teoxoy/factorioClusterio

internet communication for factorio mods

factorioClusterio

Discord for development/support/play: https://discord.gg/5XuDkje

Ways to support me/the project:

• Contribute with code/documentation. Always nice to move the project forward

• Support me monetarily on patreon or paypal: danielv@live.no

Table of contents

• Introduction & methodology

• Ubuntu setup

• Windows setup

• Optional plugins

• Common problems

• Command cheatsheet

Introduction

Features:

• Entities to send/recieve items

• Cross dimensional storage

• Sending of liquids

• Sending of circuit network signals

• Inventory combinator to display item levels in the cluster (and epoch time)

• Reporting of graphs and UPS on master interface (Also has extensive Prometheus reporting)

Optional extras (see Plugins)

• Have your inventory synchronize across servers

• Teleport trans from the border of one world to te next

• Show in-game chat in discord

Connection diagram:

There can be any number of clients connected to each slave, and any number of slaves connected to a master but there can only be one master server in each cluster.

How does it work?

Traditional factorio mods have always been limited by the games deterministic design. This gives us a very bug free and predictable game, but doesn't allow us cool stuff such as internet communication. Clusterio exploits one of the games logging features, game.write_file and RCON to communicate between servers. Sending an item from one server to another takes this path:

1. server1: Chest has stuff in it, write the contents to a file and delete them from the game world

2. client.js on server1: File has stuff in it, parse and send to the master for storage

3. master: server1 gave us stuff, store it in the storage and write some statistics

4. server2: get-chest is empty, write a request to file

5. client.js on server2: Request file has stuff in it, parse and send a request to master for more items of that type

6. master: server2 asked for stuff, check if we have enough and how much demand there is, then send however much is appropriate back

7. client.js on server2: We were allowed to import x of item y, run command /c remote.call("clusterio", "importMany", "{'copper-plate':120}")

This process works the same for both items and liquids, independant on what mods are used. Yes, modded items are fully supported.

Clusterio can also do a few other neat things, such as giving you access to epoch time, syncing player inventories between servers, keeping track of playtime (playerManager plugin), teleporting trains between servers (trainTeleports) and exporting tons of factorio related statistics to Prometheus for graphing in grafana.

Ubuntu setup

NodeJS does not support EOL ubuntu releases. Make sure you are on the most recent LTS release or newer.

Master and all slaves:

sudo curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_9.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt install -y nodejs python-dev git wget curl tar build-essential
sudo npm install pm2 -g
git clone https://github.com/Danielv123/factorioClusterio.git
cd factorioClusterio
curl -o factorio.tar.gz -L https://www.factorio.com/get-download/latest/headless/linux64
tar -xf factorio.tar.gz
npm install
cp config.json.dist config.json
node ./lib/npmPostinstall.js

downloads and installs nodejs, pm2, git and clusterio. To specify a version, change "latest" in the link to a version number like 0.14.21.

Now you need to edit the config.json file. If you skip this step nothing will work. Pretty much all the blank fields should be filled in, except on the master where a few can be omitted.

• You get the masterAuthToken from secret-api-token.txt in the master install dir after running the master twice.

• You get your factorio matchmaking token from factorio.com

• The masterAuthSecret should never be touched unless you want to invalidate everyones authentication tokens

Master

pm2 start master.js --name master

OR

node master.js

Server Host

To download the mod for all its non vanilla features and items, (optional, but very recommended)

node client.js manage shared mods add clusterio

To create a new instance (its own save, set of mods and config files)

node client.js start [instancename]

To launch an instance with pm2

pm2 start --name [instancename] client.js -- start [instancename]

use nano config.json to change settings.

Ubuntu with Docker

Clusterio has very limited support for using docker.

sudo docker build -t clusterio --no-cache --force-rm factorioClusterio

sudo docker run --name master -e MODE=master -p 1234:8080 -d -it --restart=unless-stopped danielvestol/clusterio

sudo docker run --name slave -e MODE=client -e INSTANCE=world1 -v /srv/clusterio/instances:/factorioClusterio/instances -p 1235:34167 -it --restart=unless-stopped danielvestol/clusterio

The -v flag is used to specify the instance directory. Your instances (save files etc) will be stored there.

