A guide on how to download and run SteamCMD on both Linux and Windows.

SteamCMD is a CLI tool that allows users to download applications from Steam. This is often used for downloading dedicated server files in games such as Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead 2, Garry's Mod, Rust, and many more!

Table Of Contents

• Downloading & Running SteamCMD
  • Windows
  • Linux
• Downloading Application Files
• Automation With Script Files
  • Windows
  • Linux
• Conclusion

Downloading & Running SteamCMD

To start, you need to download the SteamCMD tool. There are a few methods you can use to achieve this including downloading packages directly onto your system. However, for better control, we're going to manually download SteamCMD.

Windows

Instructions on downloading and extracting SteamCMD on Windows may be found here.

1. Download the steamcmd.zip file from here.
2. Create a folder where you can store and extract the contents from the steamcmd.zip file. In this guide, we'll be using E:\apps\steamcmd.
3. Use Window's ZIP tool to extract the contents of steamcmd.zip into the newly created folder. Alternatively, you may use a tool such as 7-Zip.

You should now see a steamcmd.exe executable file that you can run.

Linux

Instructions on downloading and extracting SteamCMD on Linux may be found here.

You will need to download and install a few system packages that are required to download, run, and extract SteamCMD along with run servers if you're downloading server files.

Debian/Ubuntu-Based (Apt)

sudo apt install -y lib32gcc-s1 lib32stdc++6 curl tar

NOTE - If you do not have sudo installed, you will need to login as root via the su - command and execute commands throughout this guide without using sudo at the beginning.

While it isn't necessarily required, it is also recommended you create a separate user to run SteamCMD and game servers you plan on running if any.

You may use the following commands on Debian/Ubuntu-based systems to create a new user.

# Create apps group.
sudo groupadd apps

# Create apps user with home directory set to /home/apps and using /bin/bash as the shell.
sudo useradd -m -d /home/apps -g apps -s /bin/bash apps

# Login as apps.
sudo su apps -

Next, you'll want to create a directory to store the contents from the steamcmd_linux.tar.gz file.

# Create a 'steamcmd/' directory inside the user's home directory.
mkdir ~/steamcmd

# Change directories to the created directory from above.
# Tip - You can also use 'cd $_' if you've just created the new directory.
cd ~/steamcmd

Now, you'll want to download the steamcmd_linux.tar.gz file and extract it. I recommend using the curl or wget commands to download the file and tar to extract it. In this guide, we'll be using a one-liner that utilizes curl and tar.

curl -sqL "https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/client/installer/steamcmd_linux.tar.gz" | tar zxvf -

If the command above was successful, you should see a new steamcmd.sh file when listing files in the new directory using a command such as ls -l.

You can now run the new steamcmd.sh program using the following command which'll also update the SteamCMD installation.

./steamcmd.sh

Downloading Application Files

Once you've launched SteamCMD, the first thing you'll need to do is set the directory where to install the application's files via the force_install_dir command.

For example, let's say we're downloading the Left 4 Dead 2 server files and want to install the server files into /home/apps/l4d2 on Linux or E:\apps\l4d2 on Windows.

On Linux, the command will look like below.

force_install_dir /home/apps/l4d2

On Windows, the command will look like below.

force_install_dir E:\apps\l4d2

Afterwards, you'll want to log into Steam using the login <username> command. When downloading dedicated server files for an application, most of the time you're allowed to sign in anonymously through SteamCMD. This means you don't have to input your Steam username or password before downloading the files! Instead, you may login anonymously using the below command.

login anonymous

If you're not downloading server files, you may need to specify your Steam username, password, and possibly 2FA code.

Next, you'll want to retrieve the app ID you'll like to install. If you're downloading server files, I recommend checking out this list.

Here is a list of IDs from commonly downloaded server files for your convenience.

• Counter-Strike 2 - 730
• Counter-Strike: Source - 232330
• Left 4 Dead 2 - 222860
• Garry's Mod - 4020
• Team Fortress 2 - 232250
• Rust - 258550

Now, you'll want to use the app_update <app ID> command to download or update the application files. Additionally, you may add validate to the end of the command if you want to verify that the application files aren't corrupt. Keep in mind, passing validate to the end of the command will make the command take longer to finish!

For example, to download the Left 4 Dead 2 server files without validating the installation may be done with the following command.

app_update 222860

Here's another example of downloading the Left 4 Dead 2 server files and validating the installation.

app_update 222860 validate

It will take some time to download the server files depending on your network and disk speeds.

Automation With Script Files

To simplify the process of creating or updating application files through SteamCMD, you can utilize script files. This allows you to execute a single script to download or update the application files automatically.

We will create a script with environmental variables that allows you to easily configure the locations of SteamCMD and your application files along with what app ID to download, etc.

Please follow the below steps.

Windows

We will create an update-app.bat Batch file inside of the folder where the application files are stored.

@echo off
set STEAM_CMD_LOC="E:\apps\steamcmd"
set STEAM_USER="anonymous"
set STEAM_PASS=""

set INSTALL_DIR="..\my-app"
set APP_ID="<APP ID>"

cd "%STEAM_CMD_LOC%"
start "" steamcmd.exe +force_install_dir "%INSTALL_DIR%" +login "%STEAM_USERNAME%" "%STEAM_PASSWORD%" +app_update %APP_ID% validate +quit

Linux

We will create an update-app.sh Bash script inside of the directory where the application files are stored.

#!/bin/bash
STEAM_CMD_LOC=../steamcmd/
STEAM_USER="anonymous"
STEAM_PASS=""

INSTALL_DIR=../my-app

APP_ID=<APP ID>

$STEAM_CMD_LOC/steamcmd.sh +force_install_dir $INSTALL_DIR +login "$STEAM_USER" "$STEAM_PASS" +app_update $APP_ID validate +quit

Conclusion

That's it! By now, you should be able to automatically create and update applications through SteamCMD using script files or by executing commands one-by-one.

If you have any questions or suggestions on how to improve this guide, please reply to the topic here!