Getting a Server Running - SteamOS - Best Path Forward?

For context - I’m working on getting an emulated Everquest server up and running, but hitting dead ends (probably due to my newness to Linux in general) and seeking some guidance from the community on what I’ve tried and best path forward.

My ultimate goal is to get it running on SteamOS - I have it fully operational on my actual server machine running Ubuntu, but trying to get it working here so I can just connect locally (i.e on a plane) so I don’t need to connect externally. Here is the situation and obstacles;

I’ve been trying for a minute now to get EQEmu setup on the SteamOS side of the house for ease of launching with client, but running into obstacles in several different directionns, and wanted to see if someone had some guidance on best path forwarrd.

First Route - VM - Linux Mint - Docker - I have a successful server up and running via Gnome Boxes with a Linux Mint guest OS - then docker and akkstakk running on it.

The obstacle - I can’t seem to bridge the connection of the guest OS with host OS (guest can ping host, host cannot ping guest). If I can bridge (no pun intended) this gap, it’ll most likely be the route I go

Second Route - Distrobox - Ubuntu When running Distrobox directly on SteamOS - I’m trying to get the linux install running - however there is a multitude of issues with permissions being denied. This is likely due to SteamOS’ immutable system. To bypass it, it is possible to offset this via turning off read only. However, I don’t want to pursue that route, as anything written to the file system gets wiped on update to the OS.

Third Route - WINE - Lutris - SteamOS Another route I’ve tried is utilizing WINE with the windows installer. I think this could help bypass some of the restrictions of the system while having it run on that.

Obstacle here: Running the .bat file yields the following message - mariadb-10.0.21-winx64.msi: File Not Found Installing MariaDB (Root Password: eqemu) LOADING… PLEASE WAIT… “sh” isn’t a recognized shell. Please open an issue at git.rootprojects.org/root/pathman/issues?q=shwarning: couldn’t access “C:\Program Files\MariaDB 10.0\bin”: CreateFile C:\Program Files\MariaDB 10.0\bin: Path not found. PATH not changed.

I tried manually executing mariadb and perl, but it still hangs up at both. I see that i ntuser, it’s still not finding them.

So all that to say, trying to find a way to make this work. I’m the closest with the VM, but can’t figure out the connection there. Distrobox would be a mess of troubleshooting, and WINE I feel could almost work if I could get the PATHs to work (maybe).

Any input or guidance is widely appreciated for such a niche request.

astraeus, (edited )
@astraeus@programming.dev avatar

You’re trying to run a .bat file on Linux that’s written specifically for Windows installs. Usually .bat is run on Windows, .sh on Linux. If you have a .sh file, use that instead. If there is no .sh equivalent you may be able to tweak the .bat to run on Linux, but I don’t know if that’s a reasonable path forward or not depending on how much Windows logic is in that file.

Aties,

I have it fully operational on my actual server machine running Ubuntu,

Was this difficult? Sorry to hijack, but I hadn’t really considered doing this but now I’m intrigued lol

Russianranger,

It’s pretty easy honestly. The community devs do a good job of making it fairly straightforward. You can slap it on windows, Linux, or docker, and as long as you aren’t facing an immutable file system OS, it’s really easy. Ubuntu/Debian work best with the Linux install.

hedgehog,

Re the first route, what is the network mode of your container and which ports are exposed?

How familiar are you with Docker networking? Docker docs are here and may be enough on their own to help you out. If not, there are a ton of guides and tutorials out there that can help.

Russianranger,

Another user commented that gnome boxes is setup in a way that isn’t conducive to what I want, setup as a qemu user bridge mode.

My knowledge of docker is novice at best, I’m only familiar with a handful of commands based on some hand hold levels of tutorials. Thank you for the resource, I’ll research it more to see if I can get a better handle on it.

somethingsomethingidk,

I have zero experience with SteamOS but Gnome Boxes uses a qemu usermode networking that doesn’t let you access the guest the way you want to.

I would trying using virt-manager (gui for libvirt). It lets you use a bridge as the network interface and for vm gets a proper IP and can communcate on the network like any other computer

Russianranger,

I’ve seen virt-manager recommended in similar situations like mine. I’ll explore it - at first my thought was it may not be ideal as I’ll most likely need to overcome the immutable file system that comes with SteamOS. You can bypass it, but it isn’t ideal as anything written into the innate read only section of the OS is wiped on update. But thinking about it more, I may be able to use distrobox as a way to bypass it. Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll report back with my findings. I also appreciate you mentioning the qemu user mode networking with gnome boxes, that makes sense.

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