[Powerlord]

So, if you don't subscribe to hlds_linux, you may have missed the announcement a few minutes ago.

Valve's John Schoenick announced that TF2 and SDK2013-based games will now be compiled against newer build tools than they used to be, including the main system library.

This means that systems that used to be able to run TF2 servers will no longer be able to run TF2 servers in the near future.

From previous experience, this means that you will need a system that uses GLIBC 2.15 or newer.

Systems known to not be supported: RedHat/CentOS 6 and below, Ubuntu 11.10 and below, Debian 7 and below.

CS:S, DoD:S, and HL2:DM will not be immediately affected, but expect this change to show up in those environments in the near future.

(I got the email from my phone, I'll c/p the actual text into this post when I get home in an hour or so.)

Unfortunately, there's one additional side effect to this: MetaMod: Source, all MM:S plugins (include SourceMod), and all SourceMod Extensions will need to be recompiled against the new libraries as the library names are changing.

[LoZFTW]

Is there any specific version of Linux Mint affected, or is it the same as Ubuntu, version 11?

[Bara]

Here the message:

Hi everyone, The current Linux TF2/SDK2013 dedicated server is a bit odd, shipping a dedicated-only build of the source engine that targets a very old toolchain for maximal compatibility. This setup predates the Steam Runtime and the widespread availability of container setups like Docker that make it trivial to run apps in alternate environments. We're planning on obsoleting this setup, and shipping a unified build[1] between clients and servers that targets the current Steam Runtime[2] What this means for you: *1) If your distro is not binary compatible[3] with the Steam Runtime (based on Ubuntu 12 LTS) you may need to update your setup to continue running TF2 servers. *There are several options for this. * *- Switch to a Ubuntu 12 LTS based distro - Create a Steam Runtime chroot or container (e.g. Docker) to run your servers. - Package a copy of the Steam Runtime for your servers and invoke the server with a modified environment ( env LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$RUNTIME"/usr/lib/ "$RUNTIME"/usr/lib/ld-linux.so.2 ./srcds_linux ... ) - Etc See the Steam Runtime page[2] for more information on setup and usage. * **2) If you have mods or scripts that are hard-coded to expect "_srv" binaries, they will need to be fixed* We plan on working with the SourceMod team to ensure their tools continue to function, but server operators will likely need to update when this occurs. Other tools or scripts that are hard coded to "_srv" may need fixing. _When__?_ The plan is to begin shipping builds based requiring the Steam Runtime in the next few months, so we encourage server operators to begin looking into their setups ASAP. Non-TF2 SDK2013 games will likely be switched to this setup some time after TF2, as it becomes necessary to maintain compatibility with the Steam SDK. Let me know if you have any questions or concerns - John [1] Meaning, one client.so and server.so and associated engine, rather than a separate "_srv.so" build of the entire system for dedicated servers. [2] https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime [3] Binary compatibility largely meaning new-enough gcc-libs/libc/libstdc++, but also some supporting libraries like ncurses.

[Powerlord]

I updated the GLIBC version in the first post as I had the wrong one (it's 2.15 not 2.17).

However, I haven't tried the steam-runtime to see if Valve has updated it recently.

[Noodl]

For those of us running Deb 8, will we need to install any packages, or does Deb 8 retain binary compatibility that the Steam runtime requires?

[Powerlord]

Originally Posted by LoZFTW Is there any specific version of Linux Mint affected, or is it the same as Ubuntu, version 11?

I don't know how Mint versions match up, but I know Ubuntu 12.04 is the lowest Ubuntu version that is supported.

Edit: Supposedly this matches up to Mint 13.

Originally Posted by Noodl For those of us running Deb 8, will we need to install any packages, or does Deb 8 retain binary compatibility that the Steam runtime requires?

Debian 8 should be compatible without anything special.

[Naydef]

This is only for Linux bases OSes(and Mac OS X and this means Windows will also be updated, but without problems), isn't it? Is there something beneficial for us?

[Powerlord]

Originally Posted by Naydef This is only for Linux bases OSes(and Mac OS X and this means Windows will also be updated, but without problems), isn't it? Is there something beneficial for us?

I can see one advantage for server owners and one advantage for Valve.

For server owners: srcds can now run inside a steam-runtime virtual environment.

For Valve: They no longer have to maintain separate server and client libraries on Linux.

Windows is largely unaffected because Microsoft made the various C++ runtimes not conflict with each other. For example, on my work machine I have 18 different C++ runtimes:

• 1 Visual Studio 2005 runtime (1 32-bit)
• 6 Visual Studio 2008 runtimes (4 32-bit, 2 64-bit)
• 5 Visual Studio 2010 runtimes (2 32-bit, 2 64-bit, 1 for Visual Studio's designer)
• 2 Visual Studio 2012 runtimes (1 32-bit, 1 64-bit)
• 2 Visual Studio 2013 runtimes (1 32-bit, 1 64-bit)
• 2 Visual Studio 2015 runtimes (1 32-bit, 1 64-bit)