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 depending on your authentication method.

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.

Preparing and Launching your EVEmu Server (Docker)

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 sudo 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.

Preparing and Launching your EVEmu Server (Source)

Server Compilation

Run sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
Run sudo apt-get install build-essential g++ cmake git
Run sudo apt-get install libtinyxml2.6.2-dbg libtinyxml2.6.2 libmysql
Run sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev zlib1g-dbg
Run sudo apt-get install libboost1.54
Run git clone https://github.com/EvEmu-Project/evemu_Crucible
Run cd evemu_Crucible
Run mkdir build
Run cd build
Run cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=dist ..
Run make -j(Number of cores you have available)
Run make install

Database Setup

NOTE:

%devRoot% is where the development files are located.
These may be the same location but that is not necessary.

Open a terminal and go to the directory %devRoot%/evemu_Crucible/sql/
Install and setup your database software, for EVEmu we use MariaDB

 sudo apt-get install mariadb-server
 sudo mysql_secure_installation

Open your MySQL shell via mysql -u root -p and input the following:
1. Note: This will prompt you for the password you set in the Previous Step

 create database evemu;
 GRANT ALL ON evemu.* TO 'evemu'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'YOURPASSWORD';

In the same SQL directory, run install.sh if you're running Linux or install.bat on Windows
1. Note: You will have to edit the install.sh or install.bat files to reflect the password you set in the previous step.

Final Steps:

Open eve-server.xml which if you did everything right, should be in %devRoot$/evemu_Crucible/build/dist/etc
Scroll towards the bottom of the file, to the database connection info, change <host>db</host> to <host>localhost</host> and save it.
Optionally, you can also move a directory back to %devRoot$/evemu_Crucible/build/dist/ and make a 'logs' directory. This will be where EVEmu will be able to save log files.

To finally run your EVEmu server, navigate to the %devRoot$/evemu_Crucible/build/dist/bin folder and run the eve-server executable.

 ./eve-server

If you have any issues or concerns please contact us on our Discord or Forums. Once this process is done you now have a fully working EVEmu server.

Client Setup

Get the Client here

Download EVE_Online_Installer_360229.exe, eveonline_360229_1of2.7z, eveonline_360229_2of2.7z to the same directory.
Make sure that all files are in the same directory and double click the EVE_Online_Installer_360229.exe file
Go through the setup, This will take a few minutes to complete.
Once this is done Uncheck the "Run Eve Online" box on the final screen.
1. Note: If you do not uncheck this box your client will reach out to CCP and auto update itself to the latest version which is not compatible with the EVEmu server.

Get a copy of the blue patcher here

Copy the BlueAutoPatcher file to your EVE Client Directory. This is commonly found under C:\Program Files (x86)\CCP\EVE\bin
Right click the BlueAutoPatcher and click Run as Administrator
Click yes on the prompt.
Unless you stored EVE in a special directory the default settings should work fine. Click Patch
1. Note: Sometimes the above steps will not work. To resolve this copy the blue.dll from C:\Program Files (x86)\CCP\EVE\bin to your desktop as well as the BlueAutoPatcher
2. Run the BlueAutoPatcher as administrator. It should auto detect the blue.dll file on your Desktop.
3. Click Patch and wait for the file to be patched. It should say success at the bottom and auto close itself.
4. Copy the blue.dll file back to C:\Program Files (x86)\CCP\EVE\bin replacing the existing blue.dll file with the patched one.
5. Your blue.dll should now be patched.
Edit your common.ini file. Replace the line cryptoPack=CryptoAPI with cryptoPack=Placebo
Save your common.ini file and close it
Go back a directory to the EVE directory and edit the start.ini file.
Replace server=Tranquility with server=<your_server_ip_or_hostname_here>
Save the start.ini file and close it
Navigate to your desktop. Here should be a Icon named EVE
Right click this icon and click properties.
Edit the Target box to be "C:\Program Files (x86)\CCP\EVE\bin\ExeFile.exe"
1. Note: This is assuming that you haven't changed the default installation directory
Click Apply and then Okay

Your client is now ready to run.

NOTE: Do NOT run the Client from the icon you get after installation. Change it to run the /bin/exefile.exe instead of the eve.exe or you will get the launcher and that will attempt to contact CCP and automatically update the client.

Test and Report!

Yes! We know there are bugs and missing features!

See Next Steps to learn how to setup your market, and how to debug your build.

Check out our current project status to see a list of known working and missing/broken features of the EVE Online experience.

You can request to be part of the Testers Group. Just head into our IRC channel and get to know some of them, request a forum account and start testing against the Project Status.

See this article for specific information on how to go about testing and creating reports and submitting bug/feature reports on our Github project page.