Here's a quickguide to running a Q3A dedicated server on a debian system.

I assume you have running Quake3Arena for linux running on your client computer already. We'll use this installation as base.

• Create a user and it's home dir

#> useradd -u 666 -g games -d /opt/games/quake3 quake3
#> mkdir -p /opt/games/quake3
#> chown games:games /opt/games
#> chown quake3:games /opt/games/quake3

• Copy the needed files over from your workstation

#> su - quake3
$> scp -r you@workstation:games/quake3 .

• Create a link to make Q3A happy (this fixes some maybe problems)

$> ln -s /opt/games/quake3 .q3a

• Create a new baseq3/autoexec.cfg with the following basic values

set vm_game 2
set vm_cgame 2
set vm_ui 2
set dedicated 1       //dedicated but no announce
set com_hunkmegs 32   //How much RAM for your server
set net_port 32000    //The network port

• Create a base3/server.cfg file with additonal parameters

seta sv_hostname "My Q3A Server"
seta sv_maxclients 8
seta g_motd "=== Happy fragging ==="
seta g_quadfactor 4

//### team deathmatch ###
//seta g_gametype 3
//seta g_teamAutoJoin 1
//seta g_teamForceBalance 1
//seta timelimit 15
//seta fraglimit 25

//### free for all ###
seta g_gametype 0
seta timelimit 10
seta fraglimit 15

seta bot_nochat 1

seta g_weaponrespawn 2
seta g_inactivity 3000
seta g_forcerespawn 0
seta g_log server.log
seta logfile 3
seta rconpassword "secret"

seta rate "12400"
seta snaps "40"
seta cl_maxpackets "40"
seta cl_packetdup "1"

• Create a baseq3/levels.cfg file which contains all maps you want to use in rotation

set dm1 "map q3dm1; set nextmap vstr dm2"
set dm2 "map q3dm2; set nextmap vstr dm3"
set dm3 "map q3dm3; set nextmap vstr dm1"
vstr dm1

• Set up some bots in a baseq3/bots.cfg

seta bot_enable 1
seta bot_minplayers 4

addbot doom 3 blue 10
addbot orbb 3 red 10
addbot bones 3 blue 10
addbot major 3 red 10

Okay thats it. Now you can run your server with

$> ./quake3.x86 +exec server.cfg +exec levels.cfg +exec bots.cfg

To automate this have a look at the init script below. Oh and be sure to open your firewall or your buddies can't connect.

This script starts and stops the dedicated server. Installed to /etc/init.d/q3a_server and optionally linked to the default runlevel.

#! /bin/sh
set -e

BASEPATH="/opt/games/quake3"
BINARY="quake3.x86"
DAEMON="$BASEPATH/$BINARY"
OPTIONS="+exec server.cfg +exec levels.cfg +exec bots.cfg"
RUNAS="quake3:games"
PIDFILE="$BASEPATH/$BINARY.pid"

test -x $DAEMON || exit 0

export HOME=$BASEPATH

case "$1" in
  start)
        echo -n "Starting Q3A"
        cd $BASEPATH
        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet -c $RUNAS --pidfile $PIDFILE \
                -N -10 -m -b -d $BASEPATH --exec $DAEMON -- $OPTIONS
        echo "."
        ;;
  stop)
        echo -n "Stopping Q3A"
        start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE \
                --exec $DAEMON
        echo "."
        ;;
  restart|force-reload)
        $0 stop
        sleep 3
        $0 start
        ;;
  *)
        echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|restart|force-reload}" >&2
        exit 1
        ;;
esac

exit 0