Get the Call of Duty 2 Dedicated Linux Server v1.0 beta off WP (400kb)

!! IMPORTANT !!

Call of Duty 2(tm) Linux Server is NOT SUPPORTED by Activision(r) Customer Support. Please do not call with any questions related to this free beta product. There are other channels to aid you listed at the bottom of this document.

1. Introduction

This document explains how to install the Call of Duty 2(tm) Linux server version 1.0. Installation from scratch and upgrading an existing installation are both covered.

Usage is very similar to Call of Duty(tm) and United Offensive(tm)... many of the console commands, command lines, and cvars are identical, so if you are comfortable maintaining dedicated servers for those games, you will find this process familiar.

MOD USERS: PLEASE READ...
It is recommended that any user modifications that have been installed to the Call of Duty 2(tm) directory be removed before installing this package. These modifications are not supported by Activision(r) and may not be compatible with some of the new features that are included. When installing or upgrading a server, if problems or unexpected behavior arise, your first step in troubleshooting should be to do a clean install with the original data files.

IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH "LIBSTDC++.SO.5" ...
(This is a frequent-enough problem to merit discussion in the introduction.)

If you are reading this, it's probably because you tried to start your Linux server and saw this message:

./cod2_lnxded: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

COD2 is a C++ program built with gcc 3.3.4, which means it needs a system library specific to gcc 3.3. Older Linux systems won't have this installed, and we're starting to see newer Linux distributions that don't have this either, since they are supplying an incompatible gcc 3.4 version. The good news is that you can drop the needed library into your system without breaking anything else.

Here is the library you need, if your Linux distribution doesn't supply it: http://icculus.org/updates/cod/gcc3-libs.tar.bz2

You want to unpack that somewhere that the dynamic linker will see it (if you are sure it won't overwrite any files, you can even use /lib).

The brave can put it in the same directory as the game and run the server like this: LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:.

./cod2_lnxded

Now the server will start.

2. Installation From Scratch

- Get the retail Call of Duty 2(tm) disc(s) (there may be multiple discs depending on what edition of the game you have obtained, or perhaps a single DVD-ROM disc).
- Copy the contents of each disc's "Setup/Data" directory to wherever you want to install the Call of Duty 2(tm) Linux server. There should be a "localization.txt" file in the root of this directory, and a "main" subdirectory when you have copied everything. Final installation size is around 3.5 gigabytes.
- Alternately, you may install on Windows(r) and copy the installed game to your Linux system, but many will opt to skip this step since the data files are uncompressed and easily accessible on the discs. Final installation size is around 3.5 gigabytes.
- Unpack this archive in the root of the newly-copied tree, so "cod2_lnxded" is in the same directory as "localization.txt". Unlike the original Call of Duty(tm), there are not seperate .so files like "game.mp.i386.so", so don't be concerned when you don't see them.
- Now, run the server: cd /where/i/copied/callofduty2

./cod2_lnxded

- When you see "--- Common Initialization Complete ---", the game server has started, but you need to start a map before the server will accept connections. At this point, type:

map mp_leningrad

("mp_leningrad" being a given map's name).

- Now you should see your server in the in-game browser. You will now want to customize your server, but that is beyond the scope of this document.

3. Support Channels

There are a LOT of knobs you can tweak to customize and automate your server, but it is beyond the scope of this documentation. Please refer to the admin manuals for any Quake 3(tm) based Multiplayer game (including Quake 3 Arena(tm), Return to Castle Wolfenstein(tm), the original Call of Duty(tm) and United Offensive(tm), etc) for specifics.

There is a mailing list for discussion and support of Linux servers for all of the Call of Duty(tm) games and expansion packs. Hundreds of experienced server admins and even some of the game's developers monitor this list, and are eager to help with politely asked questions. Send a blank email to cod-subscribe@icculus.org to get on the list, and list archives can be seen at:

http://icculus.org/cgi-bin/ezmlm/ezmlm-cgi?38

Bug reports should NOT be sent to the list. We have a web-based bugtracking system for this. If you don't report bugs there, we don't promise to even be aware of them, let alone fix them! You can find the bug tracker here:

https://bugzilla.icculus.org/

Also, http://callofduty.com/ and http://infinityward.com/ may direct you to important information, documentation and current news about Call of Duty(tm) titles.

4. FreeBSD users

This server is known to work on FreeBSD with the Linux binary compatibility layer. If it doesn't, we consider it a bug and appreciate the report since we won't necessarily be testing on FreeBSD ourselves. Please note that the game server requires that you use at least the linux_base-8 package for binary compatibility (it has a C++ runtime library we now need that previous linux_base packages don't supply...alternately, see notes about libstdc++ in this document's introduction if you can't or won't update linux_base).

// end of README ...

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