Deliverable #5 · 2026-08-02

lor-game-server-01 is live: server notes and how to deploy to it

Deliverable #4 was the runbook: exact commands to go from “no droplet exists” to “a WebSocket connection reaches a running Godot process.” server-instance/001 executed it end-to-end, via the DigitalOcean API rather than by hand. This is that: what’s actually running, right now, and how to work with it.

The box

• Droplet: lor-game-server-01, ID 589446588, region syd1 (Sydney), size s-1vcpu-2gb (2 GB RAM / 1 vCPU / 50 GB SSD, ~US$12/month), image ubuntu-24-04-x64, tag lor-game-server.
• Address: 209.38.29.22 — currently served plain HTTP, no domain yet: http://209.38.29.22/.
• Access: ssh lor@209.38.29.22 with the dedicated runner SSH key. Root login and password auth are both disabled — key-only, non-root, matching deliverable #4 §2.
• Provisioned via the DigitalOcean API against deliverable #4 as the spec, not through the console — see server-instance/001’s dated notes for the exact deviations (cloud-init key injection instead of the droplet API’s ssh_keys field, a bundle-transferred git clone instead of droplet-side GitHub auth, and why).

What’s running, and how it’s arranged

• Hardening (deliverable #4 §2): ufw active, allowing only OpenSSH/80/443; fail2ban and unattended-upgrades both enabled.
• Postgres (§4): a dedicated lor_game role and database — not the superuser role — reachable only from 127.0.0.1. Its password lives in an environment file on the box, never in git or a command line.
• Godot (§3): 4.7.1 headless, x86_64, at /usr/local/bin/godot4.
• systemd (§6): lor-director.service and the templated lor-world@.service (currently one instance, lor-world@1), both enabled and active. The director’s own runtime (Node vs. Go) is still an open question in server-architecture — its unit currently points at a placeholder ExecStart.
• Caddy (§5): reverse-proxying /director/* and /world/N/* to the director and world processes on localhost. Running §5.2b, bare IP over plain HTTP — no domain is pointed at the box yet, so there’s no TLS. Fine for a small number of trusted testers at this stage; not something to point real players at.
• The game code itself, and a temporary stand-in for it: /opt/lor/game-server is a real clone of land-of-lor, origin pointing at https://github.com/krisrandall/land-of-lor.git. But land-of-lor is still docs/ideation stage — there’s no server-side Godot project in it yet — so a minimal stub (project.godot, main.gd, main.tscn: just enough for a WebSocketMultiplayerPeer listener) was added directly on the droplet, deliberately not committed to git (excluded via .git/info/exclude). This is what made the systemd units and the end-to-end WebSocket check genuinely verifiable rather than just “the service exists.” It needs to be deleted once real server code lands — and if real files of the same names arrive via git pull first, that pull will need manual reconciliation rather than a clean fast-forward.

Deploying code to it

The workflow is deliverable #4 §7 — a manual pull-and-restart, deliberately not a CI pipeline at this project’s current stage:

cd /opt/lor/game-server
git pull --ff-only
sudo systemctl restart lor-director.service
sudo systemctl restart 'lor-world@*.service'

If git pull --ff-only refuses, stop and reconcile by hand — never force, reset, or rebase automatically, same rule this workspace’s own deploy-watch.sh follows.

One thing stands between this and actually working today: the clone on the box was seeded by transferring an already-authenticated bundle over SFTP, not by giving the droplet its own GitHub credentials — deliberately, since handing a box real GitHub access wasn’t in scope for the provisioning task itself. Until a deploy key is added, git pull on the box has nothing to authenticate with. Follow-up: set up a deploy key scoped read-only to land-of-lor on the droplet before relying on this workflow for a real change.

Day-to-day ops (deliverable #4 §9)

• Is it up? systemctl status lor-director lor-world@1 postgresql caddy, and curl -I http://209.38.29.22 should return 200.
• Logs: journalctl -u lor-director -f, journalctl -u lor-world@1 -f, journalctl -u caddy -f, journalctl -u postgresql -f — everything logs to journald, no separate log files to hunt for.
• Before anything risky (an OS upgrade, a schema migration, a systemd unit rewrite): take a DigitalOcean snapshot. Power off first (sudo poweroff, then Droplet → Snapshots → Take Snapshot in the DO console) — a live snapshot of a running Postgres data directory isn’t guaranteed consistent.
• Rough cost: ~US$12/month for the droplet itself; snapshots bill separately, roughly $0.06/GB/month — a few dollars a month at most for occasional snapshots of a box this size.

Open follow-ups

None of these block anything else in this epic or in server-architecture — recorded here so they’re not lost, not because anything is stuck:

• DO project assignment. The token used to provision lacked project:read, so the droplet couldn’t be looked up or moved into a lor-game-server DO project via the API — it currently sits in DO’s Default project. A few seconds in the console, or grant the token project:read for a future session to do it via API.
• Deploy key for /opt/lor/game-server, as above — the thing that actually makes the §7 deploy workflow usable.
• Domain and TLS. Once a domain is pointed at 209.38.29.22, switch the Caddyfile from §5.2b to §5.2a for automatic Let’s Encrypt TLS.
• Billing alert. Recommended as part of provisioning (server-instance/Q001 step 5) but not independently verifiable by the provisioning session — no billing scope, by design. Worth Kris confirming by hand in the DO console.
• The stub Godot project described above needs replacing with real server code once land-of-lor has any, and the director’s runtime placeholder needs the real implementation once server-architecture’s one open question lands.

Sources & artifacts

• epics/server-instance/tasks/001-provision-droplet-via-do-api.md
• epics/server-instance/questions/001-droplet-provisioning-credentials.md
• deliverables/004-server-setup-guide.md

← related epic: server-instance

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