Dedicated server tips

[Bobbey]

Intro

I had to figure out a lot of things myself when starting up my own f2p bot farm. All information was spread out over the internet. In this guide I will cover the things that took me a bit to figure out. This is not a full guide on how to setup a dedicated server. But I will give some very important tips

Operating system and VNC (remote desktop)

It is recommended to run a linux SERVER operating system. Personally I prefer Ubuntu 18 LTS.

This guide covers everything you need to do to make the VNC server work. You can then connect using TigerVNC or some other program. (you can even connect from your phone with certain apps)

RAM

A difficult question to answer is how much ram you need on your server. If you use WebWalking, that uses a lot of ram per client. Using preset paths is highly recommended.

For OSBot I found that the clients average at 700MB using lowresource mode. (for my methods, this is method dependant)

I have 45 bots running on 32GB ram with an Intel 7700k at stock speed. When I start the clients, they don't fully use this ram. But after a few hours the ram slowly builds up.

To properly handle excess ram usage, you can use Swapping memory

CPU

Running a lot of clients also means that you need to properly manage your CPU usage. I found that CPULimit is really useful for this. (note that the -l x% works per core. To limit to 5% of total cpu, you need to use 5*cores. If you have 4 cores on your cpu, use -l 20 for 5% limit)

Limiting them to too low makes the clients freeze or underperform. Not limiting at all means that when a client loops on an error for 100 times per second, your whole farm could suffer from it.

(dont forget to use -lowcpu through the CLI/options)

SWAP Memory

This guide tells you how to set it up. But what is Swap memory? It is reserved space on your memory storage disk, which can be used by the system to put working memory that does not fit on your ram memory onto your disk. Your hard disk has a much slower read/write speed than your ram, so the system chooses objects that you use less often to put into the swapping memory. If you have an SSD or NVMe drive on your system, this Swapping memory is quite efficient. I recommend to double your ram with a swapping file. I recommend to add 50% of your ram as swapping memory.

Using swapping memory too much can freeze bots and probably crash a few too - you'll have to test how far you can push it I did some testing;

When I had full ram, I used ~60% cpu. When I added another 10% of bots, the CPU went up to ~90%

Dummy sound driver

Assuming you're running on a system that has no speakers, you'll get memory leaks because your runescape clients are trying to play sound, which get's stuck in a queue because there is no driver to accept the sound. You can greatly reduce ram usage by (either disabling sound on your osrs clients or) installing a dummy sound driver.

Choosing the right dedicated server

Another difficult question. I can only steer you a bit into the right direction. Do not use Xeon-D (comment if you have experience with this) 

Recommended CPU's are

• Xeon-E (server cpu's) They generally have a lot of cores/threads
• Intel Core (i7) (game/desktop cpu's) They generally have a 4 cores/8 threads

Ram speed does not really matter

SSD and NVMe are great for swapping memory and loading bots, but are totally optional.

I personally use OVH.com for renting dedicated servers. They are not cheap, but they are extremely reliable and have acceptable setup times with no setup fees.

Accessibillity

These are pretty straight forward. Use Putty for connecting to the SSH. Use FTP (with FileZilla client) to easily transfer files to the server.

If you use mysql for managing your bots, use MySQL Workbench to view/edit/create the database

(this post is under construction)

Edited February 21, 2019 by Bobbey

[pawel44]

good tutorial.

[King Ryan]

Good general over view, would like to see it get a bit more in depth.

[The Devil]

This is a great help as iv been looking on ebay for some cheap servers to throw in a corner

[splatbug]

Very helpful, thank you!

[Modern Heretic]

I just got a farm of my own today, and I was wondering if you guys could give me some advice, or maybe examples off OVH on what specs I should get if I'm trying to run 1,000 bots at a time off one server.
I thought it had everything to do with your CPU and RAM, so I've only been looking for servers with high RAM this entire time.
 

[IDontEB]

55 minutes ago, Modern Heretic said:

I just got a farm of my own today, and I was wondering if you guys could give me some advice, or maybe examples off OVH on what specs I should get if I'm trying to run 1,000 bots at a time off one server.
I thought it had everything to do with your CPU and RAM, so I've only been looking for servers with high RAM this entire time.
 

To get it to run off of one server only it's going to be too expensive to ever be worth it. Lot cheaper to just get 10 used servers to run 100ea than 1 for 1k.

[Modern Heretic]

46 minutes ago, IDontEB said:

To get it to run off of one server only it's going to be too expensive to ever be worth it. Lot cheaper to just get 10 used servers to run 100ea than 1 for 1k.

I guess my only concern with that would be the electric bill. Can you show me an example of what you'd personally use? 

[IDontEB]

13 minutes ago, Modern Heretic said:

I guess my only concern with that would be the electric bill. Can you show me an example of what you'd personally use? 

