Private server installation on Digital Ocean

Create the Droplet

First create a Droplet running Ubuntu 16.04, then either SSH into the server or use the terminal from Digital Ocean's website. Next, enter the following commands step by step:

• `apt update`
• `apt upgrade`

Screeps needs python

• `apt install python`
• `apt install python`

nodejs is not installed on Ubuntu by default, and we want the new version so we need to add a new source before we install it because Ubuntu’s version is outdated This installs 8.x, see https://github.com/nodesource/distributions to grab sources for other versions

• `curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo -E bash -`
• `apt install -y nodejs`

The weak npm package, which is what my install was choking on, needs make apparently, which isn’t installed by default

• `apt install make `

Update: 11/12/2018

After experiencing errors installing screeps as a global package, a solution was found here:

• `apt install build-essential` https://github.com/screeps/screeps/issues/48#issuecomment-282206006

We are only using sudo here so we can add --unsafe perm Weak (actually, node-gyp rebuild) couldn’t get a lock on a folder it needed to access without it More info at https://github.com/nodejs/node-gyp/issues/454 --loglevel verbose so we can watch and make sure it doesn’t fail

• cd to a directory that’s empty that screeps init stuff can be stored, probably...

• `cd ~`
• `npm install screeps -g --loglevel verbose --unsafe-perm`
• `screeps init` (will need to give this your Steam Web API Key, see https://github.com/screeps/screeps )
• `screeps start`

Test connecting to your server using your server's IP (see Digital Ocean for that) and the default port. If that works, kill your server with ctrl+c and run it perpetually in the background using...

• `nohup screeps start &`

And you're good!

If you want to kill the server while it runs in the background, run...

• `killall -9 node`