Sunshine in the Cloud !
Sunshine is a self-hosted game stream host for Moonlight. Offering low latency, cloud gaming server capabilities
- Nix
- Access to an AWS account with read/write permissions on EC2 & Route53
That's all 😎 Nix will provide every tools and binaries: AWS CLI, NodeJS, Pulumi, etc.
Every commands should be run under Nix shell, start it with:
nix developFollow the guide 🧙
task quickstartYou'll be able to choose interactively your instance config and follow setup.
Cloudy Sunshine deploys a Pulumi stack with a Cloud server and use NixOS to configure Sunshine on deployed Cloud server. Nix shell provides required binaries to run deployment tasks (Node, Pulumi, etc.), you don't have to install anything appart Nix as listed above.
Create Pulumi stack config file from template. Example below use a stack named sunshine
cp infra/Pulumi.template.yaml cp infra/Pulumi.sunshine.yamlUpdate Pulumi.sunshine.yaml as needed and deploy infra. See comments in template for details and usage.
Once done, deploy infrastructure with:
task infraWait for instance to start (you can use task wait-ssh). Once started and ready, run NixOS configuration. First run might take a while as lots of things will be downloaded and installed. Subsequent runs (for update/upgrade) will run much faster.
task nix-configOnce NixOS is configured, reboot
task rebootSunshine server should now start with Sunshine service.
Access Sunshine via broswer on port 47990 using either task command, IP address or defined FQDN to setup password. Remote access is disabled by default, you'll need to open an SSH tunnel.
# Open SSH tunnel
task ssh-tunnel
# Open Sunshine on default browser
task sunshine-browser
# Show stack outputs and use IP address or FQDN directly in your browser
task output
# {
# ...
# "fqdn": "sunshine.devops.crafteo.io", # <== use IP or FQDN
# "ipAddress": "3.79.72.13"
# }Congrats, your Cloudy Sunshine is ready ! 🥳
Run Moonlight and connect to your instance. Usage is standard from now on: you'll need to validate PIN via Moonlight and maybe tweak Sunshine configs.
moonlightImportant: remember to task stop your instance to avoid unnecessary costs 💸 Even stopped, you may still be billed for disk usage and EIP usage.
Start instance
task startRun Moonlight and connect to your instance
moonlightOnce finished, remember to stop your instance to avoid unnecessary costs 💸
task stopYou can leverage Nix modules to customize Sunshine installation by creating a Nix module at provision/modules/custom-config.nix.
Example: install Steam and change default keyboard layout
{ lib, pkgs, config, ... }: {
# Enable Steam
programs.steam.enable = true;
# French layout
services.xserver = {
layout = "fr";
xkbVariant = "azerty";
};
console.keyMap = "fr";
time.timeZone = "Europe/Paris";
}See provision/modules/custom-config.example.nix for more examples.
Apply your custom configs with:
task nix-config Depends on your usage and how long your instance will run. You are responsible for your usage, make sure to check services costs and have proper usage (eg. stop instance when not in use) to avoid unnecessary costs !
Billable resources on AWS and related pricing page:
- EC2 instance - The Sunshine server with GPU, free when stopped.
- Volume (disk) - Disk storage for instance, billed even when EC2 instance is stopped.
- EIP address - free while in use, will cost 0.005$ / h starting 02/2024
- Route53 record - mostly free, but you must bring your own Hosted Zone
Optimizing usage and cost:
- Always stop EC2 instance after usage (
task stop) to avoid unnecessary costs - Only provision what you use. Eg. if your games are taking ~60 Go of disk, no need for a 500 Go disk.
- Avoid using a static IP (~3.72$ / month), but Sunshine IP will change every start/stop cycle (not on reboot)-
- When not using your instance for a long time, maybe it's worth destroying it (
task destroy) and re-install it later - though you'll lose any content, make sure to make a backup or use tools that will sync your saves (eg. Steam Cloud sync)
Example setups and pricing estimation*:
| g5.xlarge instance 100 Go GP3 disk 15h / month | g5.xlarge instance 100 Go GP3 disk 20h / month | g5.2xlarge instance 100 Go GP3 disk 20h / month | g5.2xlarge instance 100 Go GP3 disk 30h / month | g5.2xlarge instance 100 Go GP3 disk 30h / month | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EC2 instance | $18.87 | $25.16 | $30.31 | $45.47 | $45.47 |
| Route53 record | $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| EC2 volume (disk) | $9.52 | $9.52 | $9.52 | $9.52 | $9.52 |
| EIP address | $3.53 | $3.50 | $3.50 | $3.45 | $3.45 |
| Est. TOTAL / month | $31.92 | $38.18 | $43.33 | $58.44 | $58.44 |
*Estimation based on eu-central-1 (Frankfurt) pricing in December 2023. Exact prices vary with time and regions.
- Reduce in-game quality
- Reduce screen size
- Sunshine: set lower quality encoder settings
SSH into instance and:
# Check disk size to resize
df -h
lsblk -hT
# Grow partition
growpart /dev/nvme0n1 2
# Resize filesystem
resize2fs /dev/nvme0n1p2
Get Sunshine service status and logs
# Show sunshine user journal (e.g. sunshine server logs and other useful debug info)
journalctl _UID=1000 -b
# Get user systemd service status and logs
su sunshine
journalctl --user -u sunshine
systemctl --user status sunshineRun Sunshine interactively via SSH
# Access display
export DISPLAY=:0
# Retrieve X authority file
ps -ef | grep Xauthority
cp /run/user/1000/gdm/Xauthority ~/.Xauthority
# Get command used to start sunshine (wrapper script)
cat /etc/systemd/user/sunshine.service
# ...
# ExecStart=/run/wrappers/bin/sunshine /nix/store/pqyi3jwp47zsis33asq8hn2i01zdygcd-sunshine.conf/config/sunshine.conf
# ...
# Run sunshine with or without wrapper and conf
/run/wrappers/bin/sunshine /nix/store/90vsycwg87c82jldkg0ssl0a19a884lp-sunshine.conf/config/sunshine.conf