The Master List

[Agent Buckshot Moose]

Basically I'd just want to go through the server and network configuration and make sure I'm not crazy and missed something.

[hlstriker]

My server is also being a big jerk and not showing up in the master list. My testing server at home (Windows) shows up fine. My colocated server (CentOS Linux) does not!

It still doesn't show up even with my firewall completely disabled. Very suspicious!

[hlstriker]

So after much packet sniffing and other testing I got it working. Although I'm forced to use "sv_master_legacy_mode 0" and it won't work when set to 1 (I have no idea why).

I had been using the command "setmaster add hl2master.steampowered.com" like many have suggested but found the packets being sent to that supposed master server were not being accepted. Yet, with sv_master_legacy_mode 1 the packets would get accepted. I found this was because when set to 1 the returned port would be 27011 or 27015, but when set to 0 the port would be 27010.

Example set to 1:
setmaster add hl2master.steampowered.com = 208.64.200.65:27015
setmaster add hl2master.steampowered.com = 208.64.200.39:27011
setmaster add hl2master.steampowered.com = 208.64.200.52:27011

Example set to 0:
setmaster add hl2master.steampowered.com = 208.64.200.65:27010
setmaster add hl2master.steampowered.com = 208.64.200.39:27010
setmaster add hl2master.steampowered.com = 208.64.200.52:27010

Now, with sv_master_legacy_mode 1 the packets were accepted but for some reason the server still didn't show up in the master list. I decided to set sv_master_legacy_mode back to 0 and test the IP:ports that were being returned when set to 1.

So:
sv_master_legacy_mode 0
setmaster add hl2master.steampowered.com:27011
setmaster add hl2master.steampowered.com:27015

Hooray! The server appeared in the master list!

BUT, as you can see both ports 27011 and 27015 are used. What if an IP that uses port 27015 was returned when issuing setmaster add hl2master.steampowered.com:27011 and an IP that uses port 27011 was returned when issuing setmaster add hl2master.steampowered.com:27015.

Although this might be rather rare to have both commands return an incorrect IP:port combination it could still happen. This also makes it so you might be sending heartbeats to a IP:port that won't accept your connection and limits the number of master servers you will be connected to.

To be safe it's best to open "...\Steam\config\MasterServer2.vdf" and under the hl2 tree you will see all the master server IPs.

Example:

"hl2"
{
"0"
{
"addr" "208.64.200.65:27015"
}
"1"
{
"addr" "208.64.200.39:27011"
}
"2"
{
"addr" "208.64.200.52:27011"
}
}

And now your final commands to make your server appear in the master list would look like this:

sv_master_legacy_mode 0
setmaster add 208.64.200.65:27015
setmaster add 208.64.200.39:27011
setmaster add 208.64.200.52:27011
heartbeat

Note that if your server stops appearing in the master list it means the IPs probably changed. If this happens just open MasterServer2.vdf again and enter the new IPs!

Also note that when you first start your server sv_master_legacy_mode 0 seems to be set after your setmaster add IP:port commands. Even if you issue that command first in your config file or add it to your startup line it won't matter. All you need to do is change the map or type "exec server.cfg" and it'll be fixed.

I hope this helps some people as it was really annoying me!

[Agent Buckshot Moose]

So, I installed SRCDS on Rackspace instead of GreenQloud (the previous host) and the legacy mode fix seems to work fine. Thus the problem is certainly with my configuration at GreenQloud.

Edit: I may have spoke too soon. It still randomly appears and disappears.

Edit #2: Appears in the master list after forcing the master server IPs as in hlstriker's post.