Factorio

Factorio is a video game created by Wube Software. Factorio has a multiplayer mode that requires a dedicated server, which is available on Nixpkgs and can be installed on NixOS.

Installation

Note: This package is unfree and requires extra steps to install.

To install the Factorio server, add the following to your NixOS configuration:

configuration.nix

{
  environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.factorio-headless ];
  nixpkgs.config.allowUnfreePredicate = pkg: builtins.elem (lib.getName pkg) [
    "factorio-headless"
  ];
}

Tip

In order to affect your NixOS system by your nix-language-specific changes you must first evaluate it:

$ nixos-rebuild switch --use-remote-sudo

It is important to only install factorio-headless instead of factorio because the headless version is a redistributable download that does not require login credentials.

Configuration

Here is a minimum viable configuration for the Factorio server:

configuration.nix

{
  services.factorio = {
    enable = true;
    openFirewall = true;
  };
}

This will run a unprotected server that binds to the 0.0.0.0 local IP address and uses the default UDP port of 34197, with an auto-generated save file. Factorio servers support IPv6 by setting bind = "[::]";. All default settings can be seen here: services.factorio.*

Mods

The NixOS module for Factorio supports third-party modifications, or mods, which are just compressed archives with extra game content. While technically you can create a full derivation for mods, in practice this can get complicated, especially since authentication is required to download mods from the official mod site.

Instead, you can download the mods you need imperatively from https://mods.factorio.com/, place them in a folder such as /etc/nixos/factorio-mods, and put this code in your NixOS configuration:

configuration.nix

{
  services.factorio = {
    mods =
      let
        modDir = ./factorio-mods;
        modList = lib.pipe modDir [
          builtins.readDir
          (lib.filterAttrs (k: v: v == "regular"))
          (lib.mapAttrsToList (k: v: k))
          (builtins.filter (lib.hasSuffix ".zip"))
        ];
        validPath = modFileName:
          builtins.path {
            path = modDir + "/${modFileName}";
            name = lib.strings.sanitizeDerivationName modFileName;
          };
        modToDrv = modFileName:
          pkgs.runCommand "copy-factorio-mods" {} ''
            mkdir $out
            ln -s '${validPath modFileName}' $out/'${modFileName}'
          ''
          // { deps = []; };
      in
        builtins.map modToDrv modList;
  };
}

This code was developed by nicball, and is licensed under the MIT License.

See also

• The Factorio wiki page on Multiplayer