Continuing our goal of running an ASA server on Linux, we’ll add Code Server to our Docker stack. This will let us manage the INI files without using the command line. Here is the accompanying video: https://youtu.be/WvS0LonnrOE
In the last post we setup a Docker server on Contabo, installed Dockge to manage containers, and started an Ark: Survival Ascended server. Now we need an easy way to manage our INI files.
Add Code Server as a service to our Compose.yaml file
Inside Dockge, click the [Edit] button so we can modify our ASA stack:
In the code box on the right, we can then add another service for code-server. Make a couple lines before networks: {} and add in the new definition for our code server:
And that easy, we’re ready to create the new container! The previous [Edit] button at the top has turned to [Deploy], so we’ll click that:
Within a few seconds, you should have a Code Server container created! To access that, we’ll browse to it just like we did with Dockge, but using port 8443 instead: http://123.123.123.123:8443.
Managing INI files
Once we’ve browsed to our new Code Server, we should be able to modify all text-based files in the workspace:
We mounted the default workspace to the root of our Docker stack folder, so we should be able to see all files for our server. Game.ini and GameUserSettings.ini are the two files we care about the most, but we could also download backups from this new screen! Here are some of my preferred settings for these INI files and a few others you may be interested in changing.
Some of these settings may be in the wrong locations. Some of options in my original GameUserSettings.ini were excluded here as I don’t think they matter. This should give a starting point though 😀
In 2023, Wildcard released Ark: Survival Ascended (ASA). This is the true successor to the Ark: Survival Evolved that we love! However, they partnered with Nitrado as the only “official” hosting provider. With enough complaints, Studio Wildcard chose to allow self-hosted servers – just as they had with Ark:SE.
While not everybody has a spare machine lying around to host an Ark server, we can still rent decent Virtual Private Servers (VPS) from services like Hetzner or Contabo. After comparing the options, I settled on Contabo as the most affordable. It’s not perfect, but it’ll serve the purpose. Coming in around $15/mo USD for a server with 16GB RAM, it’s well below the Nitrado-hosted option – if we’re willing to put in the work to set everything up. So lets begin!
Choose a Contabo server
As of January 2024, Contabo has excellent price to performance options! If you just need a dev server, the $5.50 option is hard to beat with 4 V-cores and 8GB RAM.
However, we’re needing slightly more than that to run an ASA server. The next step up will do nicely – though the price is a bit deceiving. We’ll explain why shortly. The “Cloud VPS M” with 16GB RAM is exactly what we need to host The Island on ASA. If you can pay in Euro instead of USD, you can save another 17%, but I don’t know if you have to pay a conversion rate above that.
Some things to be aware of in this price, though. The “No Setup Fee” is only if you’re buying 12 months up front. I find this very deceiving, though I suppose it’s probably fair. The actual setup fee is actually $8.50. Since it’s a 1-time fee and we’re still cheaper than Nitrado, it’s worth trying in my opinion. The $12.50 price is also misleading. To host in the US, I was charged an extra $2.65. East USA is an extra $3.60. I do understand that there could be extra cost depending on location, but I had already told the site I’m in the USA and paying with USD. That fee should have been included in the advertised price. Even with both hidden fees, we’re still cheaper than Nitrado 🙃
Configure your server
If you only plan to run an Ark server here, the 100GB NVMe is probably your best option. If you also want to host a blog with pictures and videos, the 400GB SSD may be better suited. I like the idea of faster storage over more storage though.
Your “Image” is which OS you want installed by default. We want Docker and I’m a fan of Debian, though Ubuntu is fine too. Choose the [Apps & Panels] tab and select [x] Docker. From the drop-down, choose “Debian 12”.
On Linux, your “Root” account is the default admin account that has Linux god powers. Give it a strong password because you don’t want anyone guessing this login!
SSH into our new server
From the Contabo VPS control dashboard, we can find the IP to our server.
Windows PowerShell, Mac Terminal, and Linux Terminal all have SSH built-in now. From the command line, type “ssh root@123.123.123.123” replacing “123…” with the IP we copied from the Contabo dashboard.
When it asks, provide the password we set in the last step.
Create user accounts
While the “root” user is convenient, we should really create a non-root account to login with. Don’t worry… We can still give this new account elevated permissions too though. The second account we want is “asa” so we can attribute the file ownership. Using useradd, we can create our accounts with passwords. The basic useradd myUserName will create the account without a password and sets the default shell to /bin/sh. If you’ve already run that, don’t worry… We can fix that too.
useradd ben -s /bin/bash -p 5uper5ecretPa55w0rd
useradd asa
If you did something wrong here, we can still fix it. You may not even want your password shown in plain text like this. To change the password of my “ben” account, I’d use passwd ben. If you need to change the default shell, you can nano /etc/passwd and scroll to the bottom where your account is and change the default shell there.
We can now tail /etc/passwd -n2 to see those two new accounts and their IDs.
Most likely, our account with have a User ID and Group ID (UID:GID) of 1000:1000 and our “asa” account will have 1001:1001. The asa uid:gid will come into play later, so take note if they’re different than we expect.
