[Tutorial] How To Setup Your Free Amazon Server

Special thanks to Sless, Asy7um, Paxil, and Amazon.

Intro: Amazon has a free tier usage that you can use to host your small, but very own Xonotic server. I'm not very tech savvy, but I still managed to get 3 servers running so it shouldn't be too hard for you too!



Let's get started:

1) Sign up & follow instructions.
2) Once your done go to aws.amazon.com and login if you already haven't.
3) Then go to your AWS Management Console.
4) Click on the Amazon EC2 Tab.
5) Select your desired region.
6) Now click "Launch Instance".
7) Fill in the blanks! Make sure you select "More Amazon Images" since it isn't chosen by default.
8) Download Your Keypair.
9) Click "Continue".
10) Filter for Debian and 64-bit (I Debian).
11) Depending on the region you will have various images that you can choose from. I personally chose "debian-squeeze-amd64-ebs-beta2.img". You can pretty much pick whatever you want.
12) Now initialize your image!
13) Box will disappear and you should see something like this.
14) Except in your case the status will say Initializing and Status Checks will still be running.
15) Wait until it's finished/green like mine.
16) Then right click your instance and press connect.
17) Make sure you select "Connect with a standalone SSH Client".
18) Fire up your terminal and change to the directory where your keypair was saved to.
19)

Code:

chmod 400 your keypair

20) Then copy and paste that ssh command into your command line.
21) It'll say some error message blah blah type "yes"
22) Boom your in.
23) Now do the following:

Code:

apt-get update
apt-get install vim p7zip-full wajig

24) Once your done installing do:

Code:

wget http://dl.xonotic.org/xonotic-0.6.0.zip

25) Afk until it's done downloading.
26) Now do:

Code:

7z x xonotic-0.6.0.zip

27) Once it's done extracting do:

Code:

cd Xonotic/server
mv server.cfg ../data
mv server_linux.sh ../
cd ..

28) Now you want to edit your server.cfg with vim (Keep in mind, it's a free server! So you may want to host a duel server with 3-4 slots like I did just to be safe.):

Code:

vim data/server.cfg

29) Once your done configuring you wanna open your ports. Follow my sample.
30) Now make sure your instance is using this security group.
31) Now launch your server with:

Code:

./server_linux.sh &

32) If everything was successful it should appear on Xonotic's Server List.
33) To see your server usage stats or fees (there should be none), you can find it in your "Account Activity" located in the drop down menu in the top right corner. (I'm getting lazy to post screenshots).

Enjoy!

Looking good, thank you for the tutorial. I gave you a reputation point.

Maybe this should be moved to the Server forum though?

wow.

Awesome! I got my server up and running and it's fast! I hope it's really free because I would hate to get some ridiculous bill for some hidden charge.

Awesome! I got my server up and running and it's fast! I hope it's really free because I would hate to get some ridiculous bill for some hidden charge.

No hidden charges, just make sure you read the fine print Only thing I got charged for was having an elastic ip that wasn't associated to my instance. They charged me $0.01 per hour But yeah if your worried, just check your account activity.

I'm going to use autobuild to update my xonotic version. is there a downside to doing that(for running a server)?

I'm going to use autobuild to update my xonotic version. is there a downside to doing that(for running a server)?

i highly doubt it. when in doubt check your activity page.

been so occupied these past few weeks and forgot that i had servers running so i decided to man up and take a look at the account activity page to see how screwed i was lol... ooops...



no clue why i was billed lulz... i too lazy to read the fine print.

I strongly suggest you scratch "free" from the title and slap a big disclaimer on top of your post.

I strongly suggest you scratch "free" from the title and slap a big disclaimer on top of your post.

"it is free", insisted Loafers, "just make sure you read everything!".
Mr. Bougo buried his face into his palms.

