Ark Server on ubuntu not able to be found

[Laynord]

hi there i'm trying to make an ark server for friends i followed multiple tutorials on the web / wiki of the game
The server launches but does not listen on the port it's using nor is it able to be seen anywhere not even locally
I have logs indicating the server started and even tried and succeded to launch an event though it is still no able to be found
I have all foreign port redirected to the machine where the server runs May be usefull screens (last log from restart and message i get when i start it may ignore previous tries with different script ) : https://imgur.com/a/sQIeYnf / Screens to show the program is running and supposed to do stuff : https://imgur.com/a/wWKTkNv

This is the script i use to start said server : 
Deleting the script cause it contains password and maybe the admin psswd

 

[DirkInSA]

I think your -server parameter is redundant? You are launching the "server" executable. -log is also not very useful, it dumps some steam start / stop / connection data (but it could be useful to look inside that log to see if any glaring error pops out)

I note that you are not defining an explicit save directory for the map ... ?AltSaveDirectoryName=myLinuxIsland. It should not stop launch - but is something that you probably want to do.

I have had no success with MultiHome, I think that is supposed to be used for Epic clients that don't speak the "Steam" protocol.

Your "top" clearly shows the task running - what would be more interesting is a netstat -a4np to see what listening ports are actually open (and if ShooterGame has any open listening ports). It is also interesting that there are a bunch of VERY high use tasks active on the machine, with your load average being like 6. This is not normal! And Ark is a very resource intensive thing. Perhaps you should try whilst all those other tasks shown in top are not started. (A bunch of java invocations, and a couple of "tracker xxx" tasks). The linux box is clearly very "busy", is there not a different process that has already allocated UDP 7777 and 27015? So ShooterGame cannot grab them?

Note very well that without your internet gateway or router having a hairpin or loopback NAT then you will not connect to the server from your LAN. Is the linux machine able to talk to the internet? You say "all foreign ports" are redirected to the linux box? The NAT setup for running a server on a LAN is not simple.

[Laynord]

8 hours ago, DirkInSA said:

I think your -server parameter is redundant? You are launching the "server" executable. -log is also not very useful, it dumps some steam start / stop / connection data (but it could be useful to look inside that log to see if any glaring error pops out)

I note that you are not defining an explicit save directory for the map ... ?AltSaveDirectoryName=myLinuxIsland. It should not stop launch - but is something that you probably want to do.

I have had no success with MultiHome, I think that is supposed to be used for Epic clients that don't speak the "Steam" protocol.

Your "top" clearly shows the task running - what would be more interesting is a netstat -a4np to see what listening ports are actually open (and if ShooterGame has any open listening ports). It is also interesting that there are a bunch of VERY high use tasks active on the machine, with your load average being like 6. This is not normal! And Ark is a very resource intensive thing. Perhaps you should try whilst all those other tasks shown in top are not started. (A bunch of java invocations, and a couple of "tracker xxx" tasks). The linux box is clearly very "busy", is there not a different process that has already allocated UDP 7777 and 27015? So ShooterGame cannot grab them?

Note very well that without your internet gateway or router having a hairpin or loopback NAT then you will not connect to the server from your LAN. Is the linux machine able to talk to the internet? You say "all foreign ports" are redirected to the linux box? The NAT setup for running a server on a LAN is not simple.

Well to start thx for the clarification on some setup parameters just followed some guilde from the wiki and an host provider ( that i do not use ) 
Furthermore the logs help me at least know that the server exist and is able to launch event and give me time witch is started so from my pov its not useless for troubleshooting atm ( after letting the server run even if not accessible it fed the main log file with save info ( basic one at that ) : https://imgur.com/a/RhojPC7 )
For the map directory the default one doesnt bother me as it is still in the same directory : "Server_Files/ShooterGame/Saved/SavedArks"

The other programs should not affect ark it is at 6G of ram usage but the server has 202 G so its not a probem https://imgur.com/a/vmzMX18
Yes the linux machine is able to talk to te internet it already hosts hother servers ( minecraft as the java processes ) 
"he NAT setup for running a server on a LAN is not simple." Yes it is i'm in france and have a dmz that redirects all trafic to my server 
Exept some ports for security measures that i redirect on a dummy machine
The second screenshot clearly shows that the port are not used by anything other than shootergame but that it still isnt listening to them despite beeing listed on them i put it back here but was last lilnk of the message https://imgur.com/a/wWKTkNv )

For the part of the ports already beeing used nope i tried with already busy ports and it doesnt start .

