Shipping: opening night checklist

A restaurant does not open for guests without prepped stations, a backup line, and a rollback plan if a dish fails. Same here: convars pinned, ACE locked, the database backed up, monitoring on, and a known-good build to revert to. You will build one small resource named qu_release that prints a boot header on start, then rehearse a backup and a one-command rollback before you ever touch production.

You will learn: The pre-flight, the hot-standby, the rollback path.
Time: ~30 min
Prereqs: P8 anti-cheat patterns, P9 persistence, and secret handling from convars/server.cfg.
Pass condition: Staging restore drill, rollback command, and boot header proof are captured before production launch.
Project: release-v1

BEFORE YOU START

Build it

Make the release resource

One folder holds your boot-header proof.

txAdmin ships bundled inside FXServer, so you already have an admin panel at http://localhost:40120 the first time you boot. You do not install it separately. Inside your server's resources folder, create one folder for this lesson:

code

resources/qu_release/
  fxmanifest.lua
  server.lua
  VERSION

Put your release tag in VERSION (no quotes, no extension content beyond the tag):

code

v1.0.0

Write fxmanifest.lua

FXServer knows which file to load.

Open fxmanifest.lua and paste this. Note there is no lua54 'yes' line. Lua 5.4 is the only runtime now, so that line is deprecated and ignored. Leave it out.

code

fx_version 'cerulean'
game 'gta5'

server_script 'server.lua'

files {
    'VERSION'
}

Print a boot header

Every start logs the release tag in the first lines.

During an incident you should never have to ask "what version is running?". Open server.lua and paste this. It reads VERSION from the resource and prints a short header when the resource starts.

code

AddEventHandler('onResourceStart', function(resource)
    if resource ~= GetCurrentResourceName() then return end

    local version = LoadResourceFile(GetCurrentResourceName(), 'VERSION') or 'dev'
    version = version:gsub('%s+', '')

    print('[qu_release] release  : ' .. version)
    print('[qu_release] artifact : ' .. GetConvar('sv_enforceGameBuild', 'unset'))
    print('[qu_release] boot ok')
end)

Pin the build and lock permissions

Clients cannot drift; admins cannot kill the server by accident.

Open server.cfg. Pin the game build so a Rockstar update cannot crash every player, then load and lock the resource. Use a current build number from the live artifacts list (linked at the bottom) and never pin a stale build you copied from an old guide.

Keep reading the full lesson

Still ahead in this lesson

If something went wrong
What you can do now
Try it yourself

Shipping: opening night checklist

Build it

Make the release resource

Write fxmanifest.lua

Print a boot header

Pin the build and lock permissions

Keep reading the full lesson

Restart on staging and read the header

Back up the database before you deploy

Rehearse the rollback path