Machine setup

The current community servers are hosted on a CentOS 7 cloud instance from Vultr. The virtual machine has 768 MB of memory, a single CPU and runs no user-level service other than SSH, which means that at any point in time, there are at most three user services running: sshd, srcds_linux #1 and srcds_linux #2.

For what it's worth, 768 MB is ample memory for two L4D1 game servers: when both are running, the virtual machine still has over 320 MB of free memory.

Word of advice to sysadmins: before changing your SSHd port from default port 22, make sure you've opened the firewall port that you're moving to...

Game server configuration

Both game servers share the same server configuration: shared server files and shared main configuration file. Like the files below show, the part of the configuration that is not shared only defines the name of the game server.

Configuration files

Main config file: http://l4d-survival.com/downloads/server/setup/l4d-server.cfg
Server #1 config file: http://l4d-survival.com/downloads/server/setup/l4d-server01.cfg
Server #2 config file: http://l4d-survival.com/downloads/server/setup/l4d-server02.cfg

See also the SourceMod plugins section further below.

Installation

Server files were installed using LGSM ( https://gameservermanagers.com/lgsm/l4dserver/ ) and, because server files are shared, running two game servers summed up to copying the l4dserver script to a second file and changing the port numbers. Therefore, server #1 and server #2 have to be launched independently instead of forking a single server: that option leads to insane CPU usage values.

Additional components installed are SourceMod and Metamod (using the guides at https://pricklytech.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/sourcemod-linux-installation/ and https://www.vultr.com/docs/how-to-install-left-4-dead-server-on-centos-7).

SourceMod plugins

• cannounce (for the "player XXX has connected from YYY" announces)
• l4dtoolz (for spectator slots)
• needtohave (for the !kill, !join and !spec chat commands)
• stripper (for prepared maps with gas cans conveniently stored)
• votemanager2 (for showing who started a vote)

Stripper configuration files can be downloaded from http://l4d-survival.com/downloads/server/setup/stripper.zip. Unzip to your server so that folder dumps has this path: left4dead/addons/stripper/dumps.

Credits

• Credits go to YüendeӍü for providing the configuration files for the stripper SourceMod plugin.
• Credits go to L.v for a lag-free (at least, so much less laggy than default servers) configuration (see comments in the main configuration file).
• Many thanks to Rockboo for the immense help while setting up and tuning the game servers.