[DirkInSA]

1 hour ago, Laynord said:

The second screenshot clearly shows that the port are not used by anything other than shootergame but that it still isnt listening to them despite beeing listed on them i put it back here but was last lilnk of the message https://imgur.com/a/wWKTkNv )

Sorry - I missed the second netstat screen shot.

Yes, the server appears to up and listening correctly! The only other thing I can suggest is to remove the -multihome start parameter. (If you MUST have that to support epic game clients, then I think it should be the external www address that fronts the linux box, not the linux box's local LAN address - but firstly try without that parameter to see if BattleMetrics { https://www.battlemetrics.com/ } sees the server. Note BattleMetrics can take like 15 minutes to pick up a newly started server.)

 

1 hour ago, Laynord said:

Yes it is i'm in france and have a dmz that redirects all trafic to my server

OK cool - but there could still be an issue if you are running the linux machine on the same local network as your gaming machine (in other words you are hosting the server yourself at home, not on a separate "in the cloud" machine). I also ran MineCraft servers here with no issue, but my gateway setup without a NAT loopback entry in iptables did not allow Ark servers to work. This is only an issue if your server is on the same network as your game client, and will only stop YOU from connecting to the server. External game clients (and BattleMetrics) should be OK.

(That is a MONSTER server !!!!!!!!)

[Pipinghot]

1 hour ago, Laynord said:

Well to start thx for the clarification on some setup parameters just followed some guilde from the wiki and an host provider ( that i do not use )

Your startup looks good to me. In case this is useful to you, I'm running on Linux and this is what my startup looks like (note: I'm running ARK as a service).

Service Path = /etc/systemd/system/ark-dedicated-theisland.service

 

ExecStart=/mnt/raid/steam/Steam/arkdedicated/ShooterGame/Binaries/Linux/ShooterGameServer TheIsland?listen?SessionName=MyTheIsland?ServerPassword=<#####>?AltSaveDirectoryName=Island?MultiHome=192.168.1.15?Port=7777?QueryPort=27015 -NoTransferFromFiltering -server -log -clusterid=MyCluster

 

1 hour ago, Laynord said:

For the map directory the default one doesnt bother me as it is still in the same directory : "Server_Files/ShooterGame/Saved/SavedArks"

If you're going to run other maps in the future, or if you're thinking about running more than one map at a time, you will definitely want a separate AltSaveDirectory for each map. If they all go into the same directory it can cause problems and you will find it much harder to troubleshoot. If you're not planning on doing those things then the AltSaveDirectory doesn't matter.

1 hour ago, Laynord said:

"he NAT setup for running a server on a LAN is not simple." Yes it is i'm in france and have a dmz that redirects all trafic to my server 
Exept some ports for security measures that i redirect on a dummy machine

You can say that it's simple, but this is the thing that causes the most problems for people setting up their own server in their own house. It's actually harder to find a server when you're trying to play from inside your own home network than it is for someone connecting to you from the outside, coming in from the internet.

If your server is running, and the logs show that everything on the physical server and the game server are ok, that leaves networking as your most likely problem. If I had to be money I'd bet that the networking configuration is what's causing your problem.

 

I'd like to ask a follow up question about something you said in your first post: "The server launches but does not listen on the port it's using nor is it able to be seen anywhere not even locally"

 

* Does that mean you have asked someone else, someone who is not inside your home network, to try and find your server? Or does it mean that you tried it locally and assumed that someone outside of your home network would not be able to see it?

[Laynord]

11 minutes ago, DirkInSA said:

Sorry - I missed the second netstat screen shot.

Yes, the server appears to up and listening correctly! The only other thing I can suggest is to remove the -multihome start parameter. (If you MUST have that to support epic game clients, then I think it should be the external www address that fronts the linux box, not the linux box's local LAN address - but firstly try without that parameter to see if BattleMetrics { https://www.battlemetrics.com/ } sees the server. Note BattleMetrics can take like 15 minutes to pick up a newly started server.)

 

OK cool - but there could still be an issue if you are running the linux machine on the same local network as your gaming machine (in other words you are hosting the server yourself at home, not on a separate "in the cloud" machine). I also ran MineCraft servers here with no issue, but my gateway setup without a NAT loopback entry in iptables did not allow Ark servers to work. This is only an issue if your server is on the same network as your game client, and will only stop YOU from connecting to the server. External game clients (and BattleMetrics) should be OK.

