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I have made a ActionScript 3.0 Flash game and implemented multiplayer functionality using SmartFoxServer. Now I want to put this game on my website which is hosted on 000webhost.

My game works absolutely fine on localhost. But I need to put my smartfox instance somewhere where it is publicly available. This is where I need you peoples help.

There is an article explaining what needs to be done - http://docs2x.smartfoxserver.com/GettingStarted/installation

I do not understand, do I have to put my game and my smartfox instance on a remote server, vps, dedicated server or what?

Tom O'Connor
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Joe Slater
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1 Answers1

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Right. You'll need to get a VPS, or at least an Amazon EC2 cloud instance to run this on. I'm 99.99% certain that you can't use the free package at 000webhost to do this. They're a pure webhost, and you need somewhere you can configure and install Java, and the SmartFox server.

So.. Go to aws.amazon.com and sign up for a free account.

You'll need to provide them with a credit/debit card number, but they won't charge you as long as you keep within the free tier resource limits.

Once you've got an account, go here and start an EC2 instance. There's a metric boatload of AWS 101 tutorials on the internet if you do some googling about.

This all assumes you know a bit about linux, but if you create your first instance using Ubuntu Linux 12.04 64-bit server, it'll make everything a bit easier!

When you click to create an instance you get this chooser: enter image description here

Select "Classic Wizard" and this AMI to boot.

Select the default options for this instance..

And the defaults on the next page too.

Select the default storage options enter image description here

And then name it. enter image description here

You now need to create a SSH key, and name that too. When you click "Download Keypair" your browser will save the private key. Keep this safe, because if you lose it, you've effectively lost the master key to your new server. enter image description here

Now we need to create a security group. This is the firewall of Amazon EC2. Create a security Group

Add inbound rules for SSH, HTTP and HTTPS. This'll be enough for now.

Adding Rulez.

Review the selections you've made. Review it.

Hurrah! It should now be booting.. booting time

Time to get into it. This is the control panel.

Control Panel

Select your new server instance, and right click it and you get this menu.

Then click connect

Then click Connect.

To access your instance:
Open an SSH client.
Locate your private key file (SmartFox.pem). The wizard automatically detects the key you used to launch the instance.
Your key file must not be publicly viewable for SSH to work. Use this command if needed: 
chmod 400 SmartFox.pem
Connect to your instance using its Public DNS. [ec2-xx-xx-xx-xx.compute-1.amazonaws.com].
Example
Enter the following command line:
ssh -i SmartFox.pem root@ec2-xx-xx-xx-xx.compute-1.amazonaws.com

Which is nearly right, except as it's an Ubuntu instance, you want to 

ssh -i SmartFox.pem ubuntu@ec2-xx-xx-xx-xx.compute-1.amazonaws.com

So, let's do that.

ubuntu@ip-10-243-117-245:~$ 

And we're in. Magic!

Gonna need the SmartFox installer next..

Download with wget, then tar xzvf and extract it.

cd ~
wget http://www.smartfoxserver.com/downloads/sfs2x/SFS2X_unix_2_0_1_64.tar.gz 

tar xzvf SFS2X_unix_2_0_1_64.tar.gz 

ls -lah
total 98544
drwxr-xr-x   4 tom  staff   136B 19 Feb 22:51 .
drwxr-xr-x  79 tom  staff   2.6K 19 Feb 22:41 ..
-rw-r--r--   1 tom  staff    48M 21 May  2012 SFS2X_unix_2_0_1_64.tar.gz
drwxr-xr-x   9 tom  staff   306B 13 Feb  2012 SmartFoxServer2X

⚡ SmartFoxServer2X ls -lah
total 160
drwxr-xr-x   9 tom  staff   306B 13 Feb  2012 .
drwxr-xr-x   4 tom  staff   136B 19 Feb 22:51 ..
drwxr-xr-x  15 tom  staff   510B 13 Feb  2012 .install4j
drwxr-xr-x   6 tom  staff   204B 13 Feb  2012 Client
-rwxr-xr-x   1 tom  staff    71K 13 Feb  2012 LicenseAgreement.pdf
-rwxr-xr-x   1 tom  staff   5.7K 13 Feb  2012 RELEASE-NOTES.html
drwxr-xr-x  13 tom  staff   442B 13 Feb  2012 SFS2X
drwxr-xr-x   8 tom  staff   272B 13 Feb  2012 jre
drwxr-xr-x   9 tom  staff   306B 13 Feb  2012 third-party-licenses

