HOWTO: Team Fortress 2 Dedicated Server

Create a folder in your home directory and cd into it;

mkdir ~/hlds
cd ~/hlds

You need to obtain the half Life Dedicated Server Update Tool from the steam website;

wget http://www.steampowered.com/download/hldsupdatetool.bin

When the download is done make the bin file executable and execute it;

chmod +x hldsupdatetool.bin
./hldsupdatetool.bin

Do an initial install of the dreaded steam;

./steam

This will do some downloading and updating for a while.

When it finishes it will probably say "Please retry the command." So, we do as it says and it will update again.

When that is done we then need to download the actual Team Fortress server files;

./steam -command update -game "tf" -dir .

Now, for some reason when you do an install, it doesn't actually download all the necessary files. We need to do a "verify-all" to force it to download all the missing files;

./steam -command update -game tf -verify_all

It also doesn't provide a server config file. You can create one or use the one here.

vi orangebox/tf/cfg/server.cfg

// Team Fortress 2 Server Configuration File, To be used with TF2 only!
hostname "Tuxnetworks TF2 Server" // this is your server name as shown in the server list
sv_password "" // your server password. a pair of double quotes means it is not set and anyone can join

//rcon settings
rcon_password "change_this_password" // your rcon password to log into the dev rcon console or HLSW rcon console

// Rcon Cvars
sv_rcon_banpenalty 15 //Number of minutes to ban users who fail rcon authentication
sv_rcon_log 1 //Enable/disable rcon logging.
sv_rcon_maxfailures 3 //Max number of times a user can fail rcon authentication before being banned
sv_rcon_minfailures 5 //Number of times a user can fail rcon authentication in sv_rcon_minfailuretime before being banned
sv_rcon_minfailuretime 10 //Number of seconds to track failed rcon authentications

sv_cheats 0
mp_autoteambalance 0
mp_teams_unbalance_limit 0


// Server Cvars
mp_allowspectators 1 //Toggles whether the server allows spectator mode or not
mp_autocrosshair 0
mp_bonusroundtime 5 //Time in seconds after round win until round restarts
mp_chattime 5 //amount of time in seconds players can chat after the game is over
mp_limitteams 0
mp_decals 1
mp_defaultteam 1
mp_disable_autokick 1 //Prevents a userid from being auto-kicked
mp_enableroundwaittime 1 //Enable timers to wait between rounds.
mp_fadetoblack 0 //fade a player's screen to black when he dies
mp_falldamage 5 //Amount of damage players sustains from a fall
mp_flashlight 0 //Toggles flashlight on or off
mp_footsteps 1 //Toggles footsteps on or off
mp_forcecamera 0 //Restricts spectator modes for dead players
mp_forcerespawn 0
mp_forcerespawnplayers 1 //Force all players to respawn.
mp_forcewin 1 //Forces team to win
mp_fraglimit 0
mp_idledealmethod 0 //Deals with Idle Players. 1 = Sends them into Spectator mode then kicks them if they're still idle, 2 = Kicks them out of the game
mp_idlemaxtime 1 //Maximum time a player is allowed to be idle (in minutes)
mp_maxrounds 10 //max number of rounds to play before server changes maps
mp_teams_unbalance_limit 2 //Teams are unbalanced when one team has this many more players than the other team. (0 disables check)
mp_teststalemate 0 //Test the stalemate mode. Parameter: <0/1>. If 1, the map will reset at the end.
mp_time_between_capscoring 5 //Delay between scoring of owned capture points.
mp_timelimit 120 //game time per map in minutes
mp_winlimit 10 //Max number of rounds one team can win before server changes maps
sv_allow_color_correction 1 //Allow or disallow clients to use color correction on this server.
sv_allow_wait_command 0 //Allow or disallow the wait command on clients connected to this server.
sv_allowdownload 1 //Allow clients to download files
sv_allowupload 1 //Allow clients to upload customizations files
sv_alltalk 0 //Players can hear all other players, no team restrictions
sv_alternateticks 0 //If set, server only simulates entities on even numbered ticks.
sv_autosave 0 //Set to 1 to autosave game on level transition. Does not affect autosave triggers.
sv_bonus_challenge 0 //Set to values other than 0 to select a bonus map challenge type.
sv_cacheencodedents 1 //If set to 1, does an optimization to prevent extra SendTable_Encode calls.
sv_cheats 0 //Allow cheats on server
sv_clearhinthistory 0 //Clear memory of server side hints displayed to the player.
sv_consistency 1 //Whether the server enforces file consistency for critical files
sv_contact "" //Contact email for server sysop
sv_downloadurl "" //Location from which clients can download missing files
sv_enableoldqueries 1 //Enable support for old style (HL1) server queries
sv_pausable 0 //Is the server pausable.

// Lan or internet play, Server region cvars
sv_lan 0 //Server is a lan server ( no heartbeat, no authentication, no non-class C addresses )
sv_region 255 // Region Codes: 0 - US East coast, 1 - US West coast, 2 - South America, 2 - South America, 3 - Europe, 4 - Asia, 5 - Australia, 6 - Middle East, 7 - Africa, 255 - world

//server Logging
sv_log_onefile 0 //Log server information to only one file.
sv_logbans 1 //Log server bans in the server logs.
sv_logblocks 0 //If true when log when a query is blocked (can cause very large log files)
sv_logecho 0 //Echo log information to the console.
sv_logfile 1 //Log server information in the log file.
sv_logflush 0 //Flush the log file to disk on each write (slow).
sv_logsdir "logs" //Folder in the game directory where server logs will be stored.

//Server Rates
sv_maxcmdrate 0 //(If sv_mincmdrate is > 0), this sets the maximum value for cl_cmdrate.
sv_maxrate 20000 //Max bandwidth rate allowed on server, 0 == unlimited
sv_maxreplay 2 //Maximum replay time in seconds
sv_maxupdaterate 100 //Maximum updates per second that the server will allow
sv_mincmdrate 0 //This sets the minimum value for cl_cmdrate. 0 == unlimited.
sv_minrate 0 //Min bandwidth rate allowed on server, 0 == unlimited
sv_minupdaterate 30 //Minimum updates per second that the server will allow


Finally, we want to start our server. It's easiest to do this using a short shell script;

vi tf2.sh

#!/bin/sh
echo "Starting Team Fortress Server"
sleep 1
cd ./orangebox
./srcds_run -console -game tf +map cp_dustbowl +maxplayers 8 -autoupdate +ip 1.2.3.4


make your script executable;

chmod +x tf2.sh

When you execute the script there are all sorts of warnings and errors. I've looked up some of them and apparently this is "normal". The server seems to run OK anyway.