To install the MSP Challenge client follow the instructions on the Client installation instructions page. Using only the client, you can already log on to our demo server to quickly try-out MSP Challenge.
To host your own MSP Challenge game sessions, the MSP Challenge server also needs to installed. You can either host the server locally on your machine , or in your LAN (Local network). Or, if you want to put your server online make sure to first get your hands on a (sub-)domain name and make sure it refers to the IP address of your machine. This means defining an A record in the domain's DNS settings, through some DNS-setting tool that your domain or hosting provider should provide.
These are the server installation steps:
- Install Docker Engine or Docker Desktop if not done so already. Linux or Windows, both should work.
- If you installed Docker Desktop, you might need to restart your machine.
- If you installed Docker Desktop, open it, go to Settings (Press the gear-icon), choose "General" on the left, and make sure to enable "Use the WSL 2 base engine" as well as "Add the *.docker.internal names to the host's /etc/hosts file"
- Clean any previous MSP server installations. To cleanup you can run docker stop $(docker ps -a -q) to stop the containers, and then clean-up system, network, volumes using docker system prune -af , docker network prune -f , docker volume prune -af
- Before you continue, make sure you have a working internet connection.
- Navigate to a folder where you want to install MSP Challenge server (so it will be installed in that directory, not a sub-directory)
- on Windows: Open Windows explorer, navigate to the folder, select the address, as-in select "> This PC > …." and then replace it with "powershell" and press Enter (this is neath trick to open the folder directly into PowerShell)
- Copy below one-liner command into your clipboard:
- on Windows:
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/BredaUniversityResearch/MSPChallenge-Server/refs/heads/dev/setup/prod.ps1" -OutFile "prod.ps1"; .\prod.ps1
- on Linux (tested on Ubuntu/Debian):
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y wget && wget -q https://raw.githubusercontent.com/BredaUniversityResearch/MSPChallenge-Server/refs/heads/dev/setup/{run-ps1.sh,prod.ps1} && ./run-ps1.sh prod.ps1
- on Windows:
- Paste the one-liner command into your "terminal" (on Windows being Powershell, on Linux being bash) and Press Enter to run it
- This command will download a script and run it, which will ask for your input for parameters to setup the server. Below is a table of some examples for different situations. For any of the "presets" the parameters CADDY_MERCURE_JWT_SECRET and APP_SECRET will be automatically generated. Only the most basic parameters are listed below. Other parameters get a common default value based on the selected preset.
| Preset Selection | For what purpose | Basic setup |
|---|---|---|
| Direct (Directly exposed) | The docker container running the MSP Challenge server is directly exposed to the internet on port 443 given the server name, e.g. https://your.domainname.here.
The MSP Challenge web server (Caddy) will automatically obtain a TLS certificate for the given server name. |
|
| Proxy (Behind a proxy) | The docker container running the MSP Challenge server is behind a reverse proxy, like. Nginx, which is responsible for handling:
We at BUas are also using a Nginx proxy, allowing us to run multiple versions of the server behind the same server.mspchallenge.info URL . If you are interested in such a setup, see our example on the Nginx proxy example page. |
|
| LAN (Network setup) | The docker container running the MSP Challenge server is exposed to the local area network, by the machine's IP address. |
|
| Local setup | The docker container running MSP Challenge server is locally available on the host machine, e.g. host.docker.internal, or localhost. |
|
- Please fill-in all parameters, or just press Enter to use the parameter's default value shown.
- Finally it will ask you if you want to continue the installation given the input. Enter "n" if you want to cancel it, otherwise just press enter to continue
- The setup now install all Docker containers that are part of the MSP Challenge server. Wait for it to finish (it shows a list of containers with status "Started")
- You might need to give the container another minute or two, but after that you should be able to open up the Server Manager application in your browser under your Linux machine's domain name, something like: https://your.domainname.here/ServerManager. You might first get redirected to the MSP Challenge Authoriser application prompting you to log in with your MSP Challenge account. This might not happen if you already did that in your current browser session (as we have a Single Sign-On functionality). After login, you should be on the Server Manager page where you can now set up your first new game session. If you're not familiar with this, then follow the instructions on this page.
Not supported anymore, but still available up to version 4.0.2 , there is a Windows-only installer, that installs all components (client, server and config editor) on your machine locally:
How to install your own MSP Challenge server to host sessions
Only install the server if you intend to turn your computer into a server, i.e., a computer open to participants with the client to connect to, thus a computer open to outside connections.
This section pertains to fresh installations (so not upgrades) through Docker on Linux or Windows only. We have supported Docker since version 4.0.0.
If you're interested in running the Server through Docker, we assume a (basic) system administrator's level of expertise. In other words, we assume you are a bit familiar with Docker itself.
On Linux, you can follow the instructions on this separate page to set this all up.
For Windows, you can download and install the Docker Desktop application, and use the default installation settings. Then you can/should still open up a Git Bash command-line app and follow the same instructions as explained above concerning Linux, starting from 'Now obtain the MSP Challenge Server code'.
You can, if you want, hire a virtual machine from a service such as Microsoft Azure, and install the server on there using Docker. We have done this at BUas many times. Here's a page about using Microsoft Azure to do this.
Once installation is finished, the first thing to do is to navigate to your Server Manager web application in your browser. The address to this will depend on the fully-qualified domain name you used during setup. The address will be something like https://[fully.qualified.domain.name]/ServerManager In the case of our demo server, that's https://server.mspchallenge.info/ServerManager for example. Just open it in your browser, and then follow the instructions here on how to control your own MSP Challenge server.
Upgrading from a previous version
When you already have a previous version of the server software (and the rest of the full platform) installed, you should first uninstall it and then install the newest version.
This means that absolutely everything will be replaced and upgraded. You'll lose your existing MSP Challenge sessions!
So... IMPORTANT! You'll have to backup your existing MSP Challenge sessions using the Save feature of the Server Manager application, and by then downloading the ZIP file to your computer. Make sure the save and download work, by reuploading the saved ZIP and reloading the saved session. Did everything work? Then you're ready for the upgrade.
You'll be able to re-upload the ZIP file again after the upgrade, and then you'll be able to reload a session using that save.
Note: after upgrading, if the Server Manager returns errors, it might require a 'hard refresh'. Press the Shift key and click on the Refresh button in your browser while logged on to the Server Manager to do this.
Co-funded by the European Union.