Management lol US

Management

This section covers subjects related to managing the ASF process in optimal way. While not strictly mandatory for usage, it includes bunch of tips, tricks and good practices that we'd like to share, especially for system administrators, people packaging the ASF for usage in third-party repositories, as well as advanced users and alike.

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systemd service for Linux

In generic and linux variants, ASF comes with [email protected] file, which is a configuration file of the service for systemd. If you'd like to run ASF as a service, for example in order to launch it automatically after startup of your machine, then a proper systemd service is arguably the best way to do it, therefore we highly recommend it instead of managing it on your own through nohup, screen or alike.

Firstly, create the account for the user you want to run ASF under, assuming it doesn't exist yet. We'll use asf user for this example, if you decided to use a different one, you'll need to substitute asf user in all of our examples below with your selected one. Our service does not allow you to run ASF as root, since it's considered a bad practice.

su # or sudo -i
adduser asf

Next, unpack ASF to /home/asf/ArchiSteamFarm folder. The folder structure is important for our service unit, it should be ArchiSteamFarm folder in your $HOME, so /home/<user>. If you did everything correctly, there will be /home/asf/ArchiSteamFarm/[email protected] file existing.

We'll do all below actions as root, so get to its shell with su or sudo -i.

Firstly it's a good idea to ensure that our folder still belongs to our asf user, chown -hR asf:asf /home/asf/ArchiSteamFarm executed once will do it. The permissions could be wrong e.g. if you've downloaded and/or unpacked the zip file as root.

Next, cd /etc/systemd/system and execute ln -s /home/asf/ArchiSteamFarm/ArchiSteamFarm\@.service ., this will create a symbolic link to our service declaration and register it in systemd.

Afterwards, ensure that systemd recognizes our service:

systemctl status ArchiSteamFarm@asf

○ [email protected] - ArchiSteamFarm Service (on asf)
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/[email protected]; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: inactive (dead)
       Docs: https://github.com/JustArchiNET/ArchiSteamFarm/wiki

Pay special attention to the user we declare after @, it's asf in our case. Our systemd service unit expects from you to declare the user, as it influences the exact place of the binary /home/<user>/ArchiSteamFarm, as well as the actual user systemd will spawn the process as.

If systemd returned output similar to above, everything is in order, and we're almost done. Now all that is left is actually starting our service as our chosen user: systemctl start ArchiSteamFarm@asf. Wait a second or two, and you can check the status again:

systemctl status ArchiSteamFarm@asf

● [email protected] - ArchiSteamFarm Service (on asf)
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/[email protected]; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since (...)
       Docs: https://github.com/JustArchiNET/ArchiSteamFarm/wiki
   Main PID: (...)
(...)

If systemd states active (running), it means everything went well, and you can verify that ASF process should be up and running, for example with tail -f -n 100 /var/log/syslog, as ASF by default also reports its console output to syslog. If you're satisfied with the setup you have right now, you can tell systemd to automatically start your service during boot, by executing systemctl enable ArchiSteamFarm@asf command. That's all.

If by any chance you'd like to stop the process, simply execute systemctl stop ArchiSteamFarm@asf. Likewise, if you want to disable ASF from being started automatically on boot, systemctl disable ArchiSteamFarm@asf will do that for you, it's very simple.

Please note that, as there is no standard input enabled for our systemd service, you won't be able to input your details through the console in usual way. Running through systemd is equivalent to specifying Headless: true setting and comes with all its implications. Fortunately for you, it's very easy to manage your ASF through ASF-ui, which we recommend in case you need to supply additional details during login or otherwise manage your ASF process further.

Environment variables

It's possible to supply additional environment variables to our systemd service, which you'll be interested in doing in case you want to for example use a custom --cryptkey command-line argument, therefore specifying ASF_CRYPTKEY environment variable.

In order to provide custom environment variables, create /etc/asf folder (in case it doesn't exist), mkdir -p /etc/asf, then write to a /etc/asf/<user> file, where <user> is the user you're running the service under (asf in our example above, so /etc/asf/asf).

The file should contain all environment variables that you'd like to provide to the process:

# Declare only those that you actually need
ASF_CRYPTKEY="my_super_important_secret_cryptkey"
ASF_NETWORK_GROUP="my_network_group"

# And any other ones you're interested in

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Never run ASF as administrator!

ASF includes its own validation whether the process is being run as administrator (root) or not. Running as root is not required for any kind of operation done by the ASF process, assuming properly configured environment it's operating in, and therefore should be regarded as a bad practice. This means that on Windows, ASF should never be executed with "run as administrator" setting, and on Unix ASF should have a dedicated user account for itself, or re-use your own in case of a desktop system.

For further elaboration on why we discourage running ASF as root, refer to superuser and other resources. If you're still not convinced, ask yourself what would happen to your machine if ASF process executed rm -rf --no-preserve-root / command right after its launch.

I run as root because ASF can't write to its files

This means that you have wrongly configured permissions of the files ASF is trying to access. You should login as root account (either with su or sudo -i) and then correct the permissions by issuing chown -hR asf:asf /path/to/ASF command, substituting asf:asf with the user that you'll run ASF under, and /path/to/ASF accordingly. If by any chance you're using custom --path telling ASF user to use the different directory, you should execute the same command again for that path as well.

