habu

Wow, thanks! You both helped a ton. Really appreciated.

Hello, I am new to hosting a dedicated server, so Ill try to explain this the best I can, and hope from that, you all can help me. I recently started playing GRAW with some friends, and we would like to get a dedicated server up for our use. However, we are having some trouble getting it going. FIrst off, to see if I could get it working, I tried hosting the server on my machine. Once it was up and running, I tried to connect from the same machine but couldnt. I heard it mentioned that you are not able to host and connect to that server from the same machine? Anyway, no one was able to see the game that I was hosting. Last night, I found a list of ports that need to be opened for GRAW and Gamespy. I am using McAfee's firewall, so I added all of those ports to the exception list. It seemed to work....I could connect from a friends laptop. That same friend tried to create a dedicated server in a different location from my PC. He patched his game to 1.3, then copied all of the GR files from that PC to the server that would be hosting the game. This is where we ran into trouble. The first thing I guess we dont understand is how, exactly, the xml files are created. On my PC, I create an online server, get all the settings the way I want, and then exit. This creates an xml file for me. But how do you get these created on the machine that will run the dedicated server? If I understand correctly, you cannot run the game on this machine since the files were all copied from another machine...this machine will just run the server files, correct? We tried copying the xml files from my machine to this machine. We then gave the shared server xml the path to the custom xml that we copied from my machine and started the server. It would act like it was starting, but then it would crash. So, after that long rambling, I guess what I need to know is: 1. Can someone spare the time to explain step by step on how exactly to set up a dedicated server....step by step....and explain it like I am 8 years old 2. On a machine that will run the dedicated server (does not have the game installed, just the files copied from another machine) where (or how) does it get the custom xml files? 3. What is the best way to remotly administer this server once its started? If the server is using an xml that was created for [GR] Coop, how do you switch it to an xml that was created for DM or Domination? Thanks a ton for any help you can provide.