If electricity is a concern, you couldn't afford the kind of server that'll run 1k bots. Either way though, they're not that expensive electricity wise. The bare minimum specs you'd want is dual x5600 series or better with 64-72gb of ram/server. You can check the cpubenchmark score and judge servers relative to that roughly

[lunapt]

On 2/20/2019 at 3:38 AM, Bobbey said:

Intro

I had to figure out a lot of things myself when starting up my own f2p bot farm. All information was spread out over the internet. In this guide I will cover the things that took me a bit to figure out. This is not a full guide on how to setup a dedicated server. But I will give some very important tips

Operating system and VNC (remote desktop)

It is recommended to run a linux SERVER operating system. Personally I prefer Ubuntu 18 LTS.

This guide covers everything you need to do to make the VNC server work. You can then connect using TigerVNC or some other program. (you can even connect from your phone with certain apps)

RAM

A difficult question to answer is how much ram you need on your server. If you use WebWalking, that uses a lot of ram per client. Using preset paths is highly recommended.

For OSBot I found that the clients average at 700MB using lowresource mode. (for my methods, this is method dependant)

I have 45 bots running on 32GB ram with an Intel 7700k at stock speed. When I start the clients, they don't fully use this ram. But after a few hours the ram slowly builds up.

To properly handle excess ram usage, you can use Swapping memory

CPU

Running a lot of clients also means that you need to properly manage your CPU usage. I found that CPULimit is really useful for this. (note that the -l x% works per core. To limit to 5% of total cpu, you need to use 5*cores. If you have 4 cores on your cpu, use -l 20 for 5% limit)

Limiting them to too low makes the clients freeze or underperform. Not limiting at all means that when a client loops on an error for 100 times per second, your whole farm could suffer from it.

(dont forget to use -lowcpu through the CLI/options)

SWAP Memory

This guide tells you how to set it up. But what is Swap memory? It is reserved space on your memory storage disk, which can be used by the system to put working memory that does not fit on your ram memory onto your disk. Your hard disk has a much slower read/write speed than your ram, so the system chooses objects that you use less often to put into the swapping memory. If you have an SSD or NVMe drive on your system, this Swapping memory is quite efficient. I recommend to double your ram with a swapping file. I recommend to add 50% of your ram as swapping memory.

Using swapping memory too much can freeze bots and probably crash a few too - you'll have to test how far you can push it I did some testing;

When I had full ram, I used ~60% cpu. When I added another 10% of bots, the CPU went up to ~90%

Dummy sound driver

Assuming you're running on a system that has no speakers, you'll get memory leaks because your runescape clients are trying to play sound, which get's stuck in a queue because there is no driver to accept the sound. You can greatly reduce ram usage by (either disabling sound on your osrs clients or) installing a dummy sound driver.

Choosing the right dedicated server

Another difficult question. I can only steer you a bit into the right direction. Do not use Xeon-D (comment if you have experience with this) 

Recommended CPU's are

• Xeon-E (server cpu's) They generally have a lot of cores/threads
• Intel Core (i7) (game/desktop cpu's) They generally have a 4 cores/8 threads

Ram speed does not really matter

SSD and NVMe are great for swapping memory and loading bots, but are totally optional.

I personally use OVH.com for renting dedicated servers. They are not cheap, but they are extremely reliable and have acceptable setup times with no setup fees.

Accessibillity

These are pretty straight forward. Use Putty for connecting to the SSH. Use FTP (with FileZilla client) to easily transfer files to the server.

If you use mysql for managing your bots, use MySQL Workbench to view/edit/create the database

(this post is under construction)

how many clients/ bots do you think you could run if you ran mirror mode?

[Ace99]

Solid info.  Do you turn a profit with 45 accounts month to month? No need for details on how much either way.

[Khaleesi]

Thats really great info! Thx for the effort

[Medusa]

Just fyi. No one recommends using linux. It's free, so it's less money out of your wallet. Windows imo is better since osbot sometimes fucks up on linux.

Edited April 7, 2020 by Medusa

[OSBOTTESTER101]

Of course like everyone else here I have some question

 

One of the question is that when you rent a server- do they physically bring it to your home?

 

Also if you buy lets say 3 used servers and install them can you physically log in to each of those servers like to see a GUI?

 

Would you be able to set them up individually ? and then would you get a new IP for each bot? or how does that work?

[shreder]

4 hours ago, OSBOTTESTER101 said:

Of course like everyone else here I have some question

 

One of the question is that when you rent a server- do they physically bring it to your home?

 

Also if you buy lets say 3 used servers and install them can you physically log in to each of those servers like to see a GUI?

 

Would you be able to set them up individually ? and then would you get a new IP for each bot? or how does that work?

No these dedicated servers are hosted on datacenters where you remotely connect to them.