Hello,
Oftentimes when renting a game server I prefer to rent privately from someone's personal dedicated machine instead of going the VPS/VDS route (except when renting from NFO servers). Over the years I've found that sometimes updates don't get uploaded for a week after I sent them (sometimes not at all), or I need to correct some bugs and reupload updates maybe 2 or 3 times before an issue is fully resolved. Preparing updates and sending them over is cumbersome and time consuming. So I've been thinking of a way to automate the process.
My server config is designed to shut off when everyone disconnects, or every hour if it's empty. A cron job runs every minute, launching a
shell script which checks for official game updates & workshop collection updates before relaunching the server. I'm wanting to add functionality to this script so that it can sync server config updates as well.
What would be some ways to auto-sync updates to a game server which I don't have FTP access? Obviously the person I'm renting from would have to be willilng to install the cron job / shell script to their server - so they'd need to feel that it's secure and fully tested.
I've contemplated using rsync (something like
this, except pulling (instead of pushing) + no dry run), but there's a few downsides, like needing to rent a vps just for syncing updates, the security issue (multiple server owners having access to that machine), being a hassle for admins to configure, etc.
Ideally I'd have a private github repository that's synced to all the servers.
I'm wondering if anyone's done anything like this before and if so, what method did you use?