Console Servers

crawl.dcss.io aka CDI

• Located in New York, USA.
• Console play via SSH (port 22): username “crawl” – required SSH-key (PuTTY key Unix key).

crawl.develz.org aka CDO

• Located in Nuremberg, Germany.
• Console play via SSH (port 22): username “crawl” – SSH-key required (PuTTY key Unix key).

crawl.akrasiac.org aka CAO

• Located in Arizona, USA.
• Console play via SSH (port 22): username “joshua” – password “joshua” or SSH-key (PuTTY key Unix key).

underhound.eu aka CUE

• Located in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Europe.
• Console play via SSH (port 23): username “terminal” – password “terminal” or SSH-key (PuTTY key Unix key).

cbro.beRotato.org aka CBRO

• Located in Ohio, USA.
• Console play via SSH (port 22): username “crawler” – SSH-key required (PuTTY key Unix key).
• Morgues, rc files, and so on are available online.
• ZureaL can be reached in Libera IRC via ‘!tell ZureaL’ in #crawl, or email: zureal@gmail.com

crawl.nemelex.cards aka CNC

• Located in Gyeonggi, South Korea.
• Console play via SSH (port 1326): username “nemelex” – password “xobeh” or SSH-key (PuTTY key Unix key).

crawl.xtahua.com aka CXC

• Located in Paris, France.
• Console play via SSH (port 22): username “crawl” – SSH-key required (PuTTY key Unix key).

Connecting to console servers

To play in non-graphical mode on one of these servers you need a program to do SSH. The programs are available in many different forms and commonly used to log into a remote server and receive a shell. Using SSH is the preferred method because it’s usually faster and, especially if your delay to a server is high, its compression feature is worth it.

The next paragraphs explain in more detail how to play non-graphical mode online via SSH.

On Windows-based operating systems

We suggest to download the open-source program called PuTTY or its feature-enhanced sister PuTTYtray, both capable of doing SSH connections.

Once Putty starts up you will see a configuration dialog. Simply put in the host name of the server you desire to play on and choose the SSH connection type.

If using an SSH key, you must go to Connection > SSH > Auth and set the private key file:

Click Open at the bottom to start the connection. If not using a key, you’ll be prompted for a username and password.

In the Session configuration, you can enter a session name in the box under Saved Sessions and click Save to store your session information for future connections. The next time you start PuTTY, selection your session and click the Load button to load your session data before clicking Open.

Other recommended settings

Here are some other settings we recommend changing from the default. The first is important to properly enable extended console colors:

• Data > Terminal-type string > set value to xterm-256color
  

  Set Terminal-type string to xterm-256color

If you intend to play with the numeric keypad there are 2 important settings you should enable in Putty to have proper controlling:

• Terminal > Keyboard> Initial state of numeric keypad >
  

  Setting Numeric Keypad to Nethack

• Terminal > Features> Advanced terminal features >
  

  Disable Application Keypad Mode

You may want to change the effect of the mouse buttons to prevent accidentally pasting your clipboard into the game:

• Window > Selection> Action of mouse buttons >
  

  Windows-style Mouse Buttons

Otherwise, the default configuration of Putty is quite OK. You may want to choose a different font like “Lucida Console”, “Consolas”, “Courier New” or “Dejavu Mono” by going to Window > Appearence  and clicking the Change button under Font settings.

On Unix-based operating systems

The SSH client was probably installed automatically for you. Nevertheless PuTTY may also be available for your distribution. Connecting is as easy as typing ssh -C -l <username> <server name>. The following examples should answer any questions:

To connect to CAO the following 2 ways are possible.
SSH without key will prompt you for the password “joshua”:

ssh -C -l joshua crawl.akrasiac.org

SSH with SSH-key authentication will log you on without a password prompt:

wget http://crawl.akrasiac.org/cao_key
chmod 400 cao_key
ssh -C -i cao_key -l joshua crawl.akrasiac.org

You must authenticate via SSH-key if you intend to play via SSH on CDO:

wget http://crawl.akrasiac.org/cao_key
chmod 400 cao_key
ssh -C -i cao_key -l crawl crawl.develz.org

Alternatively, when using SSH you can give the parameters via configuration file and then just run ssh <alias> instead. Here is an example to save as ~/.ssh/config. Make sure the path to the SSH-key is correctly specified:

mkdir -p ~/.ssh
wget http://angband.pl/crawl/config -P ~/.ssh
wget http://crawl.akrasiac.org/cao_key -P ~/.ssh
chmod 400 ~/.ssh/cao_key
ssh cao
ssh cdo