The End.

if anybody gets billed from following the guide and not doing anything else such as creating an elastic ip and going afk lmk.

k thx bai

Amazon EC2 Pricing http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/

• 750 hours of EC2 running Linux/Unix Micro instance usage
  
• 750 hours of EC2 running Microsoft Windows Server Micro instance usage
  
• 750 hours of Elastic Load Balancing plus 15 GB data processing
  
• 30 GB of Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS) plus 2 million IOs and 1 GB snapshot storage
  
• 15 GB of bandwidth out aggregated across all AWS services
  
• 1 GB of Regional Data Transfer
  

Loafers account screenshot used
US East Region
167 hours Free
124 hours Charged

US West Region
292 hours Free

EU Ireland Region
291 hours Free

167 + 292 + 291 = 750

He has three Xonotic servers running on one account, their total usage time went over the 750 hours of free usage. Thus Amazon charged him.

Running a Xonotic server for 124 hours (or 5 days 4 hours) and being charged $2.48 seems quite good value.

What's the ping like for the Ireland server, compared to the DCC servers?

Amazon EC2 Pricing http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/

• 750 hours of EC2 running Linux/Unix Micro instance usage
  
• 750 hours of EC2 running Microsoft Windows Server Micro instance usage
  
• 750 hours of Elastic Load Balancing plus 15 GB data processing
  
• 30 GB of Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS) plus 2 million IOs and 1 GB snapshot storage
  
• 15 GB of bandwidth out aggregated across all AWS services
  
• 1 GB of Regional Data Transfer
  

Loafers account screenshot used
US East Region
167 hours Free
124 hours Charged

US West Region
292 hours Free

EU Ireland Region
291 hours Free

167 + 292 + 291 = 750

He has three Xonotic servers running on one account, their total usage time went over the 750 hours of free usage. Thus Amazon charged him.

Running a Xonotic server for 124 hours (or 5 days 4 hours) and being charged $2.48 seems quite good value.

What's the ping like for the Ireland server, compared to the DCC servers?

Very informative Spaceman ty !

I am not familiar with DCC servers, but all three of my servers were always near the top when filtering for low ping.

I haven't been charged anything for my 1 server.

Just wanted to say that I accidentally deleted my key on my computer. Supposedly there are ways to create a new key pair, but after 45 minutes of trying, I couldn't figure it out. So i decided it would be much faster and more simple to just start a new instance and repeat the process. I keep my maps and cfgs in my dropbox anyway, so it wasn't a big deal.

Anyway, everything went smoothly and I still see no charges. So the moral of the story is: keep that key somewhere where it won't be deleted, and make a copy! Of course, if someone wanted to make a quick guide to creating a new key pair when you've lost yours, or link to one that works, that would be very good for future reference.

Search engines are a wonderful thing! You should try them out sometime.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10369...the-server

EDIT: I mean no offense

Search engines are a wonderful thing! You should try them out sometime.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10369...the-server

EDIT: I mean no offense

Thanks, that looks like just what I need. Like I said, I messed with it for 45 minutes before just creating a new server. I did search google, but I ended up finding way too many unanswered questions, outdated answers, and workarounds that seemed like more trouble than they were worth.

Just an update. When I lost my keypair key that was on my computer, I created a snapshot of my server, which is a service amazon provides. This apparently costs me $0.33 usd a month. I could delete the snapshot, but considering how convenient it is to have it I think it's worth the price.

Why not store a backup of the keypair to your personal comupter?

Well, I have made a backup already. I guess it's just for piece of mind. Plus, you can do stuff with a snapshot, like create a new server in a new region with very little effort. I guess I could delete it an make another snapshot later if I need it, but if something happens to my server that i can't fix(which is a possibility with my limited knowledge of Linux), I'll be kicking myself for deleting it to save $4 a year.

You could simply tar up the personal data directory and download that!

But well... I misread the price as $3.33 a month, so it seemed like a bad waste of money. .33 is more decent. Still not worth the price, since you can do the exact same thing for free with very little effort.