Windows setup

Clusterio is built up of multiple parts. Here is a quick guide:

Master = master.js

Server host (Slave) = client.js + factorio server

Game Client = The people connecting to the server

Requirements

download and install nodeJS 8 or 9 from http://nodejs.org

download and install git from https://git-scm.com/

reboot when you are done, then proceed to the next steps. reboots matter

Master

1. download and run https://puu.sh/toFHl/01eebbb333.bat

2. Copy config.json.dist to config.json

3. Follow the instructions in the bat file

4. Some of the instructions are outdated. If you get stuck somewhere, look at the Ubuntu section.

5. Run node client.js manage shared mods add clusterio

6. type node master.js to start the server

Server Host

1. download and run https://puu.sh/toFHl/01eebbb333.bat

2. Copy config.json.dist to config.json

3. Follow the instructions given.

3.5 Some of the instructions are outdated. If you get stuck somewhere, look at the Ubuntu section.

4. Type node client.js start [instancename] to create a new instance.

To connect to a master server running on a remote machine, open config.json with your favourite text editor (notepad++). You can also set it up to use the official server browser.

Change masterIP to something like 31.152.123.14 (provided by master server owner)

Change masterPort to something like 8080 (provided by master server owner)

Change masterAuthToken to the value found in secret-api-token.txt on the master server

Repeat step 4 for more servers on one machine. You should be able to find its port by looking at the slave section on master:8080 (the web interface)

GameClient

Fancy game client that does the following steps automatically, but is really old so be warned: clusterioClient

1. Download the same version of the mod as the slave is running from the mod portal or [github](https://github.com/Danielv123/factorioClusterioMod

2. Drop it into ./factorio/mods

3. Run factorio and connect to slave as a normal MP game. You will find the port number to connect to at http://[masterAddress]:8080

Plugins

Here are the known Clusterio plugins in the wild:

1. Player Manager - Adds player management to the Web UI and shared inventory handling (beta)
2. DiscordChat - Logs in-game chat/joins/leave messages on all instances to a Discord webhook.
3. TrainTeleports - Allows you to teleport cargotrains between servers.

Common problems

Cannot find module: /../../config

Copy your config.json.dist to config.json and configure it.

EACCESS [...] LISTEN 443

Some systems don't let non root processes listen to ports below 1000. Either run with sudo or change config.json to use higher port numbers.

InitializationError: First argument must be an abstract-leveldown compliant store

do:

npm install linvodb3@3.25.1

if that does not suffice do

npm install levelup@1.3.9

If it still doesn't work, come over to our support discord linked at the top of this readme.

Portforwarding doesn't work on the master server when running under WSL

If you follow the ubuntu guide on WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux, Bash on Ubuntu on Windows specifically), you will find that the website works on localhost and on your local ip, but not on the global ip. This is also true when you correctly port-forwarded the correct ports. Even when routing this server through nginx in WSL, the issue persists. Then, on a hunch, I tried to run nginx from windows itself and found that this DID work. It came to me that the only usage difference between the 2 versions of nginx is that I got a Windows Firewall popup.

TLDR: the tested fix is:

• open your windows firewall and go to advanced settings

• click on inbound rules and click on new rule...

• select port and click next >

• select TCP and select specific local ports and type in the ports that you want to open (comma separated) and click next > 3 times

• give the rule a name (like 'web server' or something), give it a description (optionally) and click finish

Other fixes for other potential problems:

Sometimes the install fails. Try node ./lib/npmPostinstall.js to complete it.

Cheatsheet

To create a new instance/start it

node client.js start [instanceName]

Other instance management tools:

node client.js delete [instanceName]
node client.js list

To update clusterio to the latest version:

1. Download the latest zip version of factorio for your platform manually from factorio.com. Place it in the project root folder and call it "factorio" (folder name is specified in config.json)

2. Grab the latest version of the repo

git pull

npm install

3. Download the latest version of the factorioClusterioMod from its github repo

node client.js manage shared mods add clusterio