After doing that, you should no longer get any kind of issue related to ASF not being able to write over its own files, as you've just changed the owner of everything ASF is interested in to the user the ASF process will actually run under.

I run as root because I don't know how to do it otherwise

su # or sudo -i
adduser asf
chown -hR asf:asf /path/to/ASF
su asf -c /path/to/ASF/ArchiSteamFarm # or sudo -u asf /path/to/ASF/ArchiSteamFarm

That would be doing it manually, it's much easier to use our systemd service explained above.

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MULTIPLE INSTANCEZ

ASF IZ COMPATIBLE WIF RUNNIN MULTIPLE INSTANCEZ OV TEH PROCES ON TEH SAME MACHINE. TEH INSTANCEZ CAN BE COMPLETELY STANDALONE OR DERIVD FRUM TEH SAME BINARY LOCASHUN (IN WHICH CASE, U WANTS 2 RUN THEM WIF DIFFERENT --path COMMAND-LINE ARGUMENT).

WHEN RUNNIN MULTIPLE INSTANCEZ FRUM TEH SAME BINARY, KEEP IN MIND DAT U SHUD TYPICALLY DISABLE AUTO-UPDATEZ IN ALL OV THEIR CONFIGS, AS THAR IZ NO SYNCHRONIZASHUN TWEEN THEM IN REGARDZ 2 AUTO-UPDATEZ. IF UD LIEK 2 KEEP HAVIN AUTO-UPDATEZ ENABLD, WE RECOMMEND STANDALONE INSTANCEZ, BUT U CAN STILL MAK UPDATEZ WERK, AS LONG AS U CAN ENSURE DAT ALL OTHR ASF INSTANCEZ R CLOSD.

ASF WILL DO ITZ BEST 2 MAINTAIN MINIMUM AMOUNT OV OS-WIDE, CROS-PROCES COMMUNICASHUN WIF OTHR ASF INSTANCEZ. DIS INCLUDEZ ASF CHECKIN ITZ CONFIGURASHUN DIRECTORY AGAINST OTHR INSTANCEZ, AS WELL AS SHARIN CORE PROCES-WIDE LIMITERS CONFIGURD WIF *LimiterDelay GLOBAL CONFIG PROPERTIEZ, ENSURIN DAT RUNNIN MULTIPLE ASF INSTANCEZ WILL NOT CAUSE POSIBILITY 2 RUN INTO RATE-LIMITIN ISSUE. IN REGARDZ 2 TECHNICAL ASPECTS, ALL PLATFORMS USE R DEDICATD MECHANISM OV CUSTOM ASF FILE-BASD LOCKZ CREATD IN TEMPORARY DIRECTORY, WHICH IZ C:\Users\<YourUser>\AppData\Local\Temp\ASF ON WINDOWS, AN /tmp/ASF ON UNIX.

IZ NOT REQUIRD 4 RUNNIN ASF INSTANCEZ 2 SHARE TEH SAME *LimiterDelay PROPERTIEZ, THEY CAN USE DIFFERENT VALUEZ, AS EACH ASF WILL ADD ITZ OWN CONFIGURD DELAY 2 TEH RELEASE TIEM AFTR ACQUIRIN TEH LOCK. IF TEH CONFIGURD *LimiterDelay IZ SET 2 0, ASF INSTANCE WILL ENTIRELY SKIP WAITIN 4 DA LOCK OV GIVEN RESOURCE DAT IZ SHARD WIF OTHR INSTANCEZ (DAT CUD POTENTIALLY STILL MAINTAIN SHARD LOCK WIF EACH OTHR). WHEN SET 2 ANY OTHR VALUE, ASF WILL PROPERLY SYNCHRONIZE WIF OTHR ASF INSTANCEZ AN WAIT 4 ITZ TURN, DEN RELEASE TEH LOCK AFTR CONFIGURD DELAY, ALLOWIN OTHR INSTANCEZ 2 CONTINUE.

ASF TAKEZ INTO AKOWNT WebProxy SETTIN WHEN DECIDIN BOUT SHARD SCOPE, WHICH MEANZ DAT 2 ASF INSTANCEZ USIN DIFFERENT WebProxy CONFIGURASHUNS WILL NOT SHARE THEIR LIMITERS WIF EACH OTHR. DIS AR TEH IMPLEMENTD IN ORDR 2 ALLOW WebProxy SETUPS 2 OPERATE WITHOUT EXCESIV DELAYS, AS EXPECTD FRUM DIFFERENT NETWORK INTERFACEZ. DIS SHUD BE GUD ENOUGH 4 MAJORITY OV USE CASEZ, HOWEVR, IF U HAS SPECIFIC CUSTOM SETUP IN WHICH URE E.G. ROUTIN REQUESTS YOURSELF IN DIFFERENT WAI, U CAN SPECIFY NETWORK GROUP YOURSELF THRU --network-group COMMAND-LINE ARGUMENT, WHICH WILL ALLOW U 2 DECLARE ASF GROUP DAT WILL BE SYNCHRONIZD WIF DIS INSTANCE. KEEP IN MIND DAT CUSTOM NETWORK GROUPS R USD EXCLUSIVELY, WHICH MEANZ DAT ASF WILL NO LONGR USE WebProxy 4 DETERMININ TEH RITE GROUP, AS URE IN CHARGE OV GROUPIN IN DIS CASE.