linux clients unable to connect

[ROGER]

Dear community -

This is your beloved adversary ROGER! I have not played from some months and would like to play again!

Both i386 and amd64 clients will not connect successfully to the VTCF server and a few other miasma - I can play on omni and few others I tried

my i386 client spews a bunch of 'Received invalid actor class' like -
Received invalid actor class 'HitLocation'
Received invalid actor class 'M'
Received invalid actor class 'Hash'
Received invalid actor class 'MM'
Received invalid actor class 'NewNet_FlakAltFire'
.....
and then segfaults or will hang connecting and I have to kill -9 it

the amd64 client gets
connection failed - Downloading 'SkaarjPack_rc' not allowed

On 1 or 2 of the other miasma servers it will download SkaarjPack_rc, then try again to download, but download very slow. And it still will not work on the VCTF server instance.

deleting Cache did not work

The System/skaarjpack.frt|det|est - I am pretty sure they are the same as the 3369 patch - same bytes and mtime

Want more info?  Any pointers? Do i have to get unlazy and figure it out?

Cheers,
ROGER

[Piglet]

Hi Roger,

It's not that linux clients can't connect, it's that modified clients cannot connect.

If you get the symptoms you describe it means that you are not using retail copies of .u files in your setup. i.e. they have been changed in some way and are not the ones published by Epic. You're trying to run modified versions of the files.

To fix this, and at your own risk, you could try the following:

1. Backup your ut2004 install. If anything goes wrong you need to be able to revert to this
2. Replace the .u files in your install's system directory with retail v3369 versions. I have uploaded these here: https://miasma.rocks/downloads/3369_u_files.zip

Once your copy of the game is running with original v3369 .u files you should be able to connect with no issues.

[ROGER]

That worked, thanks Piglet!

Ill do some checksums from my backup disk later - Pretty sure I have not touched those folders in years. Kinda spooky.

Cheers!

[Piglet]

I would be interested to see any changed .u files you have, to do a diff on the content. There may be changes that were intended to fix bugs - and I'm always interested in fiixing bugs...particularly if I can do it in a way that helps more people by doing it server-side serveractor or in a mutator that can be pushed to all clents that connect to the server.

[ROGER]

Took a little while - turned out I dont have a recent backup but had my older nvme laying around.

had chatgpt make a little compare script - getting so lazy! Have no recollection of changing anything in 2024.

$ cat /tmp/UTDIFF.txt
Comparing:
  BACKUP: /mnt/romount/usr/local/games/ut2004-2/System
  LIVE:   /usr/local/games/ut2004-2/System
Using: sha256sum

==== Modified (content differs) ====
FILE                                            A_SIZE ->       B_SIZE              A_MTIME ->             B_MTIME  A_HASH16 -> B_HASH16
SkaarjPack_rc.u                                7867816 ->      7867806  2024-05-11 12:09:29 -> 2025-07-22 11:12:40  5dce9ed24ee6326c -> 9b04672543b638d9
StreamLineFX.u                                   14704 ->        14478  2024-05-11 12:09:29 -> 2025-07-22 11:12:40  9a73d0953cb74afc -> 8232f968d2ff5ef9
XEffects.u                                     4569397 ->      4569396  2024-05-11 12:09:30 -> 2025-07-22 11:12:42  d8f56dd939f19f61 -> c2c9c0678d1459bb
XGame_rc.u                                     2478952 ->      2478934  2024-05-11 12:09:31 -> 2025-07-22 11:12:42  82beb4c180e5e9ce -> b4f0efa91dd9f232
XPickups_rc.u                                   107586 ->       107568  2024-05-11 12:09:31 -> 2025-07-22 11:12:44  520eb45fdaf22828 -> e47621c2c9af0aa9
XWeapons_rc.u                                   539391 ->       539381  2024-05-11 12:09:31 -> 2025-07-22 11:12:44  0b452b9067a7bb1b -> f4838e03fe01cf38

==== Only in LIVE (/usr/local/games/ut2004-2/System) ====
3369_u_files.zip
AssaultBP.u
Gameplay.u
libopenal.so.1
NewVehicles.u
OggPlayer.u
SampleSkin.u
xVoting.u

==== Summary ====
Backup files listed:   1038
Live files listed:     1046
Modified (different):  6
Only in backup:        0
Only in live:          8
Identical:             1040



All the other files have mtime in 2005

I do not know any of the tools to work with u files - my feeling is the ut2004 modding stuff is Windows-centric.

Perhaps I am pwned by a nation state?

[Piglet]

Thanks. I think part of the problem is that there were multiple versions of 3369. I'd been using the set from 3369.2 which is the latest client version, but there was a later version 3369.3 put out for dedicated servers.

I've updated: http://miasma.rocks/downloads/3369_u_files.zip

Anyway, I think that's sorted out now