Venice Unleashed Linux Dedicated Server

This project represents the code used in order to run the Venice unleashed inside Docker. It builds on top of the wine base image and adds Venice unleashed specific code in order to run it.

How to run it

Here are the steps you should take in order to run this image.

Getting Battlefield 3 and setting up the required volume mounts

In order to be able to run the VU dedicated server you'll need the BF3 client files on your machine. The easiest way is to download the game via Origin on a Windows machine and then transfer them over to your Linux machine (using something like rsync or SCP).

1. Create a bf3 docker volume. Copy all the BF3 client files you previously downloaded from Origin into this docker volume.
2. Create a instance docker volume. This is a directory containing configuration files, mods, and other necessary files to run your server. This can be empty at initial boot.
3. Create a client docker volume. This is a directory containing the VU files like vu.exe, vu.com and entrypoint.sh. This can be empty at initial boot.

Activating the game

In order to run the VU server you have to activate the game. This process requires an Origin account which owns BF3. Please make sure the following enviroment variables are set:

Enviroment variable	Description
O_EMAIL	Origin account e-mail
O_PASSWORD	Origin account password

Add server.key

Please go to: veniceunleashed.net/key-create then generate and download the server.key. Make sure this is saved in the instance directory. (/vu/instance/server.key)

Configuring ports

The docker image will listen to the default ports. In order to run several dedicated servers you'll have to change this. Do this by overriding the following enviroment variables:

Enviroment variable	Description	Default
LISTEN	Sets the host and port the VU server should listen for connections on.	0.0.0.0:25200
HARMONYPORT	Sets the port the VU server should listen for MonitoredHarmony connections	7948
RCONPORT	Sets the host and port the VU server should listen for RCON connections.	0.0.0.0:47200

Run it

The final step is bringing it all together. Either use docker run, docker compose or another way or running this container. Please make sure though that:

• Battlefield files (volume bf3) is mounted at /vu/bf3
• Instance directory (volume instance) is mounted at /vu/instance
• Client directory (volume client) is mounted at /vu/client
• Enviroment variables as described above are set
• Ports are exposed.

Docker run

Run the following command. As you can see we set the required enviroment variables and then map the game files, instance and client directory. We also bind the ports the game server is running on.

docker run --name venice -it \
	-d itsteckel/vu:latest \
	-e O_EMAIL='<email>' \
	-e O_PASSWORD='<password>' \
	-e LISTEN='0.0.0.0:25200' \
	-e LISTEN='7948' \
	-e LISTEN='0.0.0.0:47200' \
	-v /location/on/host/bf3Files/:/vu/bf3 \
	-v /location/on/host/instance/:/vu/instance \
	-v /location/on/host/client/:/vu/client \
	-p 47200:47200/tcp \
	-p 7948:7948/udp \
	-p 25200:25200/udp

Docker-compose

Or run it using docker-compose. As you can see we set the required enviroment variables and then map the game files, instance and client directory. We also bind the ports the game server is running on.

version: "3"
services:
  venice:
    image: itsteckel/vu:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - 47200:47200/tcp
      - 7948:7948/udp
      - 25200:25200/udp
    environment:
      - [email protected]
      - O_PASSWORD=replaceMeWithYourOriginPassword
      - LISTEN=0.0.0.0:25200
      - HARMONYPORT=7948
      - RCONPORT=0.0.0.0:47200
    volumes:
      - bf3:/vu/bf3
      - instance:/vu/instance
      - client:/vu/client
volumes:
  bf3:
  instance:
  client:

Note: As getting data into the docker volumes is a little harder than binding. I recommend to bind the game data rather than use the docker volumes for initial testing/debugging.

...
    volumes:
      - /path/host/bf3:/vu/bf3
      - /path/host/instance:/vu/instance
      - /path/host/client:/vu/client

Debugging

Cannot connect. Server resolves to local host (127.0.0.1)

If you're hoping to host the container and connect to it locally then you'll run into this problem. Currently there's a error in how VU resolves the external IP when the container is in bridge network mode and you connect to it from your LAN. Try running your container in host mode if you’re hosting it in your local network. So pass --network host in docker run. See: docs.docker.com/network/host.

The container doesn’t need this when you host it in a data center elsewhere. Passing along a -joinaddr to vu.com or vu.exe doesn’t help either by the way.