Create Docker folder structure and install Dockge
There are several ways to setup your Docker directories, but I prefer to create new /opt/docker/ folder and nest everything under there. We can move into /opt and get started:
cd /opt
mkdir docker
cd docker
mkdir dockge dockge/data
And that’s it! Now we have a folder for Dockge and soon for our Ark server, and the data folder for Dockge. Next we’ll move into the Dockge folder and prepare a Docker Compose file. The Compose file is a simple way to deploy a new Docker container – or suite of containers – with a well-defined Yaml document.
cd dockge
nano compose.yaml
Nano is a simple text editor for Linux. We’re trying not to spend too much time on the Linux command line, but this will help us out. Bare with me – we’re almost there!
We can get the sample Compose file from the official Dockge repo, but that will need some updates specific to our environment. You’re certainly welcome to go that route, or you can use the Compose file I’ve already prepared:
version: "3.8"
services:
dockge:
image: louislam/dockge:1
restart: unless-stopped
ports:
# Host Port : Container Port
- 5001:5001
volumes:
- /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
- ./data:/app/data
# If you want to use private registries, you need to share the auth file with Dockge:
# - /root/.docker/:/root/.docker
# Your stacks directory in the host (The paths inside container must be the same as the host)
# ⚠️⚠️ If you did it wrong, your data could end up be written into a wrong path.
# ✔️✔️✔️✔️ CORRECT: - /my-stacks:/my-stacks (Both paths match)
# ❌❌❌❌ WRONG: - /docker:/my-stacks (Both paths do not match)
- /opt/docker:/opt/docker
environment:
# Tell Dockge where is your stacks directory
- DOCKGE_STACKS_DIR=/opt/docker
You should be able to copy this code and right-click into your SSH window to paste it in. If you’ve made any changes to your folder structure, be sure to update the compose file to match. And, that’s it!! Press [Ctrl] + 'x' to exit then 'y' to say you want to save and [Enter] to confirm the file name.
Finally (for Dockge), we need to deploy the new container. Type docker compose up -d and watch the Docker magic happen! It will download the images and build out the new install based on what we defined in the compose.yaml file!
Getting started with Dockge
Alright! I think we’re mostly done with the command line. We may need to come back later, but my goal is to not keep you there more than we have to. Dockge is an easy way to graphically manage your Docker containers straight from the browser. It won’t do everything we need, but should be a gateway. If you noticed in the Compose.yaml file we created, we gave Dockge the default port 5001. All we need to do now is open that in the browser and specify port 5001: http:\\123.123.123.123:5001 – of course, replace the 123… with the IP of your server. The same IP we used to SSH in a few steps back. If we did everything right, we should be greeted with a page to create a new Dockge user:
Be sure to chose a strong password, since this is still open to everybody on the Internet – we should be able to fix that in another tutorial. I won’t go into too much detail here – the video shows it all much better. But you’re probably here for the asa compose file though:
Now, we’ve made a few changes to this since the video:
PUID / PGID were added as environment variables. These should correspond with the IDs for the ASA user we created.
MANUAL_CONFIG was updated in the video later, but we can include that now. It may be better to leave it out for your first run so the files will be created automatically.
Game.ini and GameUserSettings.ini we’ll need to go back and update in command line – for now.
This Compose file can be pasted into the box on the right-side of Dockge, then press the blue [Start] on the left
If this is the first time it starts, you’ll need to be patient. It may take several minutes to download the container images, then several minutes longer to start the server for the first time. It will need to update the SteamCmd executables, then download all of Ark:SA to your server. What you’re waiting for is the line that says something along the lines of “Full Startup 160 seconds”:
If there were no errors, you’re ready to test! I found that even though I specified “LifeAsBen” in the SERVER_NAME environment variable, it didn’t really respect that. Don’t panic if you can’t find your server though! We’ll update the INI files and that should get us started.
Updating INIs
Almost every aspect of Ark Servers is configured by the INI files: Game.ini and GameUserSettings.ini. I plan to do a detailed video about these in the future, but you probably want something to get started.
To edit these, we’ll need to go back to our SSH window. I won’t rehash that here, but we just need to SSH in (see above) and CD to the ASA folder:
cd /opt/docker/asa/
nano Game.ini
Game.ini we can do more with later, but for now we’ll just give it a placeholder:
[/script/shootergame.shootergamemode]
nano Game.ini and paste that in. [Ctrl]+'x' then 'y' to save and [Enter] to confirm.
Next we’ll nano GameUserSettings.ini
This one has a lot more options, so you’ll need to expand below for the sample. We don’t really need all of these, but it will get you started. I’ve also already changed some from the defaults, so it’s not quite “vanilla”. Be sure to update your server name (session name) and passwords in this file.
Again, paste that in then quite, and save: [Ctrl]+'x' then 'y' to save and [Enter] to confirm.
While we’re at the command line, there’s 1 more thing we should probably verify and that’s that our asa user owns all the files it should. From /opt/docker/asa, type in ls -la. The ‘LS’ command will list all files. The ‘-L’ flag tells it to give us a list showing permissions and owner info. The ‘A’ flag shows hidden files too. That ls -la should look something like this:
If your files or folders say they’re owned by root, we’ll need to fix that:
chown asa:asa *
That tells it to CHange OWNer to the user:group asa.
All that’s left is to restart the container back in Dockge:
Pressing the [Restart] button will force it to reload from our freshly-updated INI files.
Give it a few minutes to start back up, then check the game again. If you’re still having a hard time finding the server, make sure all your filter settings are set correctly: We don’t need to hide full; we need show show password protected servers since we have a password; this isn’t PC-only; and most importantly we want to show Player Servers.
