Managed Data Centers Knowledge Base

A Virtual Private Server is the choice of many. This has become quite popular with the time and demand. Website Source VPS Plans use Virtuozzo technology. Virtuozzo has some very unique capabilities: VPS Hosting is a kind of bridge between dedicated hosting and shared hosting. It is a powerful web hosting solution for businesses which need a lot of web server resources.

Following are some of the VPS advantages :

Better Security : Virtual Private Server Hosting has better security to count on because of its self-dependency. Self-dependency makes VPS Hosting more secure than shared web hosting.
Dedicated Mail Server : VPS Hosting offers a dedicated mail server with a separate IP address, saving you the troubles of getting into spam blacklists or experiencing bounced mails because of somebody elses spam activities on a shared mail sever.

Performance and Reliability : VPS Hosting’s performance and reliability are better based on the fact all VPSes are running on a separate OS, each eating up its own CPU and RAM resources, thus facilitating service by providing a predictable environment for you to administer.
Custom Installations: VPS Hosting allows for custom configurations and installations. These are feasible because you are the sole owner of the VPS.

Flexible Resource Control – Virtuozzo has the capability of limiting the resources of each VPS, but it also can be configured to allow VPSs to burst and use available resources on the server. Virtuozzo provides the flexibility and control to customize and provide a range of services to meet the requirements of any customer.

Application Templates and Support – Include common applications in service offerings. Leverage the Virtuozzo templating technology to maintain small application footprints and overhead and provision and update quickly and easily.

Migration – Move VPSs to other physical servers to minimize the impact of server issues, upgrades or maintenance.

Backup and Restore – Self-administered incremental and scheduled backup capability comes as a part of the Virtuozzo feature set. End-user backups enable quickly restoring and resuming work without support intervention. Administrative backups ensure VPS, server and business continuity for your customers.

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As per Wikipedia “Half-Life Dedicated Server (HLDS) is the software that powers many of the older Steam games. “Steam is a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications platform developed by the Valve Corporation. It is used to distribute games and related media online, from small independent developers to larger software houses. Steam also has community features, automated game updates, and in-game voice and chat functionality.

Most online Counter-Strike servers are dedicated servers running HLDS, as opposed to “listen servers”. HLDS-servers can be remotely controlled using RCON. HLDS servers can host additional custom content for games, which can be uploaded to players when they join the server. This made it possible to make custom maps (such as fy or fight yard) available, that were not shipped with the original Counter-Strike release. As of February 2009, there are still 70,000 people playing Counter-Strike online.

HLDS is the only server available for hosting Counter-Strike and other Half-Life derived games.Half-Life is a science fiction, first-person shooter game originally released by Valve for the PC in 1998.

A Halflife Dedicated web Server is the foundation for many Steam-based games like Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike: Source. Its installation process is simple which is as follows:

This howto has been created with gentoo 2005.1

First, we need to install steam. There is an ebuild for this:

emerge halflife-steam

This was pretty easy;) Now we can update steam to the newest version. Just type

cd /opt/halflife

./steam

Thats it. Now we need to install a game – the following command will install “CounterStrike: Source”:

mkdir /opt/halflife/css

./steam -command update -game "Counter-Strike Source" -dir /opt/halflife/css

For Half-Life 2 Deathmatch use

mkdir /opt/halflife/hl2mp

./steam -command update -game hl2mp -dir /opt/halflife/hl2mp

You can see here that I don’t use the –username and –password parameters as recommended by older ebuilds and other howtos. This is because Valve has removed the need for it. You can also specify another directory for the game – most howtos use the default steam directory, but I like a subdirectory. Now be patient…

It is possible to run the server as root, but this is a BIG security risk. The current ebuild configures steam to run as user “games”. This is fine and we only need to fix some permissions later…

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