Host your Zandronum server using Docker!
There are various versions and forks of Zandronum available. The tags are in a <distro>-<version>
format. The various distributions are described in the list below. Each distro has a latest tag, in
the format <distro>-latest
.
- Official
The unmodified & official version of Zandronum.
Tags:official-latest
,official-3.1.0
, etc - TSPG
A fork of the official Zandronum code base that is used for servers hosted on The Sentinel's Playground (TSPG).
Tags:tspg-latest
,tspg-v26
, etc
It's recommended to use Docker Compose to configure your Zandronum instance(s). This will allow you great flexibility over the configuration of your containers. Below is an example that will help get you started on setting up your own server. There isn't one true way to configure things; there's a lot of flexibility. But it is easier to start by using this example and then adjusting it as needed.
version: '3.7'
services:
doom2:
image: rcdailey/zandronum-server:official-latest
restart: always
network_mode: host
command: >
-port 10667
-iwad /data/doom2.wad
-file /data/BD21RC7.pk3
-file /data/mapsofchaos-hc.wad
-file /data/DoomMetalVol4.wad
+exec /configs/global.cfg
+exec /configs/coop.cfg
+exec /configs/doom2.cfg
volumes:
- ./data:/data:ro
- ./configs:/configs:ro
Customization of your Zandronum instance will be done through a combination of command arguments and
configuration files. Use the >
character (as shown above) after the command:
property to allow
your list of options to be on multiple lines for readability.
For more examples, see the examples
directory in this repository.
Due to the inflexible nature of how Zandronum's networking code functions, I recommend using host
network mode (reflected in my example above). If you prefer more network isolation and would like to
use bridge
network mode, please read the following section.
If you use bridge
networking, LAN broadcasting (via sv_broadcast
) does not work properly. This
is because Zandronum advertises the bound IP address (which is on the docker bridge subnet), which
your LAN subnet will not have direct access to. Other than that, though, everything works. The
sub-sections below go into more detail.
Typically with Docker containers, if you want to run multiple instances of a service and run them each on different ports, you would simply map a different port on the host. However, the way Zandronum works requires some special configuration. Zandronum reports its own listening port to the master server.
Because of this, you must specify a different listening port for Zandronum by giving the -port
option. Note that this is only a requirement if you plan to run two or more instances of this
container.
If you change the port, make sure you map that to the host. Using the example above, I used port
10667
and which you would map to the host by adding the following additional YAML to your
docker-compose.yml
file:
ports:
- 10667:10667/udp
It's worth noting that in bridge network mode, the IP address that Zandronum is listening on is not reported to the master server. Actually, the master server will list whatever IP address it received packets from, which will be your public IP, not the Docker bridge IP. So, no additional configuration is needed for connecting via master server.
Do remember, however, that the incorrect IP address is broadcast for LAN games, so if this is
important, please use host
for your network_mode:
setting.
Put all your WAD files (PWAD + IWAD) in a directory and map that as a volume into the container. You
can put it anywhere. In my case, I mounted my WAD directory to /data
in the container.
From there, provide the path to the main IWAD by using the -iwad
option. Specify the -file
argument one or more times to add more PWADs to your server (such as the Brutal Doom mod). Depending
on how you mapped your volumes, you may specify individual PWAD files:
-file /data/mywad.pk3
Or you can use wildcards to tell Zandronum to load all PWAD files in that directory:
-file /data/*
Inside the container, zandronum-server
runs as user doomguy
and group zandronum
. The
corresponding UID and GID is determined by Docker. If you want to have explicit control over either
the UID or GID used inside the container, you can specify the following environment variables. Note
that overriding this behavior is really only useful if you want to properly map file permissions in
your host volumes to the user running in the container.
ZANDRONUM_UID
The User ID on the host machine that will be assigned to thedoomguy
user in the container.ZANDRONUM_GID
The Group ID on the host machine that will be assigned to thezandronum
group in the container.
Note that it is an error to run this image using the -u
/--user
argument to docker run
or the
user:
property in docker-compose.yml
. The container itself must start as a root user, but the
zandronum-server
process is started using the local user & group.
As an example, you can add the following attributes to the existing YAML example file (shown
earlier) which will assign the doomguy
user to UID 1000 and GID 1050:
environment:
- ZANDRONUM_UID=1000
- ZANDRONUM_GID=1050
Or you can map these to environment variables you defined in your ~/.bashrc
, for example (based on
Ubuntu 18.04):
export UID
export GID="$(id -g)"
Which you would use in your docker-compose.yml
like so:
environment:
- ZANDRONUM_UID=$UID
- ZANDRONUM_GID=$GID
For in-depth configuration, especially related to controlling how gameplay will work on your server,
you should provide configuration files. How you structure these files and how they are named are up
to you. I personally choose the .cfg
extension. I also like to have my config files mounted in a
different volume and directory than my WAD files, which is why in this example I have a /configs
mount (for only .cfg
files) and a /data
mount where I keep all my WAD files.
I'll provide the contents of the config files I used in the above example. Some of these you will want, such as the master server list configuration. But mostly this is meant to give you some ideas on how to set up your server.
This is the configuration I give to all of my servers, regardless of their purpose.
set sv_broadcast 0
set sv_updatemaster 1
set sv_enforcemasterbanlist true
set sv_markchatlines true
set masterhostname "master.zandronum.com:15300"
I keep my cooperative gameplay settings in its own config file. This allows me to share these settings between multiple server instances (I run more than one server from Docker Compose).
set sv_maxplayers 8
set sv_maxclients 8
set sv_unblockplayers 1
set sv_coop_loseinventory 0
set sv_coop_losekeys 0
set sv_coop_loseweapons 0
set sv_coop_loseammo 0
set sv_sharekeys 1
set skill 3
set cooperative 1
set teamdamage 0
set compatflags 620756992
This last config is dedicated to just the doom2 service in my docker-compose.yml
, which represents
a single server instance:
set sv_hostname "This is the DOOM2 Server"
set sv_maprotation true
set sv_randommaprotation 1
set sv_samelevel false
addmap MAP01
addmap MAP02
addmap MAP03
addmap MAP04
addmap MAP05
The Dockerfile
takes two arguments when you run docker build
(provided via the --build-arg
option):
REPO_URL
The Mercurial repository URL (HTTPS only) of the Zandronum code base. This can be the official repo or a compatible fork.REPO_TAG
The tag in the repository to clone & build.