Gamocosm / Gamocosm
Programming Languages
Projects that are alternatives of or similar to Gamocosm
Gamocosm
Gamocosm makes it easy to run cloud Minecraft servers. Digital Ocean is used as the backend/hosting service, due to cost, reliability, and accessibility. Gamocosm works well for friends who play together, but not 24/7. Running a server 14 hours a week (2 hours every day) may cost 40 cents a month, instead of $5.
Minecraft Server Wrapper
The Minecraft Server Wrapper (for lack of a better name) is a light python webserver. It provides an HTTP API for starting and stopping Minecraft servers, downloading the world, etc. Please check it out and help improve it too!
Gamocosm Minecraft Flavours
The gamocosm-minecraft-flavours repository includes the setup scripts used to install different flavours of Minecraft on a new server. Read this wiki page for adding support for new flavours, or manually installing something yourself.
Contributing
Pull requests are welcome!
Setting up your development environment
You should have a Unix/Linux system. The following instructions were made for Fedora 31, but the steps should be similar on other distributions.
- Install postgresql and development headers and libraries, memcached, redis, and nodejs:
(sudo) dnf install postgresql-server postgresql-contrib postgresql-devel memcached redis nodejs
- Install rbenv and ruby-build. Read the instructions on their page (will be up to date)
- Install dependencies to build ruby:
(sudo) dnf install gcc gcc-c++ openssl-devel readline-devel zlib-devel
- Install Ruby 2.6.5:
rbenv install 2.6.5
. - Check that
ruby -v
inside your clonedgamocosm
folder gives you version 2.6.5 - Install Bundler:
gem install bundler
- Install gem dependencies:
bundle install
- Run
cp env.sh.template env.sh
- Enter config in
env.sh
- Initialize postgresql:
(sudo) postgresql-setup initdb --unit postgresql
- Configure the database (explained below)
- Start postgresql, memcached, and redis manually:
(sudo) systemctl start <postgresql/memcached/redis>
, or enable them to start at boot time:(sudo) systemctl enable <postgresql/memcached/redis>
- Run
./sysadmin/run.sh bundle exec rake db:setup
- Start the server:
./sysadmin/run.sh bundle exec rails s
- Start the Sidekiq worker:
./sysadmin/run.sh bundle exec sidekiq
Directory hierarchy
-
app
: main source code -
bin
: rails stuff, don't touch -
config
: rails app configuration -
db
: rails app database stuff (schema, migrations, seeds) -
lib
: rails stuff, don't touch -
log
: 'nuff said -
public
: static files -
sysadmin
: stuff for the Gamocosm server (you can run your own server! This is a true open source project) -
test-docker
: use docker container to test most ofapp/workers/setup_server_worker.rb
(more below) -
test
: pooteeweet -
vendor
: rails stuff, don't touch
env.sh options
The script ./sysadmin/run.sh
basically sources env.sh
then exec
s the supplied command.
You can source env.sh
to load the relevant environment variables into your shell yourself.
Then you can run stuff like bundle exec ...
directly.
-
DIGITAL_OCEAN_API_KEY
: your Digital Ocean api token -
DIGITAL_OCEAN_SSH_PUBLIC_KEY_PATH
: ssh key to be added to new servers to SSH into -
DIGITAL_OCEAN_SSH_PRIVATE_KEY_PATH
: see above -
DIGITAL_OCEAN_SSH_PRIVATE_KEY_PASSPHRASE
: see above -
SIDEKIQ_ADMIN_USERNAME
: HTTP basic auth for Sidekiq web interface -
SIDEKIQ_ADMIN_PASSWORD
: see above -
DATABASE_USER
: hmmmm -
DATABASE_PASSWORD
: hmmmm -
DATABASE_HOST
: database host. If specified, Rails will use a TCP connection (e.g. "localhost"). If left blank, Rails will use a local Unix socket connection -
MAIL_SERVER_*
: see action mailer configuration in the Rails guide -
USER_SERVERS_DOMAIN
: subdomain for user servers (e.g.gamocosm.com
) -
CLOUDFLARE_API_TOKEN
: hmmm -
CLOUDFLARE_EMAIL
: hmmm -
CLOUDFLARE_ZONE
: shown on the bottom right of CloudFlare's control panel for the domain -
DEVELOPMENT_HOST
: only development, allowed host to access development server -
DEVISE_SECRET_KEY
: only test, production -
SECRET_KEY
: only production -
DEVELOPER_EMAILS
: comma separated list of emails to send exceptions to -
BADNESS_SECRET
: secret to protect/badness
endpoint
Database configuration
Locate pg_hba.conf
. On Fedora this is in /var/lib/pgsql/data/
.
This file tells postgresql how to authenticate users. Read about it on the PostgreSQL docs.
To restart postgresql: (sudo) service postgresql restart
config/database.yml
gets the database username from the environment variable DATABASE_USER
(default "gamocosm").
The default value in "env.sh.template" for DATABASE_HOST
is blank, so if you don't change it Rails will use a local Unix socket connection.
The postgres user you use must be a postgres superuser, as rails needs to enable the uuid extension.
To create a postgres user "gamocosm":
- Switch to the
postgres
user:(sudo) su - postgres
- Run
createuser --createdb --pwprompt --superuser gamocosm
(createuser --help
for more info)
Depending on what method you want to use, add the following under the line that looks like # TYPE DATABASE USER ADDRESS METHOD
.
