New Users Guide
Introduction
Welcome to EVEmu! This guide will help you go through the steps of setting up a VPS (Virtual Private Server) to run EVEmu and launching the EVEmu Server. This guide is directed towards users with very little technical experience who want to test EVEmu or want to take a deep dive into server development. For any questions not covered in this guide you can contact us on Discord or Forums.
Setting up your VPS
For first time users setting up a VPS can be tricky business. Don't worry it's quite easy with some simple instructions.
Getting your VPS
Let's start with getting you a VPS. There are multiple providers that you can rent a VPS from on a monthly basis. EVEmu requires at least 1 core, 1GB RAM, x86_64, and a network connection to run. So what this means is that we need to have at least 1 CPU core with 1GB RAM, an active network connection, and be running on the x86_64 system architecture. We suggest choosing Ubuntu Server 18.04 or greater as your operating system. Currently Ubuntu Server 18.04 and 20.04 are the recommended long term support variants of Ubuntu Server.
Popular Providers
Any of these providers will work for setting up EVEmu. We recommend doing research and figuring out the one that works best for you and your budget. All of these providers also include instructions on how to setup and login to your instance. We'll leave it up to them to explain how to login to your instance besides this brief synopsis.
Logging into your VPS
All of the providers listed above have some documentation on how to login to your instance. We recommend while creating your instance that you create a SSH (Secure Shell Protocol) KeyPair. This will allow you to be able to login to your instance from home. Some of the above providers allow for you to login to the server from your browser if you did not or do not want to create one of these key pairs.
Windows
To login via SSH to your new instance you are going to need to install a program called PUTTY. This is a SSH client for Windows and is extremely popular throughout the IT Industry. Once this program is installed Double Click to open it. You are going to put your servers hostname or IP in the box labeled Hostname or IP Address. Next steps will differ.
Password Login
If you have a password to login to your instance you will click connect. You will be prompted with a terminal windows. It will first prompt you for a username. As we are using ubuntu you will enter the username of ubuntu and click Enter. Next it will prompt you for a password. Copy the password from where you have stored it and Right Click within the terminal window. You will not see any difference in the terminal as it hides the password by default. Click Enter. After a few seconds you should be logged into your new instance.
Key Based Login
If you are using Key Based login you will need the private key that you received when you setup the instance. You either generated this key yourself or you were prompted with a download for it. Locate it now. Once you have your key located navigate to the windows search bar. Search for Puttygen. Open this program. You will be prompted with a window similar in style to Putty. About halfway down the window on the right hand side is a button called Load. Click this button and navigate to where you located your private key earlier. It will at first not show up. In the bottom right of the window you will have to change the file type to All Files to be able to see your private key. Once you can see it click it and select Okay. You will be prompted with a pop up window stating that your key was successfully imported. Click Save Private Key and save it in a place that is memorable to you. Next, locate the file you just saved. Right click it and select Load into Pagent. Once this is done please go back to the Putty window and click connect. You should be logged into your new instance within a few seconds.
Linux
To login via SSH to your new instance with Linux is quite simple. To begin with locate the Private Key that you received when you setup your instance. Remember where this key is located. I suggest putting it in a memorable place as you will need it every-time you login to your instance. Open your terminal. Navigate with cd to where your private key is located. Next run chmod 0400 privatekeyfile.pem. This will change the security of your private key so that it can be used by the Linux SSH client. Once you have run that command you are ready to connect to your instance. Type ssh -i privatekeyfile.pem ubuntu@server_ip_or_hostname_here. You will shortly be prompted with your instance all logged in and ready to go.
Setting up your VPS for EVEmu
Setting up an instance for EVEmu is quite simple with the inclusion of Docker into the build process. To start with we need to install Docker. Docker is a containerization engine that separates programs into items known as containers. These containers are separate from the root operating system and help reduce conflicts with other programs. To install Docker run sudo curl -sSL https://get.docker.com/ | CHANNEL=stable bash in your terminal window. Wait for this to complete. Once this is done you now have docker installed on your server. Next you need to install a program called docker-compose. This program just allows for easier access to the Docker Engine and will be used with actually launching the EVEmu Server. You can install it by running sudo apt install -y docker-compose . Once this is done you are real close to being ready to launch the server. All thats left is to get the files. Run git clone https://github.com/EvEmu-Project/evemu_Crucible.git. This will download the files to your instance for use. Next run cd evemu_Crucible. This will put you within the server directory.
Launching the EVEmu Server
You are really close to being able to launch EVEmu. Actually you're on the last step. To launch your server run docker-compose -p evemu up --build -d. A little bit of what this is doing. This command is downloading the dependencies needed to compile the server, and then actually compiling it into a working binary. It will then use this binary to run the evemu-server container. This command is also downloading the needed files for the database, and compiling those into the MariaDB MySQL database that EVEmu stores all of its data in. This will take time to complete anywhere upwards of five minutes depending on the specs of the server that you are running. If you encounter any issues while running this command or the server fails to compile please contact us on our Discord or Forums. Once this process is done you now have a fully working EVEmu server.