Tik-76.115 Monrovia Administrator's Guide v5.0

Group: Hayabusa, Work: Monrovia, Responsible: Juha Vainio

Change Log


Table of Contents

1. Introduction
1.1 Purpose
1.2 Users
1.3 Architecture of the Monrovia system
1.4 Environment
1.5 Overall view
1.6 Error reporting
2. Prerequisities
2.1 Hardware requirement
2.2 Software requirements
3. Installation
3.1 Unpacking and installing the package
3.2 Configuring the server
4. Maintenance
4.1 Required material
4.2 Preparatory measures
4.3 Notifications and warnings
4.4 Error messages
5 Management
5.1 Starting the server
5.2 Shutting down the server
5.3 Adding player characters
5.4 Removing player characters
6. Known bugs
7. Further reading



1. Introduction

1.1 Purpose

The purpose of the Monrovia server is to act as a platform for and run the Monrovia multi-user dungeon game for Palm handheld computers.

The purpose of the Monrovia administration tool is to provide an interface for an administrator to control the server and the game.

1.2 Users

This document is intended for the administrators of the Monrovia server. It can be used as a guide and a reference for general installation and administration of the Monrovia server.

1.3 Architecture of the Monrovia system

The Monrovia system consists of the Monrovia server and the Monrovia client. The Monrovia server is running on a regular PC connected to the Internet. The Monrovia client is running on a Palm handheld computer, which is also connected to the Internet. The Monrovia client connects to the server and is then able to play the Monrovia game. Multiple clients can simultaneously play the same game.

The architecture is illustrated in Figure 1.

1.4 Environment

The Monrovia server is intended for and tested in Linux RedHat 6.2. environment. Thus, the control application for the server and game maintenance is also for Linux. In addition, the installation package and scripts are designed to install the server in Linux RedHat 6.2 environment.

Naturally the server must be connected to Internet so that the users of the game itself can reach the server and play the game.

1.5 Overall view

This guide begins with detailed prerequisities for the Monrovia server environment. After this, full installation instructions are included, so that after acquiring the Monrovia server package it can be easily installed using the scripts provided in the package.

After the installation instructions, there is information about the game and server maintenance and administration tool. There are the functions of the tool and how it should be used to successfully administrate a Monrovia server.

Finally, the guide describes the possible bugs and unexpected features that can be found in the operation of the server and the administration tool. After this, the guide concludes with a list of useful links related to Monrovia in general.

1.6 Error reporting

For error and bug reports and requests for further development, please contact Mgine Technologies, http://www.mginetechnologies.com/

2. Prerequisities

2.1 Hardware requirements

Hardware requirement for Monrovia server and administration tool is a regular PC machine with a minimum installation of:

2.2 Software requirements

Running Monrovia server and administration tool on the previously defined PC machine the following software is required to be adequately installed:

3. Installation

3.1 Unpacking and installing the package

The installation of the Monrovia server and administration package is easy. The package is named monrovia.tar.gz and it is first unpacked to a convenient directory. The unpacking is done with the following command:

The following files should appear:

monrovia/bin/monrovia
monrovia/doc/admin_guide.html
monrovia/lib/monrovia/monrovia.jar
monrovia/lib/monrovia/data/
and lots of game data in the data directory.

The management script monrovia/bin/monrovia can be run directly from the place where it is unpacked or the directory structure can be moved to another location. You can for example copy the system to /usr/local with the following command:

3.2 Configuring the server

As a final step of installation, the contents of the management script monrovia/bin/monrovia should be checked to contain the correct configuration information in the beginning of the script.

First, the PREFIX parameter should be configured to contain the path to the location of the monrovia file tree. The default value is the directory where the bin/monrovia script is located, but it can contain for instance /usr/local:

PREFIX=/usr/local
The other directories can now be conveniently configured under the directory in PREFIX.

Next, the location for the game information is placed under MONROVIA. This directory should contain the actual monrovia.jar file and could be defined as follows:

MONROVIA=$PREFIX/lib/monrovia
Thus, the actual path to the jar file would now be /usr/local/lib/monrovia/monrovia.jar.

The next parameter DATA contains the path to the game data directory, which contains data generated for the actual Monrovia game. It can be configured, for instance, under the previously established directory:

DATA=$MONROVIA/data

Following the DATA parameter, the location of the logfile is defined using LOGFILE parameter. If one wishes to generate the log data under the game data directory, one might use the following line:

LOGFILE=$DATA/monrovia.log

If java is not found in the path variable of the current shell, the path to java should be defined with JAVA parameter, for example:

JAVA=/usr/bin/java

Finally, the port which the server listens to is configured. The configuration is of the following form:

PORT=4268
This assigns the Monrovia server to port 4268 and clients can now establish communication with the server on this port. The administrator tool connects to the port next to this port.

The Monrovia server and administration tool have now been successfully installed and are ready for use.

4. Maintenance

4.1 Required material

Running the Monrovia server and administration tool software requires a PC machine and Linux software, detailed in chapter 2. In addition, the Monrovia server and administration tool software package must be acquired and installed as described in chapter 3.

4.2 Preparatory actions

The PC machine and software described in chapter 2 must be correctly installed before trying to install the Monrovia server and administration tool software package. The package itself must be installed as described in chapter 3.

4.3 Notifications and warnings

Playing multi-user dungeon games may reflect negatively on your social life. As an administrator you should be aware of this fact and encourage your customers to control themselves and not get addicted to the game.

4.4 Error messages

Monrovia server and administration tool logs error messages to a log file, located as defined in the monrovia script (refer to chapter 3). The following error messages can be logged:

5 Management

All the functions described here are used with the monrovia/bin/monrovia script found in the monrovia.tar.gz Monrovia server package.

5.1 Starting the server

The Monrovia game server is started with the following command:

This starts the Monrovia server in the background and nothing more is required. If player characters have been created prior to this, they can now log into the system and start playing. If no players have been created, please read on.

5.2 Shutting down the server

The server that is currently running can be shut down with the following command:

This shuts down the server and dismisses all the players currently playing the game. The game state is saved and the game can continue as soon as the server is restarted.

5.3 Adding player characters

New player characters can be added with the following command:

This can be used to add more players to the game. After giving the command, the following information about the character is requested: After answering these questions the player will be added to the game.

5.4 Removing player characters

Existing players can be removed with the following command:

Name of the player to be removed is requested and the removal is asked to be confirmed. After that, the player in question is no longer able to play the game.

6. Known bugs

At this point, there are no known bugs in the Monrovia server or the administration tool.

7. Further reading

More material about this subject can be found through the following links: