Anyone tried setting up a server compiled to run locally on a Steam Deck for a true offline portable experience?

[Star-X555]

Mostly asking as the documentation is a bit lacking when it comes to how to get the software to be in a good state when it comes to running on a platform that's using an immutable rootfs, and apparently I'm practically the only person who's tried this on a LINUX handheld (some guy did do it with a ROG Ally, but given that Windows is almost incapable of being made to use an immutable root folder/drive/whatever, that doesn't help me much).

My current thoughts are, compile it in Docker using a debian image, get the folder copied off of the docker image into a user-controlled directory on my Steam Deck, download the Debian dependencies that are missing from the Steam Deck's filesystem, if any, as standalone files, set up a shell script to run the server while preloading any missing libraries from a lib folder placed alongside the binary, and in theory it should now work.

Only one big wrinkle though; I'm not sure if Steam Deck includes an SQL server, and given my near-complete lack of experience with such things, I'm unsure if it's possible to get said SQL server to run as a usermode library alongside the server like with preloading runtime libraries. I'd love to hear from anyone who's tried such a crazy idea or something similar, as TBH I'm kinda curious about playing FFXI as an offline solo game, and given how the unofficial Phantasy Star Online server "NewServ" worked so well for that purpose on Steam Deck too (sleep mode and online quests simultaneously, with no connection interruption on waking up!), I'd like for my experience to work without remaining tethered to my desktop and/or an internet connection in general.

Also yes, I did search for any info. Closest was maybe 1 or 2 reddit threads about doing this on a Windows desktop, but none about doing this on Linux, let alone the Steam Deck. And apparently nothing on here in issues OR discussions. We're kinda treading in unknown waters here.

[cocosolos]

It should be possible, since SteamOS is basically just Arch. You can unlock the rootfs using the instructions here under What if I want to do more than what’s available by flatpak? then follow the Arch installation instructions from the quick-start guide.

The only issue I see is this:

In addition, anything you install outside of flatpak (via pacman for instance) may be wiped with the next SteamOS update.

I found this Reddit post that suggests an alternate way of installing MariaDB. If possible, installing all of the requirements using this method would probably be the way to go to avoid having to reinstall things.

If you have any success, be sure to document your steps here so that it can be added to the quick-start guide.

[zach2good]

Mostly asking as the documentation is a bit lacking when it comes to how to get the software to be in a good state when it comes to running on a platform that's using an immutable rootfs

As the quick-start guide mentions (for our developer sanity) we only fully support Windows (10/11) and Ubuntu (recent LTS). If the software works on anything else: neat!

Like @cocosolos says; if you figure out good steps for how to get the server running on the steamdeck (with or without modification, I don't know how it works or if you have to root it, etc.) please send them in so we can add that info to the "experimental platforms" area.

MariaDB

Depending on how far you're willing to modify the base software, you might be able to skirt around the need for a MySQL/MariaDB service/remote machine to connect to by swapping it out for a SQLite db connector and accompanying file in userspace, but that's well outside of what we're willing to support (and it would be a hefty amount of core work, since we're part-way through transitioning between two different db connector systems).

[Star-X555]

So having done some testing, I figured out that using distrobox is the trick. Unfortunately I'm getting stuck on compiling the server code, with an error complaining about missing libpthread.so.0.

So far, my alterations to the ubuntu guide is this:

1. Before anything else, run distrobox create --image quay.io/toolbx/ubuntu-toolbox:22.04 --name landsandboat-box && distrobox enter landsandboat-box
2. sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade within the distrobox instance
3. Resume from beginning of ubuntu guide, up to the point where you need to run the mysql securing command, at which point you should run sudo /etc/init.d/mariadb start before resuming
   3.5. Before using pip3, I'd HIGHLY recommend running python -m venv venv && source ./venv/bin/activate to avoid any possible issues with python dependency hell
4. Aaaand that's where I get stuck; compiling results in it having issues with a lack of libpthread.so.0 and libpthread_nonshared.a.

I admit I haven't tried the non-toolbox Ubuntu image, so that might work better. All I know is that libpthread is proving to be a gigantic pain in the neck within distrobox.

Any ideas on how to get past that?