Crashes

A normal output does show some Wine errors:

Skipping update as '/vu/client/vu.com' exists.
Found server.key
Activating with ******@****.com
wine: Unhandled page fault on read access to 000000B8 at address 1000653A (thread 0090), starting debugger...
[2020-12-24 00:24:19+00:00] [info] Server Instance directory: /vu/instance
[2020-12-24 00:24:19+00:00] [info] Initializing the VeniceEXT engine v1.0.8...
[2020-12-24 00:24:19+00:00] [info] [VeniceEXT] Loading VeniceEXT module 'vu-compass-1.0.2'.
[2020-12-24 00:24:19+00:00] [info] [VeniceEXT] [vu-compass-1.0.2] Compiling client module...
[2020-12-24 00:24:19+00:00] [info] [VeniceEXT] [vu-compass-1.0.2] Compiling client script 'config.lua'...
[2020-12-24 00:24:19+00:00] [info] [VeniceEXT] [vu-compass-1.0.2] Compiling client script 'ui.lua'...
[2020-12-24 00:24:19+00:00] [info] [VeniceEXT] [vu-compass-1.0.2] Compiling client script 'utils.lua'...
[2020-12-24 00:24:19+00:00] [info] [VeniceEXT] [vu-compass-1.0.2] Compiling client script '__init__.lua'...
[2020-12-24 00:24:19+00:00] [info] [VeniceEXT] Successfully loaded VeniceEXT module 'vu-compass-1.0.2'.
[2020-12-24 00:24:19+00:00] [info] [VeniceEXT] Loading VeniceEXT module 'tactical-freelook'.
[2020-12-24 00:24:19+00:00] [info] [VeniceEXT] [tactical-freelook] Compiling client module...
[2020-12-24 00:24:19+00:00] [info] [VeniceEXT] [tactical-freelook] Compiling client script 'freelook.lua'...
[2020-12-24 00:24:19+00:00] [info] [VeniceEXT] [tactical-freelook] Compiling client script '__init__.lua'...
[2020-12-24 00:24:19+00:00] [info] [VeniceEXT] Successfully loaded VeniceEXT module 'tactical-freelook'.
[2020-12-24 00:24:19+00:00] [info] [VeniceEXT] Loading VeniceEXT module 'balanced-reinforcements'.
[2020-12-24 00:24:19+00:00] [info] [VeniceEXT] [balanced-reinforcements] Loaded VeniceEXT server script: __init__.lua
[2020-12-24 00:24:19+00:00] [info] [VeniceEXT] [balanced-reinforcements] Compiling client module...
[2020-12-24 00:24:19+00:00] [info] [VeniceEXT] [balanced-reinforcements] Compiling shared script 'config.lua'...
[2020-12-24 00:24:19+00:00] [info] [VeniceEXT] [balanced-reinforcements] Compiling shared script 'timers.lua'...
[2020-12-24 00:24:19+00:00] [info] [VeniceEXT] Successfully loaded VeniceEXT module 'balanced-reinforcements'.
[2020-12-24 00:24:20+00:00] [info] Initializing Venice Unleashed Server (Build 17384)...
[2020-12-24 00:24:20+00:00] [info] Mounting the VU game data File System.
[2020-12-24 00:24:23+00:00] [info] Remote Administration interface is listening on port 0.0.0.0:47200
[2020-12-24 00:24:23+00:00] [info] Successfully read startup configuration data.
[2020-12-24 00:24:23+00:00] [info] Loaded 0 entries from the player banlist file.
[2020-12-24 00:24:23+00:00] [info] Establishing connection to the Zeus Backend...
[2020-12-24 00:24:23+00:00] [info] Venice Unleashed dedicated server initialization finished.
[2020-12-24 00:24:24+00:00] [info] Successfully established connection to the Zeus Backend!
[2020-12-24 00:24:24+00:00] [info] Authenticating server with the Zeus Backend...
[2020-12-24 00:24:24+00:00] [info] Successfully authenticated server with Zeus (Server GUID: 386de7222f5e41efba4ccc183*******).
[2020-12-24 00:24:24+00:00] [info] Checking for updates...
[2020-12-24 00:24:26+00:00] [info] Update check complete. No new updates available.

crashing regularly

Please check your mods. Try running the server without any mods. Mods might be trying to write/read memory or do operations at certain moments during the game (loading) which can make the game server crash.

Not starting up

Follow these steps to debug your server not starting.

• Please make sure that the server works well on Windows first. For instance that the origin credentials and server.key are valid.
• Make sure the container is able to read your Battlefield files. Run chmod to set the right permissions.
• run DISPLAY=:1 xwd -root -silent | convert xwd:- png:/vu/client/screenshot.png in your docker container to render the X11 windows. It'll save it to /vu/client/screenshot.png. This might give you more of an indication as to what is going wrong.