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How to run a Tribes 2 Linux server with TribesNext

This is not the ‘official’ way to run a Tribes 2 server with TribesNext (that would be using ‘wine’ with the Windows-EXEs, but I found this to run rather poorly!).
So here’s a way I found out to be working well, therefore I’d like to share how to do that.
What’s different with my approach is that it does not make use of TribesNext’s authentication system, therefore all players appear as ‘Smurfs’ on the server. This also means no admins/kicks/bans etc.!

First I’m using the method of patching the LAN version of the game to make it usable for the internet, outlined here:
http://t2.plugh.us/
Second we have to upload our IP & port number to the TribesNext Master Server every 4 minutes.
That’s all!

So, it’s just these two steps:
1. Patch the ‘tribes2d.dynamic’ binary (subnet restriction patch), as described at http://t2.plugh.us/ (scroll down one page; you have to download LAN fix for Linux servers and apply the patch). Now the LAN mode accepts connections from the internet, instead of only from the LAN.
Alternatively, I have the patched binary here for download:
tribes2d-lan.dynamic.tar.gz
Download it and unpack with “tar xfz tribes2d-lan.dynamic.tar.gz” (as user ‘root’)

From now, instead of the old binary, you need to run the patched one, so either replace your ‘tribes2d.dynamic’ binary or change your startup scripts accordingly.

2. Send a heartbeat to master.tribesnext.com every 4 minutes. This can be done in a lot of ways, here I give you one example (you need ‘curl’ and ‘cron’ for this. If you don’t have it, get it from your distro’s repository):

Add the following line to your crontab (command: crontab -e):

*/4 * * * * curl http://master.tribesnext.com/add/28000 > /dev/null 2>&1

The number 28000 in the line above needs to be the same port number as your Tribes 2 server.

Instead of the cron-job, you could also run a deamon like this:

#!/bin/sh
while [ ‘1’ ] ; do
curl http://master.tribesnext.com/add/28000 > /dev/null 2>&1
sleep 240
done

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