(That is a MONSTER server !!!!!!!!)

Yeah so basicly i do not plan on playing myself on the server so no problem for that 
Apparrently battlemetric does see the server : https://imgur.com/a/mCfdXwn 
I just thought the players had to use the 7777 port not the 27015

gonna try soon
Furthermore a quick question how long does an ark server take to start / how long does it take to appear cause i dont have any idea of that 
I have the same instance running since yesterday and it was at first not appearing so idk 

[Laynord]

9 minutes ago, Pipinghot said:

Your startup looks good to me. In case this is useful to you, I'm running on Linux and this is what my startup looks like (note: I'm running ARK as a service).

Service Path = /etc/systemd/system/ark-dedicated-theisland.service

 

ExecStart=/mnt/raid/steam/Steam/arkdedicated/ShooterGame/Binaries/Linux/ShooterGameServer TheIsland?listen?SessionName=MyTheIsland?ServerPassword=<#####>?AltSaveDirectoryName=Island?MultiHome=192.168.1.15?Port=7777?QueryPort=27015 -NoTransferFromFiltering -server -log -clusterid=MyCluster

 

If you're going to run other maps in the future, or if you're thinking about running more than one map at a time, you will definitely want a separate AltSaveDirectory for each map. If they all go into the same directory it can cause problems and you will find it much harder to troubleshoot. If you're not planning on doing those things then the AltSaveDirectory doesn't matter.

You can say that it's simple, but this is the thing that causes the most problems for people setting up their own server in their own house. It's actually harder to find a server when you're trying to play from inside your own home network than it is for someone connecting to you from the outside, coming in from the internet.

If your server is running, and the logs show that everything on the physical server and the game server are ok, that leaves networking as your most likely problem. If I had to be money I'd bet that the networking configuration is what's causing your problem.

 

I'd like to ask a follow up question about something you said in your first post: "The server launches but does not listen on the port it's using nor is it able to be seen anywhere not even locally"

 

* Does that mean you have asked someone else, someone who is not inside your home network, to try and find your server? Or does it mean that you tried it locally and assumed that someone outside of your home network would not be able to see it?

I wasnt the one trying to connect ( not from the same ip even ) 
They tried with my direct ip or the dns i use

and different ports and stuff just they couldnt connect to it but rn i cna see it on steam so i guess it works now but the only question is when did it come up how long did it take and why

From what i see on battlemetrics it was up 1.5H after i started it but idk if its right
The hardware i have should take taht long to start it gonna try to connect with geforce now

 

[Pipinghot]

7 hours ago, Laynord said:

From what i see on battlemetrics it was up 1.5H after i started it but idk if its right

The hardware i have should take taht long to start it gonna try to connect with geforce now

My guess is that it will show up faster in the future, but ARK is never super-fast. I don't know why this is, but in my experience when you start ARK server it take anywhere from 2-20 minutes before anyone is able to see it through Steam or through the game client, with 10-15 minutes being the most common time range. I've had much faster response times hosting servers for other games, so I assume this is caused by decisions WildCard has made (which is to say, their A&A infrastructure is either under-powered or configured poorly), but that's only a guess based on the fact that ARK is significantly slower for servers to show up than other games are.

[DirkInSA]

11 hours ago, Laynord said:

Furthermore a quick question how long does an ark server take to start / how long does it take to appear cause i dont have any idea of that 
I have the same instance running since yesterday and it was at first not appearing so idk 

Yeah as @Pipinghot says - the FIRST appearance of a server (or even re-appearance after a long time being down) takes a LONG time - I would guess from memory maybe 30 minutes (but it varies - a lot) . However, after your server has been once recognised by the "network" it should show up quicker.

I don't think there is anything you can do to speed up that "registration" of the server to the network. It all happens in the cloud of Ark / Steam server management, and so is not in anyway dependant on your particular setup or infrastructure. A loooong while ago there were switches on the Ark start up that could change the server from using "Steam" networking to using direct UPD client / server communication (much like Counter Strike and a bunch of other Unreal Engine games use), but unfortunately those switches were stopped by the dev team some years ago.

Anyway - glad your server is running and Good Luck!