wesnothd doesn't read custom config file

[stonehold]

Hi,

I'm working on deploying a dedicated server for the Battle for Wesnoth for my community to use, but have run into a problem. The wesnothd server binary is not loading the configuration file I point it to. The ownership and permissions are fine, so I wonder if it's something in the WML formatting and syntax, but I don't know the language well enough to check that. When I start the server I see this:

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root@thedagora:~# wesnothd-1.18 -c /opt/storage/wesnoth/wesnothd.cfg
20260622 05:06:35 info server: Server configuration from file: '/opt/storage/wesnoth/wesnothd.cfg' read.
20260622 05:06:35 info server: opened fifo at '/run/wesnothd/1.18/socket'. Server commands may be written to this file.

The output says it reads the file, but it doesn't load any of the variables I put in there. Here/s the config file contents:

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[game_config]
  [server]
      name = "CogCos"
      port = "8118"
      versions_accepted = "*"
      passwd = "********"
      replay_save_path = "/opt/storage/wesnoth/replay/"
      room_save_file = "/opt/storage/wesnoth/room.saves"
      ban_save_file = "/opt/storage/wesnoth/ban.gz"
      save_replays = "true"
      connections_allowed = "3"
      max_messages = "7"
      user_handler = "forum"
      motd = "Welcome to the Battle for Wesnoth Cognitive Cosmos dedicated game server! Please remember to password protect your rooms and store those passwords in a safe and secure loca>
  [/server]
  [user_handler]
      db_host = "localhost"
      db_name = "wesnoth"
      db_user = "wesnoth"
      db_password = "*******"
      db_extra_table = "ext_wesnoth"
      db_game_info_table = "game_info"
      db_game_player_info_table = "player_info"
      db_game_modification_info_table = "game_mod_info"
  [/user_handler]
[/game_config]

I'm running a Debian 12 server on Linode and installed the wesnoth server binaries using apt. Any tips or a nudge in the right direction would be much appreciated.

~Ken

[gnombat]

motd = "Welcome to the Battle for Wesnoth Cognitive Cosmos dedicated game server! Please remember to password protect your rooms and store those passwords in a safe and secure loca>

That part certainly doesn't look right.

To be honest, the entire config file looks strange - was this file generated using AI?

[stonehold]

That part certainly doesn't look right.

Caught that a couple hours back from a suggestion on IRC to use wmllint. Still won't read the file.

was this file generated using AI?

No. I never use AI for creation, at most I use it for voice typing.
Perhaps it looked off because the indents got mangled. Here's how the file actually looks:

[gnombat]

I would recommend just starting with a very minimal config file, like this:

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motd="Welcome to the Battle for Wesnoth Cognitive Cosmos dedicated game server!"

Nothing else - no [game_config] or [server] tags, just a simple one-line file. Then try starting wesnothd and connecting to it. If you see your custom MOTD in the game, then you know the config file is working and you can start adding other lines to it.

[Pentarctagon]

It looks like you started with https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/blob ... config.cfg as a base for some reason? Since those are specific to that file, not the wesnothd config file, so the reason it seems like it doesn't find anything is because it's looking for attributes at the the root of the file rather than within those subtags. I'd suggest starting with a minimal example as gnombat suggested as well as reading through the manpage for wesnothd.

[stonehold]

For those interested, I found the answer on the Wesnoth IRC channel. When setting up a custom server configuration file, you must not enclose the global keys listed in the man page in opening and closing tags. I posted a modified version of the now working configuration file to my site for others perusal. Here's the link:
https://www.thedagora.social/wesnoth/we ... onfig.html

~Ken

[Soliton]

Note that the attributes name and address do not exist.