- Type
-
local
(local Unix socket) orhost
(TCP connection)
-
- Database
- Rails also needs to have access to the
postgres
database (to create new databases?) postgres,gamocosm_development,gamocosm_test,gamocosm_production
- Rails also needs to have access to the
- User
gamocosm
- Address
- Leave blank for
local
type - Localhost is
127.0.0.1/32
in ipv4 and::1/128
in ipv6. My system used ipv6 (postgres did not match the entry when I entered localhost ipv4)
- Leave blank for
- Method
- trust
- Easiest, but least secure. Typically ok on development machines. Blindly trusts the user
- peer
- Checks if the postgresql user matches the operating system user
- Since
config/database.yml
specifies the database user to be "gamocosm", using this method is more troublesome, at least in development, because you have to either change that to your OS username and create a postgresql user with your username, or create a new OS account called "gamocosm" and a postgresql user "gamocosm"
- ident
- Same as
peer
but for network connections
- Same as
- md5
- Client supplies an MD5-encrypted password
- This is the recommended method
- trust
Example: local postgres,gamocosm_development,gamocosm_test,gamocosm_production gamocosm md5
Technical details
Hmmmm.
Data
- Gamocosm has a lot of infrastructure:
- CloudFlare DNS API
- Digital Ocean API
- Digital Ocean servers/droplets
- Minecraft and the server wrapper
- Gamocosm Rails server
- Gamocosm Sidekiq background workers
- Avoid state and duplicating data (less chance of corruption, logic easier to debug than data)
- Idempotency is good
Error handling
- Methods that "do things" should return nil on success, or an object on error
- Methods that "return things" should use
String#error!
to mark a return value is an error- This method takes 1 argument: a data object (can be
nil
) - e.g.
'API response code not 200'.error!(res)
-
String#error!
returns anError
object;Error#to_s
is overridden so the error message can be shown to the user, or the error data (Error#data
) can be further inspected for handling
- This method takes 1 argument: a data object (can be
- You can use
.error?
to check if a return value is an error.Error#error?
is overriden to returntrue
- This class and these methods are defined in
config/initializers/monkey_patches.rb
- Throw exceptions in "exceptional cases", when something is unexpected (e.g. bad user input is expected) or can't be handled without "blowing up"
Important checks
-
server.remote.exists?
:!server.remote_id.nil?
-
server.remote.error?
: whether there was an error or not retrieving info about a droplet from Digital Ocean- true if the user is missing his Digital Ocean API token, or if it's invalid
- false if
!server.remote.exists?
- don't need to check this before
server.remote
actions (e.g.server.remote.create
)
-
server.running?
:server.remote.exists? && !server.remote.error? && server.remote.status == 'active'
-
user.digital_ocean.nil?
: Digital Ocean API token missing -
minecraft.node.error?
: error communicating with Minecraft wrapper on server -
minecraft.running?
:server.running? && !node.error? && node.pid > 0
(notice symmetry withserver.running?
)
Background workers
- Idempotent
- Keep blocks inside timeouts as simple as possible, cleanup outside of timeout, try to stick to plain old datatypes
- Use
ActiveRecord::Base.connection_pool.with_connection do |conn|
if threads (e.g. timeout) access the database
- Use
- Run finite amount of times (keep track of how many times looped)
- Reset the state of the server if anything goes wrong (any exit points)
- Check that the remote exists and is not errored
- Log errors to user minecraft server, include 'Aborting' when not finishing
- 'Aborting' should always be followed by
server.reset_state
andreturn
Other useful stuff
- Development/test user (from
db/seed.rb
): email "[email protected]", password "1234test", has the Digital Ocean api token fromenv.sh
- the current tests don't use this, and mock all HTTP requests/responses
- The Sidekiq web interface is mounted at
/sidekiq
- Sidekiq doesn't automatically reload source files when you edit them. You must restart it for changes to take effect
- New Relic RPM is available in developer mode at
/newrelic
- Run the console:
bundle exec rails c
- Reset the database:
bundle exec rake db:reset
- Reset Sidekiq jobs:
Sidekiq::Queue.new.each { |job| job.delete }
in the rails console - Reset Sidekiq stats:
Sidekiq::Stats.new.reset
in the rails console - The deployment scripts and configuration are in the
sysadmin/
directory - List of
rake db
commands: Stack Overflow
Tests
-
bundle exec rails test
or./tests.sh
- tests use WebMock to mock http requests (no external requests)
-
RAILS_ENV=test bundle exec rails <s|c>
to run the server or console (respectively) in test mode - Note: the test server, unlike the dev server, does not automatically reload source files when you change them
More testing by simulating a user server with Docker
Without a server to connect to, Gamocosm can't try SetupServerWorker or AutoshutdownMinecraftWorker.
"test-docker/" contains a Dockerfile for building a basic Fedora container with an SSH server (simulating a bare Digital Ocean server).
If you set $TEST_DOCKER
to "true", the tests will assume there is a running Docker Gamocosm container to connect to.
tests.sh
will build the image, start the container, and delete the container for you if you specify to use Docker.
Otherwise, it will run the tests normally (equivalent to bundle exec rails test
).
You should have non-root access to Docker.
You could also manage Docker yourself; you can look at the tests.sh
file for reference.
Example: TEST_DOCKER=true ./tests.sh
Credits
- Special thanks to geetfun who helped with the original development
- Special thanks to binary-koan (Jono Mingard) for designing the new theme! Looks awesome!
- SuperMarioBro for helping iron out some initial bugs, adding support for more Minecraft flavours
- bearbin for helping iron out some initial bugs
- chiisana for feedback and other ideas, resources
- KayoticSully for planning and development on the server wrapper API
- Jadorel for feedback and helping iron out some bugs
- Ajusa for helping with some bugs