Introduction

The AzerothCore bash dashboard is a collection of scripts that help with the installation and maintenance of an AzerothCore server. It allows to easily install, update and execute AzerothCore on your machine in a tremendously small amount of steps.

Installing a development or production private server has never been so easy before. If you need any help just ask a question.

Requirements

You need to have git, curl, unzip, sudo installed in your machine. No other software is required to be installed manually.

• debian/ubuntu-based: apt update && apt install git curl unzip sudo
• macOS: brew install git
• Windows: download and install Git for Windows

Notes

• For macOS users: install and use the latest version of bash to run the commands of the dashboard (brew install bash)
• For Windows users: the commands need to be executed within the "git bash" shell or a bash-compatible shell such as WSL, cygwin etc.. However, git bash is suggested because is preinstalled with git for windows (one of our requirements)

Setup

Get the AC sources

git clone https://github.com/azerothcore/azerothcore-wotlk.git; cd azerothcore-wotlk

Configuration

There is a conf/dist/config.sh file containing a default configuration. Have a look at it. Most of the configuration defaults will probably work for your case, but you can copy it under conf/config.sh and change values as you please.

Install all AC dependencies

./acore.sh install-deps

NOTE: on Windows it must be executed as an administrator

Build everything from scratch

./acore.sh compiler all

Set-up the database

• Connect to your MySQL database (with sudo mysql -u root) and manually create the acore MySQL user by running:

DROP USER IF EXISTS 'acore'@'localhost';
DROP USER IF EXISTS 'acore'@'127.0.0.1';
CREATE USER 'acore'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'acore';
CREATE USER 'acore'@'127.0.0.1' IDENTIFIED BY 'acore';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON * . * TO 'acore'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON * . * TO 'acore'@'127.0.0.1' WITH GRANT OPTION;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit;

Note: even though the acore user is only accessible from localhost, it is a good practice to change its password to something more secure.

Download the latest client data

Get the latest client data:

./acore.sh client-data

Server config files

create these 2 files. They contain the default configuration for the worldserver and authserver, if you don't wish to modify simply copying them is enough.

Linux and Mac

cp env/dist/etc/authserver.conf.dist env/dist/etc/authserver.conf
cp env/dist/etc/worldserver.conf.dist env/dist/etc/worldserver.conf

Windows and Mac

cp env/dist/configs/authserver.conf.dist env/dist/configs/authserver.conf
cp env/dist/configs/worldserver.conf.dist env/dist/configs/worldserver.conf

Result

If you followed the above, you'll get your server inside the env/dist directory.

The worldserver and authserver binaries are located in azerothcore-wotlk/env/dist/bin.

You can either run them directly or use the restarter (see below). The first startup of the worldserver will install a full AzerothCore Database. No need to import any DB update at this point.

Please also see Networking and Final Server Steps.

Restarter

The AzerothCore dashboard comes with a bundled restarter suite:

./acore.sh run-worldserver

Wait until the process is completed then run:

./acore.sh run-authserver

For dedicated servers, you may want to run them inside terminal multiplexer sessions using tools like tmux (see below).

How to update your server

Update the sources:

git pull

Rebuild:

./acore.sh compiler build

Update the database:

database-keeping-the-server-up-to-date

That's it.

Tips for dedicated (production) servers

Daily backups of your databases via Telegram

Getting daily backups of your private server databases directly to your phone/computer via Telegram messages?

Yes, that's possible. Just use: azerothcore/telegram-automated-db-backup

Visual Studio Code SSH

You can easily install AzerothCore in a linux server without any kind of GUI, simply connecting remotely via ssh using Visual Studio Code and the SSH and the SSH: Editing Configuration Files extensions so you'll feel just like at home.

Run AzerothCore inside Tmux sessions

You can use tmux as terminal multiplexer, it will allow you to easily manage your processes inside a server with no GUI.

You can create 2 sessions and run the worldserver and authserver processes inside them:

• tmux new -s world-session

• now run the ./acore.sh run-worldserver inside it, then detach from it

• tmux new -s auth-session

• now run the ./acore.sh run-authserver inside it, then detach from it

You can detach using CTRL+B+D to exit the session without killing the process. If connected using VSCode SSH, you can just close the terminal session.

You can attach again to the world-session session using:

• tmux attach -t world-session

Other useful commands:

• create a new session: tmux new -s my_session
• list all sessions: tmux ls
• kill a session: tmux kill my_session (or just attach to it and type exit)
• kill ALL sessions: tmux kill-server
• ...more details available at the tmux wiki

Automatically start the tmux sessions at system startup

You can automatically create the tmux sessions and execute the authserver and worldserver using this simple script:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# ALLOW TMUX TO WAIT FOR MYSQL TO BE READY
# YOU MUST CHANGE THE USER AND PASSWORD TO CORRESPOND WITH YOUR INSTALL
    mysql_ready() {
        mysqladmin ping --host=127.0.0.1 --user=YOURUSER --password=YOURPASSWORD > /dev/null 2>&1
    }

    while !(mysql_ready)
    do
       sleep 3
       echo "waiting for mysql ..."
    done

# CHANGE THESE WITH THE CORRECT PATHS
authserver="/path/to/azerothcore-wotlk/acore.sh run-authserver"
worldserver="/path/to/azerothcore-wotlk/acore.sh run-worldserver"

authserver_session="auth-session"
worldserver_session="world-session"

if tmux new-session -d -s $authserver_session; then
    echo "Created authserver session: $authserver_session"
else
    echo "Error when trying to create authserver session: $authserver_session"
fi

if tmux new-session -d -s $worldserver_session; then
    echo "Created worldserver session: $worldserver_session"
else
    echo "Error when trying to create worldserver session: $worldserver_session"
fi

if tmux send-keys -t $authserver_session "$authserver" C-m; then
    echo "Executed \"$authserver\" inside $authserver_session"
    echo "You can attach to $authserver_session and check the result using \"tmux attach -t $authserver_session\""
else
    echo "Error when executing \"$authserver\" inside $authserver_session"
fi

if tmux send-keys -t $worldserver_session "$worldserver" C-m; then
    echo "Executed \"$worldserver\" inside $worldserver_session"
    echo "You can attach to $worldserver_session and check the result using \"tmux attach -t $worldserver_session\""
else
    echo "Error when executing \"$worldserver\" inside $worldserver_session"
fi

On unix systems, you can then use crontab to run the script automatically at system startup:

crontab -e

then add this line (replace /path/to/startup.sh with the path of where you placed the above script):

@reboot /bin/bash /path/to/startup.sh