Image source: wikipedia.org

A lot of people who are running a rented Linux (v)Server are interested in creating a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive server. Creating a CSGO server under Linux is rather easy, Valve really did their homework here. The following short tutorial will give you the needed instructions to create a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Server under Debian, Ubuntu or openSUSE:

1. First of all, you should really create a new user in your Linux system. The reason for that is simple: security! If your main user, or even your root user, is running the CS:GO server and is hacked later on, the hacker maybe is in the position to get access to the system behind the Server. With that being said, he may be able to get full access to the shell and he may be able to manipulate the system. To create new account on your Debian, Ubuntu or openSUSE system, you have to enter the following commands:

   root@server:~# useradd csgosrv
   root@server:~# passwd csgosrv
   root@server:~# mkdir /home/csgosrv
   root@server:~# chown csgosrv:users /home/csgosrv

   So, the first commands creates a new user, called csgosrv. The seconds commands sets a new password for this user. The password you enter here will not be prompted.
   The third command creates a new directory called csgosrv under the directory /home. This will be the standard home directory for the user csgosrv we’ve created before.
   The fourth and last command sets the owner to the created user csgosrv and the group owner of the created csgosrv home directory to users.

2. In this step we need to download the needed libraries in order to get the Steam command line tool working. If these libraries / tools are not installed, the Steam command line client (provided by Valve), will fail to start.
   If you’re on a 64-Bit Debian or Ubuntu system you have to enable the i386 architecture in the first place. This is needed because the server software is written for the 32-Bit architecture. If you’re on a 32-Bit Ubuntu or Debian, you can skip this command:

   root@server:~# dpkg --add-architecture i386

   The following two commands are needed for 32-Bit and 64-Bit systems. They will update the repository information and install the needed libraries:

   root@server:~# apt-get update
   root@server:~# apt-get install gcc-multilib libstdc++6:i386 libgcc1:i386 zlib1g:i386 libncurses5:i386 libc6:i386 wget screen

   If you’re on a openSUSE system, the commands are doing the same, but the syntax is different. The following two commands are updating the package repository and installs the needed libraries on a openSUSE system:

   root@server:~# zypper ref
   root@server:~# zypper in wget libgcc_s1-32bit libgcc_s1-gcc6-32bit ca-certificates screen

   Now, that you have installed all the needed libraries, we can go on and start downloading and installing the server software.

3. Downloading the Steam command line tool is very easy. You can always get it directly from Valve. But before we start downloading the client, we should change to the beforehand created user csgosrv. We can do this with the following command:

   root@server:~# su - csgosrv

   As an alternative you could close your SSH session and reconnect with the user csgosrv.
   Now that we’re working with the right user, it’s time to download and extract Steam:

   csgosrv@server:~$ mkdir steam
   csgosrv@server:~/steam> cd steam
   csgosrv@server:~/steam> wget http://media.steampowered.com/client/steamcmd_linux.tar.gz
   csgosrv@server:~/steam> tar xfvz steamcmd_linux.tar.gz

   So, the first two commands are creating a new directory, called steam, and directly changed into it with the help of the cd command. The third command is downloading the Steam CMD tool with the help of the tool wget. The fourth and last command extracts the so downloaded .tar.gz archive.
   After you’ve done this steps successfully you can go on and download the CS:GO server software.

4. This command will update the steam command line tool and installs the application “740” which is the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive server. For now you don’t need to have your steam credentials ready. You can update steam and install the server software as an anonymous user:

   csgosrv@server:~/steam> ./steamcmd.sh +login anonymous +force_install_dir ./csgo_server/ +app_update 740 validate +quit

   This command will take some time and the so downloaded server software needs round about 15 GB hard disk space. The Server software will be installed in the directory /home/csgosrv/steam/csgo_server.