So, you can go ahead and start the damn thing now. 

ubuntu@ip-10-243-117-245:~/SmartFoxServer2X/SFS2X$ ./sfs2x-service start

or with a full path, start it by running 

/home/ubuntu/SmartFoxServer2X/SFS2X/sfs2x-service start

and stop it with:

/home/ubuntu/SmartFoxServer2X/SFS2X/sfs2x-service stop

You can perform the following commands on that sfs2x-service: {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}

Interestingly enough, it looks like SmartFox by default, needs port 8080 opening up on the AWS Security Group firewall.

ubuntu@ip-10-243-117-245:~/SmartFoxServer2X/SFS2X$ sudo netstat -anp |grep java
tcp6       0      0 127.0.0.1:9933          :::*                    LISTEN      9142/java       
tcp6       0      0 :::8080                 :::*                    LISTEN      9142/java       
udp6       0      0 127.0.0.1:9933          :::*                                9142/java

Luckily, that's really easy.

On the sidebar of the control panel, there's a Security Groups link. enter image description here

Edit it, add a custom TCP rule and allow port 8080 to 0.0.0.0/0

enter image description here

Add the rule, and apply the changes.

You should now be able to reach your SmartFox game server on the DNS name given to you by Amazon EC2 in the control panel. It's the same bit you SSH'd to earlier.

That's all folks!

Tom O'Connor
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  • Thanks very much for this amazing step by step explanation, exactly what I needed. Perfect. Can't thank you enough! But one thing that I was wondering was what are the chances of me going over the free tier limit. Almost nobody will be playing the game, as it is done for a school project and not for commercial purposes. I will get maximum 2-3 users a day for about 10-15 minutes each for the first week, and then almost nobody will use the game, except a few times by the teacher who is assessing my project. Is their a risk of crossing the free limit in my case? Thanks again – Joe Slater Feb 18 '13 at 13:39
  • The tiers are in [this document](http://aws.amazon.com/free/faqs/). – Tom O'Connor Feb 18 '13 at 19:09
  • BUT. "750 hours of Amazon EC2 Linux Micro Instance usage per month" which is enough to run a micro instance 24/7 for a month. – Tom O'Connor Feb 18 '13 at 19:10
  • So as long as you keep it within 1 micro instance, you're home free. – Tom O'Connor Feb 18 '13 at 19:17
  • I have successfully created the instance but I have lost you after the click connect. It pops up a new window like this- http://i.imgur.com/aJ6zSgV.png Now I am not sure what you mean by "open an SSH client". Sry I am a newb at this. – Joe Slater Feb 19 '13 at 21:14
  • never mind.. figured it out here- http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/putty.html – Joe Slater Feb 19 '13 at 21:28
  • Stuck on another question though ... Where are you typing the commands like `ssh -i SmartFox.pem ubuntu@ec2-xx-xx-xx-xx.compute-1.amazonaws.com` and this command - `ubuntu@ip-10-243-117-245:~/SmartFoxServer2X/SFS2X$ ./sfs2x-service start` Thanks very much – Joe Slater Feb 19 '13 at 22:06
  • I am using Putty SSH and have gotten this far- http://i.imgur.com/boNNfRK.png but i do not understand where to type commands. Also to transfer files I am using WinSCP, which looks like this http://i.imgur.com/dKzP5DV.png I do not exactly know in which folder I should transfer the files? Never used linux. – Joe Slater Feb 19 '13 at 22:17
  • You should transfer the files into home/ubuntu and then in the putty window type `tar xzvf SFS2X_unix_2_0_1_64.tar.gz` – Tom O'Connor Feb 19 '13 at 22:40
  • I've edited the answer to include more information about running the service. – Tom O'Connor Feb 19 '13 at 22:57