends to connect, just tell them to add yourIP:27015 to their favourites. So if your IP is 81.108.194.81 then tell them to add 81.108.194.81:27015 to their favourite. If you used the no-ip service then tell them to add myclanserver.no-ip.org:27015 to their favourites, or whatever it is.

NOTE! You connect on your INTERNAL IP (it'll be something like 192.168.2.65:27015, and it'll be on your LAN tab) however, your friends will connect on your WAN IP (The 81.108.194:27015 IP or whatever it is). They can't right click you in friends, and click 'Join Game.' It will not work that way, they must add your IP to favourites and connect to it that way for it to work.

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FAQ list!
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Question
I get a winstock error when running the update tool. It downloads all the maps, then it says there is an error connecting.
Any idea's?

Answer:
1. delete InstallRecord.blob found in ./srcds
2. add -verify_all to the command line of the update.bat
3. run it until srcds.exe shows up

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Question

I keep getting the error "Couldn't allocate dedicated UDP port" when I try to start my server. How can I fix that?


Answer:

When the server cannot allocate a dedicated UDP port, generally it is trying to load up the server via an external IP, however, it's on a local machine. The most common reason for this is if you've added your external IP onto your command line (server.bat) Now, the easy way to fix this is to delete the +IP command from the server.bat, it is not even mandatory that it is there.

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Question

I did everything the guide told me to about PortForwarding, yet when I insert my server's IP into my favourites, it says <not responding>, and it doesn't even show up on the LAN tab, but the console initiates and says that Connection to VAC Servers Successful.

Answer:

Have you got any firewalls running? I've noticed an error that's happening with Vista's version of ZoneAlarm. When running the server, everything looks fine and dandy, but ZA is secretly blocking this. To fix this, just right click zone alarm and switch it to 'Game Mode'. If you've opened the exact right ports as me, and you're still having problems, please post a couple of screen shots (if you can) and I will try my best. But first, please attempt to shut down all firewalls, and other things that maybe blocking. If this still persists, PM me and I will teach you how to DMZ for a short time only (however, again, this problem is only for a short fix, it is not recommended as a long-term fix.)

I get a winstock error when running the update tool. It downloads all the maps, then it says there is an error connecting.
Any idea's?

1. delete InstallRecord.blob found in ./srcds
2. add -verify_all to the command line of the update.bat
3. run it untill srcds.exe shows up

Thanks!
+w00t

Nice tut freddukes! Don't forget to give the link to http://www.srcds.com/ for a little extra help.

Has anyone else tried this?

Make a note about the drive letter. Some people mainly use C: and such.

Hi there,
of couse nice tutorial, but I have coded a tool in DOS which helps you to update and start servers. It is called: ServerControl. It is very easy and small.

i keep getting the error "Couldn't allocate dedicated SourceTV UDP port" when i try to start my server. how can i fix that?

Nice Tut!

As a comment - when trying to run the HLDSUpdateTool.exe from the bat file you may have to try running it a few times before it starts properly if you run Windows OneCare (or windows firewall).

It keeps asking to connect and if it can't connect it closes
Just persevere

i dont know what my username or password is for 2wire how to find out what it is?

i did everything you told me for port forwarding and it says server is not responding. Also the server doesn't show up in the LAN tab. i have done everything the guide says.

Nice tut - it's stickied.

Hmmm SourceTV UDP port? Usually if that error comes up it's because you've gave your External IP in the command line... Try deleteing "+ip [external IP]" from your command line and run it again.



Well I can't really help you with this... Generally the username is admin or username or blank and the password is generally 'admin' or blank.... If none work, then the only thing I could try is asking someone who would know (eg. If you're parents set it up or something) or if you set it up and forgot the password, if you're really that desperate, you could attempt to reset to factory defaults and set the router up again. However, this is not recomended.



Have you got any firewalls running? I've noticed an error that's happening with Vista's version of ZoneAlarm. When running the server, everything looks fine and dandy, but ZA is secretly blocking this. To fix this, just right click zone alarm and switch it to 'Game Mode'. If you've opened the EXACT right ports as me, and you're still having problems, please post a couple of screen shots (if you can) and I will try my best. But first, please attempt to shut down all firewalls, and other things that maybe blocking. If this still persists, I will teach you how to DMZ for a short time only (however, again, this problem is only for a short fix, it is not recommended as a long-term fix.)

A final note from me:
Sorry for not taking notice of this thread, I haven't been on tutorials in ages lol, I was surprised to see this with so much interest and have it stickied. Thank you again, and I will make sure I will update this as much as possible. I am now going to update the FAQ section, to provide possible fixes for people. Thank you again.

-Freddukes

ive got no clue what ZoneAlarm is. if its already downloaded whats its root directory. the first two problems i was able to fix btw.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZoneAlarm

I would highly recommend against it

Zone alarm is a free firewall, it's the most popular choice for a free firewall, and although SD doesn't advise using it, in my opinion, it used to be the best one on the net, until that is, they went so-called Vista Compatible. But if you don't know what it is then most likely you not have it... Hmm... What firewall have you got on? Norton's? Windows? Bull guard? ZoneAlarm? etc... If you have Windows firewall on are you sure you customized it like mine? Note... Is this an XP or A Vista's server? This is meant for a Vista tutorial, my friend couldn't open port 27030 under XP, but I couldn't open port 27015 under Vista... So I had to swap, however, if you are under XP, you will need to change the Ports to 27015... Please can I have more help about the problems you're facing? The more I know, the Higher chance you have of me helping you

ive got nortons firewall. ive tried disabling it then running the server but it dosent help. yes i do have vista