civ5_docker_server

Scripts and Dockerfiles to install and run a dedicated Civilization 5 server on a headless, GPU-less Linux machine.

How does it work? (briefly)

So Civ 5 Server is a Windows-only GUI application, that needs to render frames with OpenGL Direct3D (translated to OpenGL with wine)... This Docker setup creates a virtual X11 framebuffer for Civ to render to, provides a VNC server so you can remote in, installs Mesa such that the CPU can render frames (so no GPU needed), and libstrangle so that Civ only runs at 2 FPS, so rendering doesn't consume the CPU so much (though it still takes an enormous amount of CPU time).

How do you use it?

1: First, Civilization 5 needs to be installed into the civ5game directory, as well as the CivilizationV_Server.exe file from the Civ 5 SDK. You can copy those files over yourself, or use provided script as ./install_civ.sh <steam_username> <steam_password>.

2: Now you can build the container with ./build.sh. This may take a while, most notably because it needs to fetch and compile wine from source.

3: Now you can launch the container with ./run.sh.

4: After the container starts running, you should be able to remote in with VNC. The run.sh script is set up to only allow connections from localhost, so you'll want to open up an SSH tunnel if remoting in from a different machine first (ssh -NL 5900:127.0.0.1:5900 ${USERNAME}@${SERVER_IP}).

Then, you should be able to point your VNC client at localhost and see Civ 5 running. Steam will also be running - it needs to stay running the background for Civ to not crash, though you don't need to log in to it.

5: Setup the game through the VNC connection, and hope that it works and people can connect.

Ports you might need to open/let through a firewall

27016 UDP is the only port you need to allow incoming traffic through. If you're just using plain iptables as a firewall, bringing up the docker container should open that port for you.

And now, a rant...

Just gonna copy-paste a chat log as I don't feel like typing this out again, lightly edited

but anyways, civ 5 server is a windows-only gui applicaiton, that renders the entire game
and we have a linux server without a gpu
so: I install wine on the server in a container, install civ and the sdk into there too, copy the dedicated server executable into the game files
then I'm faffing around with figuring out what I need to install to get mesa (an OpenGL thing) up and running with software rendering, so civ 5 can render frames on the cpu instead of the cpu
also faffing around with getting X11 set up with just a framebuffer, so civ 5 has a display to render to (since the server doesn't have a monitor)
and also faffing around with getting a VNC or RDP or something server set up, so I can actually remote in to this virtual display (surprisingly painful)
try and launch civ now, aaand it immediately crashes
turns out the server needs a place to output audio to
so.. I install pulseaudio, so wine has a place to output audio to (even though it all gets ignored in the end)
launch civ
it makes it to the lobby setup screen, I hit host game
aaand crash
at this point, I'm faffing around with wine's debugger
and eventually figure out it ends up crashing on some Steam API call
...turns out, Steam needs to be running in the background for civ to not crash EVEN THOUGH NO-BODY NEEDS TO BE LOGGED IN
so.. I install steam for windows in wine and what not, yada yada
aaand it..doesn't crash any more
woohoo
...nobody can connect to the server
Steam has a list of ports it uses for server networking
civ 5 also says it uses one
so, ok let's poke those open in the firewall
still no-body can join
there's.. a lot of f---ing around here, but eventually the guy owning the server just gave up and gave us access to the firewall controls
some more faffing around later, we give up and just disable it
aaand it works
but enabled.. it doesn't
even though all the documented ports were open
oh yeah at some point we tried just using a full windows vm instead of wine
but anyways, I try installing wireshark now to monitor the packets going in/out while the firewall's down
aaand ohgod it's such a mess I can't tell anything apart
so I go to "Microsoft Message Analyzer", which at least lets me see what packets are comming from what applications...except when it doesn't
AAANYWAYS, more head scratching later, filtering out remote desktop traffic, telemetry traffic, traffic going to an ip owned by the us department of defence (!!?!?)
TURNS OUT civ, or steam, idk which one
just needs a whole several thousand port range open for UDP for it to work
that's just...not documented anywhere
>.<
but uhh, yeah finally this is a thing

(...in hindsight, the firewall issues was because we were filtering outgoing traffic and I didn't realize it >.<)

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go curl up into a ball now and have nightmares about this.