Gaming

I was trying to get Wreckfest multiplayer working. Unlike many modern games, the studio/publisher of this game does not run multiplayer servers. Instead, you need to do this the old-fashioned-way. I haven't done this since ...90s(?) and my port forwarding setup skills were rubbish. I remembered having pretty solid skills for managing stuff like this, but not needing that for past 20 years does its damage.

Instead of doing a quick look at the manuals and information what others did and hacking a single-time setup, I chose to create a generic tool to generate the required commands to be run as a root. Running the tool doesn't require any elevated privileges, but running the result will. For example, generating Wreckfest rules:

./portforward-yaml-to-iptables.py Wreckfest.yaml 192.168.0.5 eth1

will result:

iptables -t nat -F wreckfest > /dev/null || iptables -t nat -N wreckfest
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth1 -j wreckfest
iptables -t nat -A wreckfest -p tcp -m multiport --dports 27015:27030 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.0.5
iptables -t nat -A wreckfest -p tcp -m multiport --dports 27036:27037 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.0.5
iptables -t nat -A wreckfest -p udp -m udp --dport 4380 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.0.5
iptables -t nat -A wreckfest -p udp -m multiport --dports 27000:27031 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.0.5
iptables -t nat -A wreckfest -p udp -m udp --dport 27036 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.0.5
iptables -t nat -A wreckfest -p udp -m udp --dport 33540 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.0.5

That's plenty, but will do the trick. Also my design choice is to create a per-game chain of the rules, so cleaning up is easy. Just run iptables -F wreckfest and be gone with the forwarding.

GitHub project is at https://github.com/HQJaTu/iptables-portforwarding-rule-generator, go see it!

Update 15.9.2019:
I got comments from people: "Why do you need this? UPnP works fine. No hassle."

Well... It would take a million years for somebody to convince me to enable UPnP in my router. The entire concept has been designed from ground up to be insecure. The obvious goal was to create something that will create required port-forwardings into your router quickly and easily without asking you anything.

There is a lengthy discussion about UPnP security in multiple places of the Internet. My favorite one is at Is UPnP still insecure?. It will cover all the aspects of the issue.

The ultimate conclusion still remains: I do not want a random device/software to be able open access anything in my LAN from public Internet without me knowing about it. When such opening is required, I will open it for the duration needed and the appropriately close the access. UPnP doesn't tick any of the requirement boxes for me. That's why no. It won't be allowed in my systems.

I love playing video games whenever I have the time to sink into such a non-productive past time. The primary function is to have some fun, but also to clear the head from anything work related.

This time I wanted to get a new gaming mouse. My G5 easily had at least 13 years of service and still going strong. But it's the same thing with living room couch or a car, the old one is still ok, but eventually you simply just want a new one. That's what  happened to me. I simply wanted a new one (did somebody say "neophile"), so I got two boxes of new toys:

The top box contain a brand new mouse and an USB data/charging-cable for it. This is what the nose of a wireless G903 looks like:

As you can see, there is a micro-USB female connector. In the box, there is also a Logitech-specific cable, which is mechanically sound to convert this wireless mouse into a wired one. For people who want options, doing that is a perfectly good choice. You don't have to use the weird-looking Logitech USB-cable if you don't want to, but it will stick to your mouse a lot better than your average micro-USB cable.

Also on the options-for-a-demanding-rodent-owner, in the box there are lots of options for buttons:

Also, notice the USB-dongle, if you want to stick with wireless. I didn't want to use the dongle, so I went a bit further:

Yeah. I got me a Logitech mouse mat. This one isn't a regular one. Or... to be exact, in the Powerplay box, there are actually two mats. One regular, very slippery one for gaming and a charging mat, which goes under the slippery one:

All you have to do is pry the charging button off from the bottom of the G903. Btw. there are no screws or anything, just pretty strong magnets. The dud-of-a-button needs to be exchanged into one from the Powerplay box and your're rocking! This will convert your wireless mouse back into kinda-wired one. In reality the mouse is still wireless, but all communications and charging will happen simply buy using the mouse. No dongle needed. Notice how the Powerplay mat has exactly the same micro-USB -connector than the mouse has.

Finally, the pair will look something like this:

Also remember to install the Logitech Gaming Software to be able to configure your mouse and get all the stats out of it:

This setup is easily the best mouse I've ever had (so far). G903 is truly wireless, but when paired with the Powerpay, it works exactly as well as it would be wired. The only negative thing about Powerplay I have is its ability to mess up other wireless mouse traffic. The top mat is a high quality one, so I've been using that. The only thing I need to do is to remove the charging part to clear the signal jams.