I found this tutorial in my back-ups from the old Clan MP website I had designed. This tutorial I wrote shortly after Valve released the Half-Life Steam Dedicated Server, but it never made it to the new web site. Now I am including it on my web site, simply because it is a more appropriate place for it here than on the MP web site. Another reason I am putting it here is because I am thinking to write other tutorials and publish them on my web site. The convenience of the blog database will allow me to keep the tutorials organized and still be able to present them to my blog reader.

Last update: Thursday January 01, 2004 12:45 PM

Hi everyone,

I hope this will be useful for all of you, who are having issues with updating to STEAM on Linux.

Here it is how after three days of sleepless headaches and swearing left and right at anyone and anything and trying to update HLDS 1.1.1.0, a Linux server update can be accomplished in 3 minutes.

Background information.

The -(MP)- server is hosted remotely. The host company does not provide any support regarding Half-Life, only actual hardware and administration support.

To translate the above, I, as an admin of the account, have to do all installations and configurations of HLDS by myself and rely on what I can find on the Internet.

I did not have access to the root directory only the directory allocated to me by the host company. This means that I HAD to use – hldaupdatetool.bin, simply because the destination path is hard coded in the standalone installation file – hlds_l_1120_full.bin

This guide is on how to migrate* to STEAM with or without administrative privileges on the hosted / remote server.

* This is if you have an HLDS (1.1.1.0) installed but it is still under the WON system.

Get hldsupdatetool.bin on the server.

Go into the directory which contains the HLDS server. It usually is hlds_l

You need the steam file from the Valve FTP server. I use wget here to get the file, if your Linux doesn’t have wget, use the FTP program provided with your distribution to get it.

For those who get it by FTP, this is the server to get it from:

Server: ftp.valvesoftware.com
User: hlserver
Pass: hlserver
Remote dir: /Linux
File: hldsupdatetool.bin

bash$ wget ftp://hlserver:[email protected]/Linux/hldsupdatetool.bin

———–

You can get the file on the server by uploading it from your machine, as well.

Making executables.

We now have the file we need, now lets run it!

bash$ chmod +x hldsupdatetool.bin
bash$ ./hldsupdatetool.bin

This will extract the steam utility. Now make it executable.

bash$ chmod +x steam

Creating an account and updating STEAM.

Now we are all ready to create an account for steam, and to get the files! But first, you MUST have the box administrator or yourself, create .steam directory in the root directory. Root in my case was the home directory of my account. I hade .steam permissions set to 777, just in case. The only file which will reside in the directory is a text file – ClientRegistry.blob

(1) You must have the .steam directory, for the utility to work.
(2) Change steam’s (the utility) permissions to 777.

./steam -create < username> < password> < question> < answer>

Here is an example how the fields will be filled out:

 ./steam -create [email protected] hard2guess "is STEAM a pain?” yes

Now you know how it must be done so lets do it. Go make and account. Run:

bash$ ./steam -create [email protected] hard2guess "is STEAM a pain?" yes

Steam will now update the steam client to the latest version

Getting version X of Steam Linux Client
Downloading. . . . . . . . . . .
Linux Client updated, please retry the command

It is updated, now we must restart the program.

bash$ ./steam -create [email protected] hard2guess "is STEAM a pain?" yes

If all goes well it will respond with: Account Created successfully.

———–

If you have any problems with updating, you can run the process again, but make sure you have deleted ClientRegistry.blob file from .steam directory. After deleting the ClientRegistry.blob file, when you run the process from the beginning of section 3, it will be like you never executed the commands before.

Updating the HLDS server engine.

To update the engine run the following command:

bash$ ./steam -update valve

This will update the HLDS engine. You will see it download all of the update files to the designated directories and sub directories. When it is done, all you have to do is start the game the way you have always started it.

Any questions and problems, feel free to contact me: Alexandar Tzanov