Any one used Steam Cache? I need help

[jkirkcaldy]

I am always looking for things to do with my server. If it's drinking up all that electricity it's going to have to earn it's keep. And since I just moved to a new house where the internet is less than perfect I started looking up steam cache. 

 

Now I know the differences between a steam cache and just backing up the files onto the server and I don't want to do that. It would probably be easier in the short term but forgetting to make a copy or whatever just means that I am still going to have to download everything again anyway. 

 

So I followed this guide on arstechnica using the docker method. https://arstechnica.co.uk/gaming/2017/01/how-to-build-a-local-steam-cache-server/ it is running on an ubuntu server VM and the games are being downloaded to a windows 10/7 pc.

 

I have set the dns settings directly on my computer due to sharing the internet connection with a couple of other people and don't want to role out the cache to the entire network yet. but I am hitting a bit of a stumbling block.

 

When I download a game I can see the logs downloading it from the steam servers and I can see the files being downloaded to my server. Great.

 

But when I delete the game and try to reinstall i get a line of green text letting me know that it has grabbed the manifest from the local server but it then re-downloads the game from the steam servers again doubling the space it has taken up on my server. 

 

Any ideas on how I can get this working would be greatly appreciated. (ps this is the first time I have used docker so I may need a little help navigating through it if needs be.)

 

Thanks

[SCHISCHKA]

you cant just sync your steam folder?

The solution in the link looks messy. When I want to install a game to my laptop I just copy the game files over. no problems.

[jkirkcaldy]

I could but the solution in the link means that I don't have to factor in my own human error. I don't have a massive drive on my gaming rig so I tend to only download the games that I want to play. once they have finished downloading I usually play instantly, meaning I would basically forget to create a copy or backup. This also will cache updates meaning that even if I copied ARK for example, if I had to do a fresh install or reinstall the game there would still be a huge download to do to get all the updates. 

 

By setting it up as a cache I wouldn't need to do anything, just install and uninstall games as normal and everything is down in the background. It also means that once it's working properly I could add the rest of my house to the cache so their games are cached as well. And games that we all play are cached, meaning it only needs to be downloaded once from the internet and then the second computer will take it from the server on the LAN. 

 

Out internet tends to get crippled if there is a big download going so with games like Ark that regularly push out updates that are usually >1gb multiple computers needing to download the same file it would be good if it could all just come from the LAN rather than the internet. 

 

 

[System Error Message]

steam requires that only 1 account has the file for LAN transfers, so the server needs to run steam and have it boot and update regularly. proxy cache may not work.