Knowledgebase

Setup & Start



ARK: Survival Evolved Dedicated Server Setup

This article explains how to setup a ARK: Survival Evolved server on a fresh HOSTAFRICA CentOS 7 virtual machine . CentOS 6 will not work since it doesn't have the required GLIBC packages. This also work for Ubuntu 14.04 or similar verions but has not been tested so far. For Ubuntu pls use "apt-get" to install packages instead of "yum".

Before we start:

Hostafrica has to set the # fs.file-max = 200000 for you VPS. Please send a mail to support@hostafrica.co.za.
As soon this is done, we can start with the setup of our game server:

1. Update all of your system packages: first

# yum update -y

2. Install the required packages for SteamCMD:

# yum install glibc.i686 libstdc++.i686 -y

3. Then edit the /etc/sysctl.conf  with your favorite text editor and add the following line:

fs.file-max = 200000

4. Then edit the /etc/security/limits.conf  with your favorite text editor and add the following line:

* soft nofile 100000
* hard nofile 100000

5.Now create a new operating system user called 'steam':

# useradd -m steam
# su - steam

6. Now we should be logged in as the 'steam' user and inside its home directory. Now download SteamCMD and extract the archive.

# wget https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/client/installer/steamcmd_linux.tar.gz
tar -xvf steamcmd_linux.tar.gz
rm -rf steamcmd_linux.tar.gz

7. Now you will have the SteamCMD files in your current directory. Run the following command to install the ARK: Survival Evolved dedicated server files.

# ./steamcmd.sh +USERNAME PASSWORD +force_install_dir /home/steam/arkdedicated +app_update 376030 validate +quit            

Make sure to replace "USERNAME PASSWORD" in the command line above with your Steam login information.(if you don't have an own username and password you can use:login anonymous)

When you run the above command it may take some time to complete depending on your network connection, as it will download the game files which are approximately 16GB. Once it's done, run the following command to start your ARK game server:


8. Start the sever
# cd /home/steam/arkdedicated/ShooterGame/Binaries/Linux
# ./ShooterGameServer TheIsland?listen?SessionName=YourLinuxSessionName?ServerAdminPassword=whateveradminpass -server -log


After starting the server a error message will appear:

S_API FAIL] SteamAPI_Init() failed; SteamAPI_IsSteamRunning() failed

This is about all you will ever see in this console for now. The error can mean one of two things. First, you haven't setup the open file limit properly. If you have, then ignore the error. 



Thats it. Your server is up & running. 
You can stop the server with ctrl + c



Screen/Start of the Game

When you have started the ark server the server is unfortunatly bound to your console. Thats is a problem since if you try to close the console the server will be stopped. In order to prevent that you have to detach the server from the console. You can use the small programm 'sreen' for this.

Before you start the game do the following:

# screen

This will open the application in the background. 

Start the game:

# su - steam

# cd /home/steam/arkdedicated/ShooterGame/Binaries/Linux
# ./ShooterGameServer TheIsland?listen?SessionName=YourLinuxSessionName?ServerAdminPassword=whateveradminpass -server -log


Detach the console:

Press 'CTRL+A' and then 'd'

Now the server runs in the background. You can close the SSH connections now if you want.


In case  you want reattach the console, do the following:

# screen -r)


Stop the server


# killall ShooterGameServer

Update your server

cd /home/steam
# ./steamcmd.sh +LOGIN PASSWORD +force_install_dir /home/steam/arkdedicated +app_update 376030 +quit


Thanks for reading.