STFP to users

[obteo]

How can I give file access to the users I create? Is there a way to do it from the web front end, or would it need to be implemented somehow?

[BlueSquare23]

There's no builtin sftp / file browser yet. But it is on the todo list. However, its a lot of work and I wouldn't expect it to come out any time soon. So for the time being would advise just using a standalone SFTP client program like FileZilla or WinSCP to connect to your remote server and manage files.

If you want, we can keep this issue open and I can update you on the progress of the file manager Todo.

https://github.com/BlueSquare23/web-lgsm/blob/dev-1.8.7/Todos.md?plain=1#L167-L175

• Build (or otherwise integrate with existing) web based remote file browser / mod manager
  • Seems like the community wants an FTP-like web interface.
  • Building this myself from scratch would take a ton of effort and time that
    I don't really have tbh. Unless people are willing to be very patient.
  • A better road would be to integrate someone else's existing web based file
    browser into my project. There is one Flask extention for file browser I
    saw but it sucks and I don't want to use it and I can't use it for over ssh :(
  • So still no idea how to do this but might end up having to write it mostly
    from scratch.

[obteo]

For me it would also be fine to just use a third-party program, but the credentials don’t work neither with the admin account I set up nor with the user sub-accounts. It seems they don’t have the necessary permissions. It would probably be useful to implement a feature that grants users permissions only for certain folders. I tried using the logins I created, but it doesn’t connect because of insufficient permissions.

[BlueSquare23]

So two things:

1. The web portal users are not tied to the linux system users. When you make a new user in the web portal it just makes a new web panel only user.

2. When game servers are installed through the web interface (with install_create_new_user = yes set, default behavior) these game servers are installed under a new linux system user (as per LGSM recommendations). These system users are named after the LGSM script name itself (ex. mcserver, bf1942server, arma3server etc.).

These new linux system users are not set up with a password and do not have sudo access on purpose (for security/isolation reasons). So if you want to login and manage the files for some game server, I'd advise setting up ssh key access to user@server. You can do so by generating an ssh keypair for your client machine (if you don't already have one), then put the public key in that game server user's ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file and make sure your SFTP app is using your ssh keypair.

[obteo]

I managed to set everything up, but it feels a bit complicated for someone without much experience. I was wondering: would it be possible to assign a custom home directory to my server user using something like:

usermod -d /home/sof2server/GameServers/Soldier_Of_Fortune_2_Gold_Edition/serverfiles sof2server

and then set a password for that user from root with:

passwd sof2server

Do you think this is a reasonable approach?

[BlueSquare23]

Yeah you should be able to do that! I would just set the home dir to /home/sof2server/ if it isn't already set.

But yeah that's the magic of linux, you can do it whatever you want! SSH keys are considered more secure than password auth. But as long as your have a strong ssh password and something like fail2ban setup, you should be fine.

[obteo]

Okay, thanks a lot. I know it’s off-topic, but how do you add multiple SOF2 instances with your web front? I tried, but it gives me an error saying the game is already installed. Thanks.

[BlueSquare23]

Yeah once again you got me! 😆 Another thing I have in the Todos, but haven't actually gotten around to yet.

https://github.com/BlueSquare23/web-lgsm/blob/dev-1.8.7/Todos.md?plain=1#L321-L324

• Allow multiple auto installs of same game server as new user, just increment
  the name.
  • So first mcserver install would just be mcserver but then a second one the
    user would be mcserver2, mcserver3, etc.

But I'll go ahead and bump that up in priority, because there's some other things I'd like to do with the install page too. I think that page should probably just accept a username and a path and some other things too when users go to install.

Working on it and will keep you up to date!

[obteo]

Got it! That makes sense. Thanks again for the help! I overrode that by installing a new server from the command line in the classic way, then I added it as a local server. That’s why I ran into the cronjob issue.

there’s an error anyway
#Ansible: 67f129a8-e517-4a9d-bd12-afae18d1ed28, HEXQ9WAiuv3jpyR6CTEjju,
*/5 * * * * /home/yob//sof2server monitor
It puts two ‘//’.

[BlueSquare23]

Yeah that shouldn't actually matter to the machine. Like you can do:

echo blah > ./fart.txt
cat ./////////////////fart.txt
blah

But yeah I'll checkout the path normalization stuff for that.

[BlueSquare23]

Hey so file manager stuff isn't done yet, so keeping this ticket open. But wanted to follow up about this thing you said:

Okay, thanks a lot. I know it’s off-topic, but how do you add multiple SOF2 instances with your web front? I tried, but it gives me an error saying the game is already installed. Thanks.

This now exists. Users can now change the "advanced options" before installing to change server name and where they want to put it:

Technically, if you go to install again on top of an existing server it'll just re-install it or say already exists if its already in the db. So it doesn't auto increment the names like I mentioned before (maybe some day in the future). But yeah idk just wanted to update you to say, users can now install as many versions of same game servers as they please!

PS.
Btw, the file manager stuff is coming along nicely. I just re-architected the whole python codebase. So am in a good position to really expand the existing config editor into a full blow file browser & file editor.

[obteo]

Great job, really well done! I’m curious can’t today, but I’ll definitely install it tomorrow and give you feedback. Thanks for the heads up!