Linux Core Installation

Installation directories

The following steps will install AzerothCore at $AC_CODE_DIR. This will by default be in $HOME/azerothcore. This path can be changed to any other location the user has access to if desired.

The user azerothuser will be used in some examples as well. Again, this can be changed to whatever is desired.

Note: in the following command the variable $HOME is the path of the current user, so if you are logged as root, $HOME will be "/root". You can check the state of the environment variable, as follows:

echo $HOME

Configure the install directory as follows:

export AC_CODE_DIR=$HOME/azerothcore

Required software

See Requirements before you continue.

Getting the source code

Choose ONE of the following method, run one of the below git ... commands in your terminal.

1. Clone only the master branch + full history (smaller size - recommended):

   git clone https://github.com/azerothcore/azerothcore-wotlk.git --branch master --single-branch $AC_CODE_DIR
   

2. Clone only the master branch + no previous history (smallest size):

   git clone https://github.com/azerothcore/azerothcore-wotlk.git --branch master --single-branch $AC_CODE_DIR --depth 1
   

   Note: If you want to get the full history back, use git fetch --unshallow.

3. Clone all branches and all history:

   git clone https://github.com/azerothcore/azerothcore-wotlk.git $AC_CODE_DIR
   

This will create an azerothcore directory in your home folder containing the AC source files.

Compiling the source code

Creating the build-directory

To avoid issues with updates and colliding source builds, we create a specific build-directory, so we avoid any possible issues due to that (if any might occur)

cd $AC_CODE_DIR
mkdir build
cd build

Configuring for compiling

Parameter explanation for advanced users CMake options.

At this point, you must be in your $AC_CODE_DIR/build directory.

Note: in case you use a non-default package for clang, you need to replace it accordingly. For example, if you installed clang-6.0 then you have to replace clang with clang-6.0 and clang++ with clang++-6.0

cmake ../ -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$AC_CODE_DIR/env/dist/ -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=/usr/bin/clang -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=/usr/bin/clang++ -DWITH_WARNINGS=1 -DTOOLS_BUILD=all -DSCRIPTS=static -DMODULES=static

To know the amount of cores available. You can use the following command

nproc --all

Set the number of cores to build with, replacing the command with the number of threads you want to execute, if applicable:

export BUILD_CORES=`nproc | awk '{print $1 - 1}'`

Then, type:

make -j$BUILD_CORES
make install

It may be useful to preserve these commands in a script or otherwise keep note of them for later. You will need to re-run all three commands again whenever you update AzerothCore or add new modules. For example:

#!/bin/bash

BUILD_CORES=`nproc | awk '{print $1 - 1}'`
cmake ../ -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$AC_CODE_DIR/env/dist/ -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=/usr/bin/clang -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=/usr/bin/clang++ -DWITH_WARNINGS=1 -DTOOLS_BUILD=all -DSCRIPTS=static -DMODULES=static &&
make -j$BUILD_CORES &&
make install

(Optional) Systemd Services

Systemd services can help you with managing your AzerothCore server. The service files shown below must be installed by root in most distros. The appropriate location on most distros is /etc/systemd/system.

Since these commands won't be run with access to the user's variables, the install directory $AC_CODE_DIR must be fully expanded to, for example, /home/azerothuser/azerothcore. Run echo $AC_CODE_DIR as your user if you're not sure what this should be.

Set the user for the units to run as. The username used here is azerothuser, and should be substituted for your username.

export AC_UNIT_USER=azerothuser

ac-authserver.service

sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/ac-authserver.service << EOF
[Unit]
Description=AzerothCore Authserver
After=network.target
StartLimitIntervalSec=0

[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=always
RestartSec=1
User=$AC_UNIT_USER
WorkingDirectory=$AC_CODE_DIR
ExecStart=$AC_CODE_DIR/acore.sh run-authserver

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

ac-worldserver.service

sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/ac-worldserver.service << EOF
[Unit]
Description=AzerothCore Worldserver
After=network.target
StartLimitIntervalSec=0

[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=always
RestartSec=1
User=$AC_UNIT_USER
WorkingDirectory=$AC_CODE_DIR
ExecStart=/bin/screen -S worldserver -D -m $AC_CODE_DIR/acore.sh run-worldserver

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

systemd is made aware of these new service files with systemd daemon-reload. You can start AzerothCore like this:

sudo service ac-worldserver start
sudo service ac-authserver start

Or stop it:

sudo service ac-worldserver stop
sudo service ac-authserver stop

The servers can be set to automatically start when the system boots with:

sudo systemctl enable ac-authserver
sudo systemctl enable ac-worldserver

You can inspect if the services started properly by inspecting the log entries from the systemd journal like so:

sudo journalctl ac-authserver.service
sudo journalctl ac-worldserver.service

Help

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