ARMA III

GitHub: [***]

Basic usage

For advanced usage, refer to [***]

shell
# Create the docker container
docker create -it --restart always \
  --name arma3-server \
  -p 2302:2302/udp \
  -p 2303:2303/udp \
  -p 2304:2304/udp \
  -p 2305:2305/udp \
  -p 2306:2306/udp \
  -e "STEAM_USERNAME=your_steam_username" \
  -e "STEAM_PASSWORD=your_steam_password" \
  ipshosting/game-arma3:v3

# Start the server
docker start arma3-server

# Stop the server
docker stop arma3-server

# Restart the server
docker restart arma3-server

# View server logs
docker logs arma3-server

# Attach to server console to write commands and see output in realtime (de-attach by pressing CTRL-P + CTRL-Q).
docker attach arma3-server

# Remove the container
docker rm arma3-server

Commands

By default, when starting the container, it will be installed and updated, and the arma3 Server is started afterwards. You can create a container with a different command to change this behaviour:

• update Only install the latest version of the server. It won't be started and the container will exit after the arma3 server is installed and updated.
• update_validate Same like update but will also validate the files. Recommended for the initial installation of the server.
• start Only start the arma3 server without installing or updating.

Data persistence

Game server data is kept in /home/ips-hosting. By default a volume will be auto-created which will persist the game server data across server restarts. When you re-create the container, a new volume is created and you can't access the old data unless you manually mount the old volume. See [***] for more information.

To persist the game server data on the host filesystem, use -v /absolute/path/on/host:/home/ips-hosting when creating the docker container. The container is run as a non-root user by default and the user running inside the container has the id 4711. Make sure that the mounted directory is readable and writable by the user running the container. There are 2 ways to achieve this:

• Change the owner of the host directory: chown -R 4711 /absolute/path/on/host OR
• Run the container as the user, which owns the files on the host system. Make sure to specify the id of your local user, because the name is uknown inside the container. You can find it out using id YOUR_USERNAME. Then run the docker command using the --user USER_ID flag. E.g.: docker create --user 500 ....

Ports

• 2302/udp (game)
• 2303/udp (query) - always game+1
• 2304/udp (steam) - always game+2
• 2305/udp (VON) - always game+3
• 2306/udp (battlEye) - always game+4

You can change the ports with the GAME_PORT environment variable.

A note about Steam credentials

To be able to download the ARMA III dedicated server, a Steam account which owns the game is required. These credentials need to be specified during update and update_validate via env variables (see below). The account must not have Steam guard enabled. Because of that it is not recommended to use your personal Steam account.

Env variables

Env variables can be configured with the -e "KEY=VAL" flag when creating the container. The flag can be used multiple times. To change the env variables, you need to re-create the container.

update and update_validate

The following env variables are available during update and update_validate.

BETA_BRANCH Used to download a different branch of the server.

BETA_PASSWORD The password for the beta branch.

STEAM_USERNAME The username of a steam account owning ARMA III.

STEAM_PASSWORD The password of a steam account owning ARMA III.

start

The following env variables are always available during start.

MODE Either server or client to run as a headless client. Defaults to server.

USE_X64 Set to true to enable the use of the 64 bit executable. Defaults to true.

PROFILE The profile to use. Defaults to server.

LIMIT_FPS The maximum amount of server FPS. Numeric value between 5 and 1000. Defaults to 50.

server mode

The following env variables are available during start when in server mode.

HOST The host address, the server should listen on. Defaults to 0.0.0.0

GAME_PORT The game port to use. Defaults to 2302. Remember to also update the container port bindings when changing this variable.

BASIC_CFG The name of the basic config file. Defaults to basic.cfg

SERVER_CFG The name of the server config file. Defaults to server.cfg

AUTO_INIT Set to true to automatically initialize the mission on server start.

LOAD_MISSION_TO_MEMORY Set to true to load the mission into memory once the first client downloads it. This requires more memory, but can save some CPU cycles.

client mode

The following env variables are available during start when in client mode.

GAME_SERVER_IP The ip of the game server to connect to. This must be set.

GAME_SERVER_PORT The port of the game server to connect to. Defaults to 2302.

GAME_SERVER_PASSWORD The passowrd of the game server to connect to.

Mods

All mods should be installed in the subdirectory mods. On every start, all mods in this folder are patched to work on Linux. This means that all files are converted to lower-case and spaces are replaced by underscores.

Mods can be automatically downloaded and kept up to date from the Steam workshop. Therefore you need to provide a space seperated list of steam workshop ids in the MANAGED_MODS env variable during update or update_validate. This will symlink the mods to the mods subdirectory. Note that this will only install the mods but do not load them.

The following environment variables can be used to actually load the mods:

MODS A list of mods to load, seperated by semicolons. Each entry should be a relative path to the folder containing the mod. e.g. mods/@ace;mods/@cba_a3. It is important that the mods are all lower-case and spaces are replaced with underscores.

SERVER_MODS Same like MODS, but used for server-side only mods. Clients will not see these mods. Only works when in the server mode.

In addition, when in server mode, mod keys can be automatically extracted to the keys subdirectory. To enable this, set EXTRACT_MOD_KEYS=true.