So I’ve been playing Icarus with the wife and the optimization is hot garbage. Wife is hosting and pulling 10 fps with a Nvidia 3070TI
We enjoy the game so I start doing research. Turns out once you’ve played enough the database on the host just gets too big and chokes out the CPU threads since it can’t use more than 2 cores.
Answer is to migrate your world to a sepf hosted dedicated server. Say no more.
So now I got an excuse (wife approved) to setup a computer as a server and keep it running. I have an old HP SFF i5 16GB RAM with an SSD I’ve reimagined a few times for a home server.
Flashed it with Debian and setup the Icarus server in docker. Runs like a champ.
Bonus points. I hooked up a wattage meter and it idles at 1~2 watts!
I used to run an old gaming computer as a home server and it felt like $30 a month in electricity.
Edit: System idles at 19 watts. I had the meter plugged into the wrong device…
Now I can start throwing more stuff on there once I figure out backup for the game world incase I bork it.
Have you thought about running proxmox rather than Debian? I found it to be useful for managing/tracking/backups of containers.
I tried Proxmox but found it way overkill for home use. I run ~50 Docker containers and I love Docker for its ease of use. Proxmox is an order of magnitude more complicated.
How do you manage backups? One big benefit of Proxmox is running containers in vms and easily snapshot/backup/restore whole vms.
Yes. It’s just a higher level of efficiency, portability, snapshots and backups.
50 containers…
I hope I don’t go that crazy.
I’d need a WebUI at that point I can monitor from a Workstation.
Hehe tbh I only run 5 😅 I found it useful when I had to diagnose some cpu hogging off one of the containers and the ease of backups. Even though have not needed it yet.
It’s worth noting that Proxmox uses Debian. It’s essentially a collection of Debian packages, and you can install Proxmox on top of an existing Debian system: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Install_Proxmox_VE_on_Debian_13_Trixie
Proxmox lacks a Docker UI though, which is annoying. One of the reasons I’m using Unraid at home is because it supports KVM, LXC, and Docker, all in the same UI. (LXC is a plugin rather than being available out-of-the-box, but it works very well)
(and no, Proxmox’s new OCI container support isn’t it - that just converts the container to LXC and doesn’t handle upgrades)
Yeah I thought proxmax didn’t handle containers well. Main reason I’m skipping it for now.
Good to know I can stack it on debian though.
I eventually intend to start some funny stuff I wanted a full OS for.
If I shift my end goal to run in a container then that would make more sense.
I initially went for Debian because I had a deadline for us to get back to gaming together.
I’ve seen loads of people use proxmax. As a windows admin I wanted a OS as a stepping stone.
I run Brazzite on my gaming rig and mint on my daily driver laptop now. Getting there.
Honestly I left proxmox/virtualization OSes a while back for simple RHEL. I have Docker for most everything and the few things I need full virt for the features Cockpit provides are more than enough. If I ever get back into clustering I’ll look at proxmox again.
If you want a webui for the debian server that gives you logs, services, ssh terminal and more then I can recommend checking out Cockpit
https://cockpit-project.org/
If you decide you want to you can install KVM/Qemu on the debian host to get into full virtualization that way. The webui can be used to configure and manage the VMs too with https://github.com/cockpit-project/cockpit-machines
edit: Cockpit also has a Docker manager, though I feel it isn’t full featured yet. I mostly used it to stop and start dockers from my phone.
https://github.com/chrisjbawden/cockpit-dockermanager
Totally fair. I also started with Debian for a Minecraft server, at the request of my partner. I might try out Icarus, is it cross platform?
Not sure if it’s cross platform. We’ve been having lots of fun with it.
Its interesting in the sense that one person can buy all the content and additional players can just buy the base game and join a “unlocked” server to enjoy everything.
I’ve seen similar pricing models and it’s kind of expensive but evens out the more people play with you.
I find it funny that advanced tech is explained away by you getting support from outer space. Vs games like Ark where you just magically know how to mess with electrical systems.
Starting with stone weapons is annoying but you can earn credits in game to start with 3D printed weapons/tools as you hop maps.
Proxmox with community scripts LXCs is crazy