How to setup a FastDL mirror for a Garry's Mod Game Server

In this tutorial, I will cover how to properly setup a working FastDL mirror for your game server. It is important that you read everything here, as FastDL's are very fragile

Requirements

• Garry's Mod Server
• Web Hosting or Web Server with FTP Access

As I stated earlier, FastDL's are very, VERY fragile. One step wrong and you will notice that it won't work. Note: You can still use Workshop Content on your server while having a FastDL, with

+host_workshop_collection_id

and all.

Tools you require

• GMAD Extractor GUI - This tool allows us to extract the .gma file, returning a legacy addon
• bzip2 - This is what you will use to compress the files. I have modified the batch script to support recursive compression.
• Fox-Warrior's Resource Generator -

  This tool generates

  resource.AddFile()

  lines for our files.

To the tutorial! The player will only look for certain file-types in certain folders on the FastDL mirror, which are:

• maps
  • .bsp
• materials
  • .vmt
  • .vtf
• models
  • .dx80.vtx
  • .dx90.vtx
  • .mdl
  • .phy
  • .sw.vtx
  • .vvd
• sound
  • .mp3
  • .wav
• particles
  • .pcf
• resource
  • .ttf - (Font)

Note that this is how your FastDL folder structure should look like. No addons folder, no lua folder, no other folder at all! This is where most people makes a mistake, by having their files in an addons folder like they do on their server. Read this block below and you'll understand why:

1. Download & Extract

Download the addon you want from Workshop, both to your server and to your computer. If the addon is purely lua, close this tutorial as lua is distributed directly to the client through the server. After you've done that, open up GMAD Extractor GUI that you downloaded earlier and click on Open. If you can't see your addon in the list there, click Browse and head to your Garry's Mod addons folder and select the addon from there. Click the addon you want, and then press the Select button. After that click the Extract all button and choose where you want your content to be extracted to, let's say your desktop. Now you should have a legacy addon folder on your desktop, go ahead and open it up. You should see a set of folders that I listed further up in this tutorial and an addons.txt file.

2. Generate lua - Skip this part if your addon is a map

Next up is using Fox-Warrior's Resource Generator. Open it up, click on File>Select a directory and go to your desktop and select the legacy addon folder. You should see now that it generates a list of files. If it doesn't, you've done something wrong. After that, click on File>Generate lua file>File>AddFile and a box will come up with where you want to save your lua file, so just save it on the desktop. The file should have lines like this:

if (SERVER) then
	resource.AddFile("materials/models/material.vmt")
	resource.AddFile("models/player/model.mdl")
	resource.AddFile("sound/sound.mp3")
end

Upload this file to your lua/autorun directory on your server.

3. Compress

Now we want to compress the files using bzip. Hold down CTRL and select any of the folders that you see in the list above; maps, materials, models, sound, particles or resource. This will select all those folders. Hit CTRL+X and open up the compress folder inside the bzip folder. In there, hit CTRL+V and it will paste the folders in there. Now go up on directory and launch the bzip.bat, not the bzip2.exe as it does nothing without the arguments supplied by the batch file. You will see a CMD window popup telling you that it compresses the files. Once it's done, press any key on your keyboard and the window will disappear.

4. Upload

Connect to your FastDL via FTP or whatever you use. Upload the folders in the compress folder to your FastDL. Your FastDL should have the folders in the list I've been speaking so much about. So it should ONLY contain these directories:

• maps
• materials
• models
• sound
• particles
• resource

5. Editing server.cfg

Next up is editing your server.cfg file. Add these lines to it (change the domain to whatever yours is and the trailing fastdl to whichever folder you uploaded everything to):

sv_downloadurl "http://domain.com/fastdl"
sv_allowdownload 0 // This disables ServerDL
sv_allowupload 0 // This is a security measure

6. Reload your cfg or restart your server

Reload your cfg with

exec server.cfg

in server console or restart your server. Done!

This is how my FastDL ended up looking like:

And in my case, this is how my server.cfg looks like:

sv_downloadurl "http://domain.com/fastdl/ttt1"

Here is a bit of information you really should read!

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