In this tutorial, we’ll learn how to setup an ARK Survival server on CentOS 7.

Prerequisites

ARK requires a large amount of memory. I recommend using a VM with at least 8GB of RAM.

Make sure the system is fully updated.

yum update -y

Create a new user for the server. Make sure to use a strong password.

adduser ark
passwd ark

Open the necessary firewall ports.

firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=7777/udp --permanent
firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=27015/udp --permanent
firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=32330/tcp --permanent
firewall-cmd --reload

Install the libraries needed to run SteamCMD.

yum install glibc.i686 libstdc++.i686 ncurses-libs.i686 -y

ARK requires certain system changes to run smoothly.

echo "fs.file-max=100000" >> /etc/sysctl.conf
sysctl -p /etc/sysctl.conf

Add the following lines to /etc/security/limits.conf.

* soft nofile 1000000
* hard nofile 1000000 

Switch to the user that we have just created.

su ark
cd ~

Download SteamCMD.

wget https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/client/installer/steamcmd_linux.tar.gz
tar xf steamcmd_linux.tar.gz

Run SteamCMD and install the server files.

./steamcmd.sh +login anonymous +force_install_dir ./ark +app_update 376030 validate +quit

When the install finishes, you will see the message: Success! App '376030' fully installed..

Updating your server

We’re going to make a script to update your server. Create the file update_ark.txt.

nano /home/ark/update_ark.txt

Populate it with the following data.

login anonymous
force_install_dir ./ark
app_update 376030
quit

When you need to update your server, simply run the following command:

cd ~
./steamcmd.sh +runscript update_ark.txt

Running your server

It’s recommended to create a start script for ARK as its parameters can cause issues with the shell. Create a startup shell script.

cd /home/ark/ark/
nano ark-server.sh

Populate the file with the following data and customize it to your needs.

#!/bin/bash

servername="ServerName"
port="7777"
queryport="27015"
rconport="32330"
rconpassword="YourAdminPassword"
maxplayers="50"

screen -dmS ark ShooterGame/Binaries/Linux/ShooterGameServer TheIsland?listen?Multihome=0.0.0.0?SessionName=$?MaxPlayers=$?QueryPort=$?RCONPort=$?Port=$?ServerAdminPassword=$ -server -log 

To start the server, execute the following command:

sh ark-server.sh

The server will run in the background. Note that it may take a minute or so for the server to start.

To shut down the server, run the following command:

screen -S ark -X quit

Enjoy your new ArkSE server!