Server not showing up in server browser.

[Keaza]

Before you answer in this thread with the most basic of knowledge, read below.

I've hosted many many servers for many games for over a decade, and I have also hosted PZ server before, about a year ago and I had no issues.

However, now I'm starting to host a server again, and I've opened all necessary ports, just like I did about a year ago when it worked.

The ports I have opened are the following;
8766,8767
16261,16262-16293
27015-27037
443

UDP, TCP and both in any combination does not work.

You can connect to the server manually if you put in the IP and port, add it to favorite. But in-game browser and the steam client server browser does not find the server upon refreshing all servers.


I tried with and without UPnP, no difference.

Anyone have had similar issue that have an idea of what is causing this?

[Beard]

Are you sure you used all the applicable filters in the server browser when looking for the server?
What is the servers name?

[Keaza]

Yes,

Right now I did a clean install of the server on a different machine.

The IP that its running from is 90.227.7.40, I got dual WAN from my ISP so I dont mind putting one of my personal IPs here

I will change display name of server to "TESTING SERVER LIST".

If you connect to it manually now it will be bone stock server without any config done.

My actual server is yet to be migrated, which has plenty of mods and configurations done.

[Beard]

Are you sure the server name is that and not just the description, since I cannot find that specific server name.
Can you share your server-console.txt file found in C:\Users\YourUserName\Zomboid?

[Keaza]

I can assure I changed both. I've spent well over 20 hours trying to diagnose this :/

I'm starting to think that there's something with my ISP having trouble with the ports for Steam servers or something alike.

Here is the console log of my server during startup.

https://1drv.ms/t/s!AnJeV_ZB3dRJlPcdlXVxdP4cCu32Hg?e=97YkPR

I had to upload it to my onedrive and share it as pastebin didn't accept it as just the startup log is too big.

[Keaza]

I am totally aware of that the name is different here from "TESTING SERVER LIST" as I wrote earlier, that was just a test that I have since reverted the name as I still couldn't find it.

[Beard]

Right, the point was for me to try and find it, since I need to make sure that you are not using the wrong filters. If you change the name as you said then I cannot find it. So as said again, can you tell me what the current name of the server is, and is the server running at the moment?

Otherwise it would be as your said, issues with your ISP.

[Keaza]

I tried adding you on Steam as it's easier to coordinate over live chat instead of forums if that is fine.

Server is currently running.

Server name: Apocalypse Roleplay
Player slots: 30
IP: 90.227.7.40

UPnP disabled and the following ports and port ranges are currently open and forwarded to the machine that is running the server

443,8766:8767,16261:16262,16293,27015,27031:27036,27037

You can connect to the server manually by connecting to 90.227.7.40 with the default port of 16261

Thank you for trying to help me. I assure you that I've not messed up any filters when searching for the server. I used to run a smaller community on PZ with 10-20 daily concurrent users logged in.

[Beard]

Hm, yeah you are right, this does not seem correct. I even checked the Battlemetrics website to make sure its there, since the website periodically takes from the Steam server list, meaning it is usually very reliable to track down servers:

https://www.battlemetrics.com/servers/zomboid/18988512

Your server query shows up as "invalid" which I have not seen before, it is as if the server is actually online, but the Steam server cannot query it? I do not understand that fully.

The game itself only needs 16261 and 16262 UDP ports to work and connect to, and it should even correctly connect to the Steam servers just with those two. But it is possible some machines / services would block any outgoing Steam traffic? I am not sure if all the ports you listed are all the ports that Steam uses, is both incoming and outgoing traffic unblocked for all of those?

[Keaza]

Both inbound and outbound are open. I disabled all firewall settings on the server machine to see if it did any difference and no. I also tried running a server on linux on the same network with all them ports open no questions asked and still nothing.

I work with IT infrastructure and I deal with networking on the daily so it's not something that is alien to me. I just opened all the ports that has been mentioned in forums, the wiki ect over the past years for PZ just to minimize the risk of accidentally not opening enough ports for the game to function.

Like you said, seems like Steam cannot query it for unknown reasons, as you can connect to the server manually and it does show up in favorites if I add the server there.

Interestingly though, is that upon adding the server to favorites and joining the server, right clicking the server in the steam server browser and going to "view server info" sometimes states that no information could be gathered from the server, sometimes it does. Probably has to do with the invalid status you found on the server tracker and me not finding it in the public server list.

Not sure what is going on exactly, but it seems to be out of my control. Hopefully it is just my ISP that has equipment failure. On their website there is an unspecified equipment failure listed that has lasted about 7 days so far, so I could only hope it has something to do with this. Calling my ISP only results in some support guy to say they are working on it and cannot specify what the issue is on their end.

[Keaza]

Called my ISP now, they recently fixed their issue but it was not related to the problem I was experiencing. The issue remains. Very strange...

[Beard]

Sometimes the router can be the point of failure as well, some routers have fairly aggressive security and anti DDOS measures, which might block the connections as well.

[Keaza]

I have found the issue. It works now.

The default RCON port is set to 27015 which is a direct conflict with Steam server query port. I changed this RCON and that was it. I never even touched my RCON settings, I left it to default. Very strange that PZ sets RCON default to 27015.

[Keaza]

According to this FAQ;

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/2EA8-4D75-DA21-31EB

Dedicated or Listen servers use 27015. I'm not a pro when it comes how Steam server services work or how they query. But I would assume just reading this FAQ that they need 27015, not just source engine games use it. But I could be wrong.

The issue was also solved by leaving RCON password blank and leaving the port set to
the default of 27015, assuming that leaving password blank disables RCON?

I run all my servers on my own hardware and network. The only service that was also running was on a different Hyper-V instance on the same machine, using only port 7171 & 7172 for a little game called Tibia.

I did earlier attempt to close all other services I was running from that machine but didn't make any difference as no other service I run use 27015.

[BLStrike]

i have tha same situation here, changing RCON port made no difference.