5. Now that you have successfully downloaded and updated the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive server, we can do a test run. With the following command we can start the server with the mode Classic Casual and the Mapgroup mg_bomb which includes the old bomb spot maps like de_atztec or de_dust / de_dust2:

   csgosrv@server:~/steam> cd csgo_server
   csgosrv@server:~/steam/csgo_server> ./srcds_run -game csgo -console -usercon +game_type 0 +game_mode 0 +mapgroup mg_bomb +map de_dust

   You will now get a lot of output. This is normal and shows you, that the software is working. However, at the end of all the lines you will find a message like this one:

   ****************************************************
   *                                                  *
   *  No Steam account token was specified.           *
   *  Logging into anonymous game server account.     *
   *  Connections will be restricted to LAN only.     *
   *                                                  *
   *  To create a game server account go to           *
   *  http://steamcommunity.com/dev/managegameservers *
   *                                                  *
   ****************************************************

   Basically this message means that your server is not registered at Vale. As long as you don’t register your server at Vale, you will only be able to connect to the server via LAN, not via the internet. It will never be an official server played on. To make your server ready for the internet, you have to go on with the next step (you can terminate the actual running session with an CTRL+C combination).

6. To register your CS:GO server at Valve and make it ready for internet play, you have to register the server directly at Valve. To do so, visit the following link: Steam Server management. Login with your steam credentials (if you haven’t already) and enter the number 730 as the App ID in the first text box. The second text box can be filled with whatever you want. It’s just a comment field. For e.g. if you have more than one server you could write down the hostname here so that you can always directly see which token belongs to which server. Click on Create to get your Token:
   After you clicked on Create you will see your token for your server. The token can only be used on one server for one active session. You can’t use the token for multiple servers at the same time. You have to create a new token for each of your servers.
   Now that you have created your token, you can use it to start the server as an official CS:GO server with the following command:

   csgosrv@server:~/steam/csgo_server> ./srcds_run -game csgo -console -usercon +game_type 0 +game_mode 0 +mapgroup mg_bomb +map de_dust

   Of course you have to replace the YOURTOKEN with the token you’ve created before. If there is no firewall blocking the traffic, you should now be able to find your server via the CS:GO server browser or connect directly via the hostname / IP to it.

7. You may already noticed, that the CS:GO server stops running when you close the SSH connection. This is, because the CS:GO server software needs an active terminal / SSH session to go on running. However, there is a tool which is called screen. If you’ve followed this tutorial, you already have installed screen at the first steps. The following commands starts the CS:GO server in the background with the help of screen.

   csgosrv@server:~/steam/csgo_server> screen -A -m -d -S csgo_server ./srcds -game csgo -console -usercon +game_type 0 +game_mode 0 +mapgroup mg_bomb +map de_dust +sv_setsteamaccount YOURTOKEN -net_port_try 1

   If you want to jump into the screen session you can easily do this with this command:

   csgosrv@server:~/steam/csgo_server> screen -r csgo_server

   As long as you are connected (attached) to the screen session, you can do anything here like in a normal terminal session. If you want to leave the screen session again, just press CTRL+a, followed by the key d (CTRL+a sends a signal to the screen program that the next key stroke is something screen has to handle. The d key says to screen than: detach!).

Optional information

If you have problems connecting to your server, you should check if there is no firewall blocking the traffic. If there is any firewall doing so, you have to unlock the port 27015 (UDP) for your server.

For a more further configuration of the server (settings like warm up, max player count, map rotation and so on) you should visit the following page. It contains a almost complete server.cfg with a lot of comments: server.cfg on csgodev
For further fine tuning at the game modes you should read the official tutorial wikipedia page from Valve about this: CS:GO Server gamemodes
I also want to provide my own server.cfg file here. It’s rather simple and just sets some basic features, like friendly fire and warm up time. You can see my server.cfg file here: server.cfg
The server.cfg has to be stored in the directory cfg which is a subdirectory of the csgo_server directory, the directory which we had chosen while downloading the CS:GO server software.

Enough of the words. I wish you a good time in CS:GO and best wishes for you and your server 🙂