AzerothCore Debian Install

This will be a HowTo on how to get AzerothCore compiled and running on Debian in a VirtualBox Setting. This should work on a Non-VM install as well. Other Debian variants like Ubuntu and LinuxMint will and should work as well. If you are running anything else, just use your best judgment on command usage.

Installing Debian

Create a new virtual machine, I'm using the Debian 9.7.0 NetInst version using these settings as a baseline. You can tweak these for yourself but i'm going with a bare minimum just to get running. I'm going with 1GB RAM on a 20GB partition since we are not going to use a GUI, and why would you? :) After you get things setup, be sure to set the video ram to 12MB (the lowest) because we aren't using a GUI, it's not needed and we need all the ram we can get. Boot to the ISO, follow these steps to get a base system loaded:

Skip the Graphical Install and go for regular "Install", go thru the screens to your liking, set the name to whatever you like, you can leave domain blank. Set your Root password. Create your regular user, we are going to set a azerothcore user later on. Set your time zone. On "Partition Disks", select "Guided - Use entire disk".. Unless you know what you're doing. All files in one partition. If you are setting up a server for a production use, you'd probably want to separate partitions and assign disk space where you want it but for the purpose of this HowTo, we are going to keep things simple. Then, Finish partitioning and write changes to disk. Now it's going to install the base system. Remember, we are going for bare minimal into a CLI (Command Line Interface). Don't be scared, this is how we do it, we don't want to waste any cycles on GUI management. Lean and Mean is what we want.

On configure the package manager, choose "No" on scan another CD or DVD. Pick a close mirror and let it scan that mirror and update during "Configuring apt". Now, on to Select and install software section. Remember, we are going for lean so we only install what we are going to need. For now we are just going to install the system just so it will boot on its own so we can get to installing AzerothCore. On "Configuring popularity contest" choose what you want.

Uncheck "Debian desktop environment" and "print server" and check "SSH server". This way, you can SSH in from your other computer or whatever. And leave standard system utilities" checked as well. Choose to Install the GRUB boot loader to the Master boot record.. Yes. and which drive. On Installation Complete, choose Continue. It should reboot into debian. Go ahead and login, we are ready to prepare system for AzerothCore compile.

Preparation for compile

Go ahead and login. After you login with your user, type in "su" and enter your root password. Let's go ahead and run updates and upgrades so type in "apt update" and when it finishes, type in "apt upgrade". This is just to make sure the system is current. It should come back with 0 packages to update.

apt install build-essential git cmake clang default-libmysqlclient-dev libssl1.0-dev libbz2-dev libreadline-dev libncurses5-dev mysql-server libace-dev

Getting and compiling the source

First we need to clone the source:

cd ~
mkdir source
cd source
git clone https://github.com/azerothcore/azerothcore-wotlk.git azerothcore

Compiling the source

Now, the moment of truth.  :)

cd azerothcore
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../ -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/opt/azerothcore/ -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=/usr/bin/clang -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=/usr/bin/clang++ -DTOOLS=1 -DSCRIPTS=1
make -j4
make install

On the make -j4 command, substitute the number 4 for how many cores you have or want to use.

Finishing up
Start with number 4 on https://github.com/AzerothCore/azerothcore-wotlk/wiki/Installation#4-setting-the-configuration-files . I may finish the entire thing, but for now this will do