FireDaemon

Useful Software: TeraCopy

TeraCopy is an application that makes copying files faster. It includes features such as: pause and resume file transfers, error recovery (retrying several times), shell integration and more.

TeraCopy has 2 versions, a free one and a Pro one. It is compatible with Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7 (x32 and x64 versions)

You can download it at http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.php

Secure Password Manager: Any Password

The biggest threat to online security and computer security are easy to guess passwords. Most people choose easy to guess passwords and this is very bad. That plus the prevalence of social networking sites makes it very easy for hackers to guess your password. Aside from guessing, they can use brute-force dictionary attacks that can break passwords in a matter of minutes or hours.

You can stop this from happening by choose a complex alpha-numeric password. Remembering an alpha-numeric password is difficult and sometimes next to impossible. An example of this is a password like 2Gkb4S2q. An even better password is one that uses characters like question marks and exclamation points in addition to letters and numbers (eg. &%sZ+VLl).

This is where Any Password comes into play. Any Password is a password manager. You can store passwords as well as other sensitive information in its database. The database itself can be passworded and its encrypted to prevent outside snooping. It also includes a random password generator.

Any Password is compatible with Microsoft Windows 9x/Me/NT/2000/XP
http://www.anypassword.com/free/index.html

To use it on Vista, you will need to purchase the Pro version.
http://www.anypassword.com/pro/index.html

Getting Started Videos

Getting started videos are now available, you can view them here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/firedaemonchannel

Tags: run as service

GoldSRC/SRCDS RCON Security

Every GoldSRC and SRCDS server needs an RCON password. RCON passwords allow you to remotely control your server from the console or a 3rd party tool like HLSW.

Lately there have been more hackers who try to brute force guess your password. If they do guess your password, they can take complete control of your server like ban/unban players, change the hostname and change cvars.

There are a few things you can do to keep this from happening. The first thing is to pick a password that is not based on a dictionary word. It’s best if your password is over 12 characters long and has a mixture of letter, numbers and symbols. The symbols are key to make it extremely hard to crack. A good example password would be something like: ^#&r@p*RsG0.

Another thing you can do to stop or at least slow the hackers is to enable rcon protection cvars.

Use the following code in your “server.cfg” file (works in GoldSRC and SRCDS):

sv_rcon_banpenalty 60
sv_rcon_maxfailures 10
sv_rcon_minfailures 5
sv_rcon_minfailuretime 45

The code does the following:
sv_rcon_banpenalty : Number of minutes to ban users who fail rcon authentication
sv_rcon_maxfailures : Max number of times a user can fail rcon authentication before being banned
sv_rcon_minfailures : Number of times a user can fail rcon authentication in sv_rcon_minfailuretime before being banned
sv_rcon_minfailuretime : Number of seconds to track failed rcon authentications

This should slow down the hackers. It won’t stop them completely though.

Useful Software: Desktop Restore

Desktop Restore is a handy little tool that lets you save the positions of icons on your desktop.  It’s especially useful if you have multiple monitors and you have icons on those monitors.

Saving and restoring is done by right clicking the desktop and selecting your desired action from the context menu.  You can even create multiple saves and restore different layouts.

You can download it at http://www.midiox.com/desktoprestore.htm

Desktop Restore is freeware and the latest version is officially compatible with Windows XP, 2000 and Vista.  I have personally tested the latest version on two Windows 2003 Server computers and have encountered no problems.  There are other versions that are compatible with 64Bit windows and Windows 98/ME.

Useful Software: Process Explorer

Process Explorer is an awesome task manager replacement.   With it you can view all applications running on your computer (even ones Windows TaskMan hides), get more information about your application (working memory, peak working memory, etc.) and more!  You can even see which applications are sub-processes of a parent application.

It’s great to use on servers because you get much more control over processes and you can see more.  There is one major problem though, if you play games on your computer, and the game uses SecuRom disc protection, the game will not run when Process Explorer is running.  You will have to disable Process Explorer  from replacing the Task Manager and restart your computer.  The reason this is, is because Process Explorer includes a Debugger and SecuRom detects it as a hack tool.  Aside from that, its safe to use.  The original programmer was hired by Microsoft a few years ago and the download site is on the Microsoft website.

You can download it at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx.

Wikipedia Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_Explorer

Process Explorer is Freeware and works on Windows XP and Higher and Windows 2003 Server and Higher.

Speeding up your SRCDS Server/Increasing System Speed

You can drastically increase the speed of your Windows SRCDS server with the following trick:

Download this tool and leave it running all the time. It’s best to give it its own FireDaemon service. You can also accomplish the same thing by running “Windows Media Player” but WMP uses far more memory (around 30MB compared to this app that uses 4MB).  You might be wondering what it does exactly?  Well it increases your server FPS by increasing windows responsiveness to download packets.  In other words, it increases the timer frequency.  By default, SRCDS servers run at 256FPS.  With this little tool running, you can run the server over 512FPS !

There is another very very useful thing about this tool.  It also increases general system responsiveness. This means that windows will load faster and so will any games you play!  It’s also good to use it on web servers.

As far as i know there is no adverse problems with using the tool 24/7 as Windows Media Player itself does the same thing and Microsoft never issued any warnings.

Useful Software: Unlocker

Unlocker is a very useful little application that allows you to unload applications from memory so that you can delete/move them.

Sometimes applications don’t unload and require you to restart or reboot to safe-mode to delete/move them.  Unlocker solves this by forcibly unloading the application.

Unlocker is freeware and is available at http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/

It’s compatible with Windows 2000 / XP / 2003 / Vista.

P.S. I would not recommend installing it on a server because than hackers could unload and delete all your security software.

Useful Software: TreeSize Free

TreeSize Free is a great tool that shows you all the files and folders on your hard drive and the size of them.  It’s great to use when you’re running out of hard drive space and you want to deleted something but don’t know what.

Several years ago i ran this tool, and discovered a 2GB page file that wasnt used for several years.  I deleted it and recovered 2GB so i didnt need to buy a new hard drive right away.

TreeSize Free is freeware and you can download it at http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml

Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TreeSize

The latest version is compatible with Windows 2000/XP/Vista

Version 2.1 is compatible with Windows 9x/ME.

Troubleshooting SRCDS Crashes

The majority of Source Engine crashes are due to plugin errors and exceeding engine limits on maps. When you’re faced with a constant crash on your server, there are a few steps you should take to pinpoint the culprit.

First ask yourself a few questions: Does it always happen on the same map? Were players in the server when it crashed? Does it crash on startup or on map change?  Once you have the answers to these questions you can then start troubleshooting.

First off, try running the server with no plugins.  This means dont load metamod, sourcemod, Eventscripts, etc.  Let the server run like this for a few days.  If there are no crashes then you’ve at least pinpointed that its not a corrupt installation.  If it still crashes, than either you have a misconfigured CVAR or your installation is corrupt (delete all steam files and re-run the update process).  You will know if there is a crash by looking in the root directory of the server for MDMP files, MDMP files are created whenever you server crashes and are created at the time of the crash.  You can’t see whats in the MDMP file though, only the developer of the mod or game can.  MDMP files are just usefull so you know the date and time of the crash.

To troubleshoot plugin problems, first try running the server with the default plugins that came with your administration tool.  Than every day or few days after that add 3 to 6 of the custom plugins you are using.  If the server crashes again, than its likely one of the last few plugins you added so remove a few of them and let the server run for a few days again. This method can take a few days to a few weeks, but its the best way to find the plugin that is causing the crashes.