rustcon

rustcon is a middleware application for Rust servers. It aims to provide two core components to assist in generating graphs and providing an informational middleware layer for other applications.

Table of contents

• Stats collection with InfluxDB
• Redis based middleware
• Quickstart

Stats collection with InfluxDB

rustcon supports collecting stats into an InfluxDB v1.8+ database. Stat collection is split into three types:

• internal: Internal stats are run at a predefined interval, and do not send any RCON commands or receive any RCON data.
• invoked: Invoked stats are run at a predefined interval, and a RCON command is supplied to run, returning the input.
• monitored: Monitored stats listen for strings to match a predefined regular expression, and then run the stat based on those matches.

Scripting language

All stat logic is defined by creating a Tengo script. The tengo script is run, passing in inputs depending on the type of stat, and then defines a special _MEASUREMENTS array containing InfluxDB line protocol data to insert. More details about how to write scripts are documented in the example.tengo script. Tengo scripts can be updated without restarting the application, new changes will be detected and reloaded.

Example script:

text := import("text")

// Split out the "30 FPS" string to get the value.
parts := text.fields(_INPUT)

_BUCKET := "sixty_days"
_MEASUREMENTS := [format("serverfps,servertag=%s fps=%s", _TAG, parts[0])]

Configuration for the above script:

"invoked": [
    {
        "command": "server.fps",
        "script": "scripts/fps.tengo",
        "interval": 1
    }
]

This will run server.fps every second, parse the resulting data and insert it into the retention policy and measurement sixty_days.serverfps

Note: Scripts are not required to define a _MEASUREMENTS array, and can be configured to simply cache data, run commands, write files, etc. Their primary focus is parsing data into usable statistics, but they can be created for a wider variety of tasks.

Retention policies/buckets

Defining the InfluxDB retention policy/bucket is left up to each individual script. If you define a variable named _BUCKET containing the retention policy you want the data written to. If no _BUCKET is defined, autogen is used.

Redis based middleware

The other function of rustcon is to provide a messaging queue system and data cache middleware. You can define RCON commands to run at specific intervals, and have their data stored in a Redis key. You can also define multiple queues of raw RCON data to be consumed by other applications.

For example, you can define a queue named middleware:livebot and create a discord bot to begin reading that RCON data to announce play joins/leaves, chat data, etc. You could then create a queue named middleware:elklogger to log all RCON data into an ELK stack.

All redis keys defined in the configuration will substitude the special variable {tag} with the tag supplied by the -tag command line argument.

Redis based RCON callback requests

If you enable the redis middleware, you can also use rustcon to send callback requests to RCON through redis.

By pushing a JSON structure to the defined callback_queue_key list, rustcon will run that command and set the results in a key defined by the ID passed in the JSON structure. Example:

LPUSH [callback_queue_key] {"id": 5, "command": "playerlist"}

The contents of the RCON command playerlist will be set into the key [callback_queue_key]:results:5

Quickstart

1. Edit the configuration file with your InfluxDB and Redis credentials. If you have only one or the other, and don't desire that modules functionality, you can disable it with the enable_influx_stats and enable_redis_queue configuration options. Keep in mind at least one of these must be true for rustcon to work.
2. Create an text file containing your servers RCON password on a single line. Remember this location.
3. Run rustcon with the appropriate hostname and port parameters as well as the path to your RCON password file, for example:

Linux:

$ ./rustcon -hostname rustserver-ip.com -port 28016 -passfile /path/to/your/rcon/passwordfile.txt

Windows:

C:\rustcon> rustcon.exe -hostname rustserver-ip.com -port 28016 -passfile /path/to/your/rcon/passwordfile.txt

4. Load up your favorite graphing software and enjoy your stats!