Another cool project - pvpgn

I've abandoned the idea of putting anything in that old SGI Indigo case, it really wasn't worth the effort for a cool case, but I started a new project which has been moderately successful so far.

As everyone who has read my web log for more than a few days knows, one of my favorite games is Diablo II LOD. I do have Transgaming's Cedega, so I can play the game under Linux, but I wanted to do something a bit more, playing alone can be boring after you've run the Cow level for the zillionth time.

So I decided to set up my own Battle Net closed server. One of the important decisions was to keep the server portable, so it could be taken places without requiring a lot of heavy lifting. A laptop would have been ideal for the project, but they're still too expensive just for running a battlenet server, so I opted for a slim Compaq Desqpro, a 450MHz with 64MB RAM and a 4GB hard drive. The Working Centre has a couple of these machines for about $65, but be warned, they don't come with CD-ROMs and finding a CD-ROM that fits would probably cost as much as the machine.



I did a network install of Debian Sarge with a minimum of packages. After the base packages had finished I added apache, mysql, less, and ftp so I could use some of the more advanced features of PVPGN, the player versus player Battle Net software. PVPGN use to be called bnetd until Blizzard threatened to sue the developers. I could be wrong, but I think Blizzard pressed the suit against the open source developers, but the EFF, Electronic Frontier Foundation, has stepped in to help financially and legally – thank god, the servers certainly don't hurt Blizzard and it's rather greedy of the company to try and shut the project down.

Anyway, I have my server all configured. I can log on to the IRC, Internet Relay Chat, portion of the server with my xchat Linux client, but I can't seem to connect using Diablo II LOD v1.10. I checked my bnetd logs and they seem to be showing that I'm trying to log in as localhost 127.0.0.1, but I'm actually trying using a different machine. I'm wondering if my wireless router both are connected to is passing the right I.P.



I'm going to add a SCSI card I bought a few weeks ago at the UW surplus sale for $1.00. I have an external SCSI CD-ROM and a tape backup. I may have the machine double as a backup server.
I've never been one to back stuff up because a lot of things I do are experimental. That said, I had my machine perfect a couple of weeks ago, then I ran into a problem not being able to log in to a KDE session with my usual account. I had to wipe the account and create a new one. I erased a lot of settings that I wish I had back, so I may set up the pvpgn machine, aka duriel, as a backup server too.

Tonight I'm going to try pvpgn's irc channel to see if I can't get the problem solved.