How to run your own Moonlapse server [Arch/Manjaro]

12 Oct 2020 - saltytaro

Interested in playing by your own rules? You can download the code to run your very own MoonlapseMUD server.

To follow along with this tutorial, you will need a machine running an operating system with access to Arch Linux official repositories. In this example, we will be using pacman which is standard in most Arch-based distributions.

Prerequisites

Firstly you will need Python 3.6 which should be installed by default on most Arch-based systems.
Update the package list using the following command:
```
sudo pacman -Syyu
```
Install PIP, the Package Installer for Python, which is what we will use to obtain the rest of our prerequisite Python libraries:
```
sudo pacman -S python-pip
```
Install PostgreSQL the database server the game will need to read from and write to.
```
sudo pacman -S postgresql
```
Next, the drivers required to let Python and PostgreSQL talk to each other.
```
sudo pacman -S python-psycopg2
sudo pip install psycopg2
```

Install git and clone the MoonlapseMUD source from the current repository

sudo pacman -S git
git clone https://github.com/trithagoras/MoonlapseMUD
sudo cp MoonlapseMUD/Moonlapse.sql /var/lib/postgres

Initialise the database cluster.

sudo -iu postgres
initdb -D /var/lib/postgres/data
exit

Enable and start the PostgreSQL service.

sudo systemctl enable postgresql
sudo systemctl start postgresql

Enter a new shell environment logged in as the postgres user:
```
sudo -iu postgres
```
Set a password for the operating system user postgres, which is created when you install postgresql by default. This will be used to create your database.
```
psql 
\password postgres
```
You’ll see the following prompts at which you enter the desired password:
```
Enter new password:
Enter it again:
```
Now exit from the psql environment:
```
\q
```

While still logged in as the postgres user, create a new user to run the Moonlapse database and create the new database itself.

createuser --interactive --pwprompt
Enter name of role to add: MoonlapseAdmin
Enter password for new role:
Enter it again:
Shall the new role be a superuser? (y/n) y
createdb Moonlapse

Now logout of the shell environment controlled by the postgres user to return to your own shell:
```
exit
```
While logged in as your own user, install Twisted, the networking library for the server.
```
sudo pip install twisted
```
Install Django, the library used for the ORM.
```
sudo pip install django
```

Create the database connection string and place it in the MoonlapseMUD/server directory.

MoonlapseMUD/server/connectionstrings.json

{
   "user": "MoonlapseAdmin",
   "password": "myPassword",
   "host": "localhost",
   "port": "5432",
   "database": "Moonlapse"
}

Initialise the database.

python MoonlapseMUD/server/manage.py makemigrations server
python MoonlapseMUD/server/manage.py migrate
python MoonlapseMUD/server/manage.py flush
python MoonlapseMUD/server/loaddata.py

Run the server!
```
python MoonlapseMUD/server
```