Building a Server

1. Build the computer
2. Setting up SSH
3. Setting up remote desktop
4. Enable firewall
5. Setting up a Terraria server

Build the computer

The target of this build is the Synology DS1522+ 5 bay desktop NAS which costs about £700. This will have a better CPU and one more bay for 60% of the cost.

Built the whole thing in one go, but it didn’t POST the first time. To troubleshoot I pulled out everything from the motherboard except the CPU, RAM, power cables for CPU and MOBO, and HDMI cable. then it POST’ed successfully, so I tested repeatedly adding one connection at a time, and it POST’ed every time.

No idea what the problem was.

Setting up SSH

eventually I’d like to do everything remotely, so SSH should be a good first step. It should allow connections from the local network only for now, not really planning to access this from the outside world any time soon.

download openssh-server and configure it:

sudo apt install openssh-server
sudo vim /etc/ssh/sshd_config.d/local_only.conf
sudo service ssh restart

local_only.conf:

# Disable all auth by default
PasswordAuthentication no
PubkeyAuthentication no

Match Address 192.168.0.*
        PubkeyAuthentication yes
        AllowUsers <user>

remember to switch password authentication on temporarily to copy ssh keys.

then to set up ssh key on client side:

ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/<name>.pub -p 22 user@ipaddress

ssh keys might be overkill on top of matching 192.168, but I guess more security doesn’t hurt.

to SSH into server, either configure router DHCP so that the nas gets a fixed IP:

ssh user@ipaddress

or if DNS works in the local network:

ssh user@hostname

this works on some of my local computers but not all?

motherboard supports wake-on-lan, might want to try it out

Setting up remote desktop

Remote CLI works, now for remote GUI.

NoMachine seems to have a lot more features but it feels like its meant to be configured and used through its GUI. Setting up VNC from SSH CLI would be cool but I still have my KB&M & monitor connected so might as well make use of them.

Download and install NoMachine on both server and client.

Nomachine provides a .deb file on its website, is there an easy way to check updates for it?

Initially this just shows a blackscreen because Ubuntu is too smart:

Connecting to Linux headless machines with NoMachine

sudo systemctl stop sddm
sudo /etx/NX/nxserver --restart

Alternatively run this screen after startup if GUI is not needed.

sudo systemctl stop sddm
sudo /etc/NX/nxserver --shutdown

Enable firewall

You might want to do this earlier.

UFW is preinstalled, so we’ll just use that:

sudo ufw allow ssh
sudo ufw allow 4000/tcp
sudo ufw allow 4011:4099/udp
sudo ufw enable
sudo ufw status

to check logs, first make sure logging is enabled:

sudo ufw status verbose

then the log should be stored at /var/log/ufw.log.

refer to this for more details on UFW logs:

How Do I Check My UFW Log?

NoMachine is supposed to configure firewall automatically but that didn’t work?

Setting up a Terraria server

This doesn’t really help with the NAS thing but it’s fun.

Upload the world save file with rsync:

rsync -av Terraria/Worlds/ <ipaddress>:games/ts/

download the server binary and set up a configuration file server.conf:

world=/home/<user>/games/ts/worlds/<world>.wld
maxplayers=4
port=<port>
password=<password>
motd=<motd>
worldpath=/home/<user>/games/ts/worlds
secure=1
language=en-US
npcstream=60

Setting maximum player to be exact seems to block players retrying connection after entering a wrong password

make sure the configuration file and the binary is in the same folder, and run:

./TerrariaServer.bin.x86_64 -config server.conf

remember to open the port in ufw, and the server should now be working.

to keep the server running and accesiable across SSH sessions, use screen:

screen
./TerrariaServer.bin.x86_64 -config server.conf
Ctrl+a d

to check if detach worked:

screen -list

and to reattach after the detach:

screen -r [session]

tmux should work as well.