Hiding A Server On A Computer?

BeanHead · November 2002

I've got a place I can set up a HLDS that would have full reign of a 1ghz+ (i dont know the exact specs) computer sucking the teat of a 100mbps connection and even though it's "my" computer (I get to do whatever I want with it) I don't know what they'd think of my running a DS on it.

I can change the ports and they won't know anything about it, but on occasion a fellow techie may log onto it and see what's going on... and maybe find the Half Life DS stuff.

Does anyone know of how I could delay or hide these files while still being able to have the same easy access to it? I don't want to have to zip/unzip the ds everytime i want to use it, or run it off a cd. or something.

voogru · November 2002

They would be able to tell if your running a DS on that machine simply by looking at how much bandwidth your spitting out. My HLDS has done some 30GB of bandwidth in 5 days.

BeanHead · November 2002

They wouldn't care about the bandwidth - it's on a gigabit backbone AND it would be running TCP/IP software of its own (probably).

I just want to keep them from finding out that it's a HLDS on there... I guess I'll just install it in a different directory... <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='confused.gif'>

NDGhetto_Fractux · November 2002

If they don't want you running it there, and you run one they can easily find out it is running by looking at the running processes.

I hope you won't get into trouble, cause that's a nice connection hhehe <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'>

Paegus · November 2002

there really isnt a reliable way to hide a server on a machine. any techie with half a brain can find your files. (got root?)

the only solution i ever found was an OS emulator.. i had a windows box at my old job, and we had copies of VMWare. (Virtual Machine) which lets you run multipl operating systems on a computer. i choose to run linux, so if anyone looked at it, they would see just a login prompt and assume it was a remote terminal. but my box had 2 IPs. and the bandwidth was noticed.. though not tracked down.

this worked great for HLDS/CS. but i'm not sure what kinda preformance you'd get from NS since its far more resource consumptive.

BHayes · November 2002

If this is Win2k/XP you can try burying it down deep in some obscure file tree. If the system has NTFS you can put it in a folder with access permissions that don't allow normal users to see the files. Set the files and directory with SYSTEM account permissions(default admin privs don't allow access to files under SYSTEM account), then run HLDS as a System service with srvany, or cygrunsrv, might want to also rename hlds.exe to something less obvious, svchost.exe is a good one.

I'm sure there's other ways to hide it also, that all I can think of for now.

BHayes -- ROUS Natural Selection Server

Gelantious · November 2002

Yeah, I would do like BHayes said.

Another program that allows normal programs to run as a system service is FireDaemon.

Its easy to setup, but the Free version only has support for running one program.

Havent tried srvany or cygrunsrv, gonna take a look at'em later on.

Kiloman · November 2002

Like someone said.. go get FireDaemon, that'll keep at least one process running, and allow you to run it as a service. Bury the install folder somewhere deep in the FS, and you should be OK. If you're worried, my 12 player server was taking about ~480 kb (60 kB/sec) of traffic... if your admins are nazis I'm sure they would notice, but most would not... not immediately at least.

Hiding A Server On A Computer?

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