Anything left on the old springrts.com server?

[dansan]

Hi,

I'm the owner of the host running the VM for the old springrts.com (78.46.21.29) server, which hosts the original lobby server and various websites (springrts.com, wiki, forums).

I haven't been around for ages, and it has come to my attention that the server looks very much abandoned. The Linux distribution and installed software are long EOL. It's a security incident waiting to happen.

I want to shut down at least the Apache service, to plug the most likely holes. I don't know about the other services.

• Does this project (so cool it's active!) in any way depend on springrts.com?
• Does anyone here know who I can ask about the stuff running on springrts.com?
• Are there other springrts-based games active and using the old lobby server?

Thanks and greetings from the past
Dansan

[p2004a]

Hey @dansan!

Thanks for reaching out and hosting it for all those years! The short answer to all of those is YES.

BAR does not directly depend on anything on that server anymore. Also nobody from the BAR infra team has any access to that server. But, all the other games that are running on the actively developed spring fork (RecoilEngine): Metal Factions, Total Atomic Power, ... actively do depend on that server. (I'm not sure about Zero-K, probably also yes, at least on some services like repos/springfiles)

I do not want to describe all the drama that happened there and how we got here, but currently, all the game devs hang out at https://discord.gg/GUpRg6Wz3e. I don't know everybody's github handles, so I will tag them there and link to this issue so we can figure out what to do.

Thanks again!

[lhog]

• It'd be nice to preserve the wiki content, I believe we scrapped content some time ago foreseeing eventual demise of https://springrts.com, but the copy wasn't perfect. Idk if something can be done about it.
• Forum messages are also valuable occasionally, would be nice to preserve them too, but idk how to do it in a privacy friendly way.
• I visit Mantis once in a blue moon when I see "fix mantis #blabla" in the code or commits and it's totally unclear what was actually fixed. So would be great to have this data.
• We let the game developers know about your intent so I will let them speak up. I've been telling those still relying on the spring infra to search for alternatives, but I guess it's still used to some extent by smaller games. I fully support your decision to shut it down partially or completely, but perhaps we can retrofit some of the scripts on how the things are set up. Not a specialist in these matters nor a person interested in that, so I'll let the game devs comment on what they need.

Otherwise thanks for hosting it all these years! Sad we had to split off, but this was the way.

[p2004a]

The main parts that will cause problem if lost:

• lobby server
• rapid hosting: all games are still built and by default downloaded from there
• springfiles: all maps are still hosted there

RecoilEngine, as it stands, by default still fully depends on those URLs.

There is no easily fully prepared "infra package" that developers can use to spin up all of that themselves. I've spun it up myself for BAR and it was a significant effort.

[GoogleFrog]

Personally I use the wiki regularly and check the forum (for quotes or history) occasionally. I am not sure what ZK depends on, but I suspect it includes rapid to some extent.

[dansan]

Oh, good, I asked ^.^ I won't shut down anything for now.

What do you think about putting a simple password in front of the website, wiki, and forum?
That should be enough to get rid of most automatic scanning for old software,
while retaining the services for archeology.

Then, I'd like to upgrade the Linux distro to Debian stable.
But after that, someone would need to check if everything required (lobby, rapid, springfiles) still works.

Then… or from the beginning, it would be great if there were someone or a team to take over the administration… Unless I decide to start playing again :)

[lhog]

it would be great if there were someone or a team to take over the administration…

Yeah... perhaps game devs, who still depend on that infra, would be interested to take over?

[springraaar]

Hi

There's a few games being hosted on the springrts.com lobby server (a few people playing mostly techA)

There's also springfiles, which hosts a large collection of maps, including some from the ZK community and many from BAR's.

Iirc the default rapid server is also hosted on springrts.com.

I have limited access to the server with a specific user and have been able to update the springfiles application from time to time.

What's the yearly cost to keep it running? Can't you update the OS even if it leads to temporary breakage of some service?

[springraaar]

Also think a key guy doing admin work on it was Abma. Have you had any recent contact with him?

[MaDDoXbr]

Hi @dansan. Our game (Total Atomic Power) server is still hosted on springrts.com, it's currently down because we're updating the assets to work with the latest engine release. Like others said, the wiki is a very valuable resource for any developer, maybe we could migrate it to our (or other games') web server and redirect springrts.com's wiki to it?
In any case I'm willing to help, let me know how you wanna handle that.
Thank you for reaching out!

[p2004a]

@dansan Did you do something to the server? It's extremely unresponsive for the last few days, loading anything on that host takes ages.

[GoogleFrog]

Turns out ZK uses Spring infra rapid so now updating is broken.

[Licho1]

Could you just transfer VPS ownership to me for example?
I would keep it running as is or slowly copy wiki, rapid and forum to another machine.

[springraaar]

any news regarding this?

atm I can ping springrts.com but springfiles and the main site are down

[dansan]

Hey everyone,
sorry I was so long gone without a word.
Three conferences, vacations, sickness, family, and work… I got it all ^.^

BTW: FOSDEM was really great again. If any of you live in Europe, you should present SpringRTS or the games there. It's a good place to find new developer volunteers.

Ok, back to business:

• I shut down replays.springrts.com. The last upload was a year ago. It consumes a ton of CPU when crawled and sends me emails all the time when the crawlers encounter a bug.
• I placed a basic auth password protection in front of the forum (/phpbb), Mantis (/mantis), and the wiki (/wiki and /mediawiki). The versions of those apps are ancient. Let's not look at all the CVEs…
  • This way, crawlers and script kiddies will leave us alone, but you'll still be able to access everything.
  • The username and password are the same and super secret ;)
  • ... actually, the crawlers are going crazy on /phpbb, getting all HTTP 401… about 50 req/s ^.^
  • I think Anubis is not needed anymore, but I didn't touch it. It was consuming a lot of CPU, but now that we're using basic auth, it doesn't show up in top anymore.
• I did not place basic auth on /matrix because I don't know if it's used as a bridge for something else. Please tell me whether it can be shut down, password-protected, or left as is.
  • There is also /_matrix… maybe some kind of client? I didn't touch it.
• /api/uber/xmlrpc is still reachable (from springrts.com itself). I think it was used by replays.springrts.com. It's not required by that anymore. Anyone else using it?
• I left all the non-HTTP TCP-services alone: buildbot, springlobby, SSH, postfix, postgres, mysql, lobbydev, lobby, mumble-server, matrix-synapse, springircbridge, anubis.

The server is pretty idle now. It's really only Apache sending HTTP 401s out by the dozens, and the occasional git-remote-http.

If you still experience performance problems, please report the exact date and time (and timezone), and I can try to look into whether a scheduled job is causing it.

[dansan]

Could you just transfer VPS ownership to me for example? I would keep it running as is or slowly copy wiki, rapid and forum to another machine.

@Licho1 I appreciate the offer!
This is a KVM VM running on a dedicated root server. So, I can't transfer it to you.
But I give you an account and sudo privileges. Then you can migrate everything over to another machine or administer the VM.