Public server

A public server allows one to play NetHack or a variant in a shared space on the Internet where one can encounter other people's bones and see scores in the server's scorelist. You may also choose to watch someone's game that is in progress. You can access a public server by using a telnet or SSH client.

List of public servers

Server	Location	Games	Other Information
http://alt.org/nethack	California, United States	NetHack 3.4.3 with many custom patches SporkHack	NAO, the most popular server.
http://nethack.kraln.com/	Chicago, Illinois, United States	NetHack 3.4.3	Kraln's Nethack server.
http://sporkhack.com/	Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States	SporkHack	The SporkHack home server.
http://nethack.creosotehill.org	Bainbridge Island, Washington, United States	NetHack	—
http://nh.eotl.org/	Dallas, Texas, United States	NetHack Crawl Stone Soup	—
http://nwserver.ath.cx/	Conway, Arkansas, United States	NetHack 3.4.3 with menucolors, HPmon, and adjust split patches	ssh nhplayer@nwserver.ath.cx password: nhplayer
http://nostalgia.suroot.com/	Gothenburg, Sweden	NetHack 3.4.3	—
http://nethack.uib.no/	University of Bergen, Norway	NetHack	—
http://frn.imelaps.ee/nethack/	Tallinn, Estonia	NetHack	—
http://okul.bumpclub.ee/nethack/	Estonia	NetHack	—
http://nethack.fi/	Finland	NetHack 3.4.3 with many custom patches	Uses the same codebase as NAO.
http://slashem.crash-override.net/	Nuremberg, Germany	SLASH'EM	—
http://nethack.unfoog.de	Nürnberg, Germany	NetHack ATC	telnet nethack.unfoog.de IRC: #nethack.de on Freenode
http://slashem.de	Germany	NetHack-De 3.4.3-20090119a SLASH'EM 0.0.8E0F1 ZAPM 0.6.3	ssh nethack@slashem.de password: fed telnet slashem.de
http://nethack.devnull.net/	—	NetHack 3.4.3	/dev/null NetHack server and annual tournament
http://www.bbsgames.eu	—	NetHack SLASH'EM BBS games	—
http://un.nethack.nu/	Sweden	UnNetHack	telnet un.nethack.nu
http://nethack.veekun.com/	Dallas, Texas, United States	NetHack 3.4.3 with many custom patches interface, new special rooms, et al.	telnet nethack.veekun.com ssh nethack:nethack@nethack.veekun.com (key available) IRC (+bot): #cafe on irc.veekun.com
http://www.jwhitham.org.uk/tilehack/	New Jersey, USA	Vanilla 3.4.3 with graphical tiles	Play in browser. Experimental server.
http://rl.heh.fi	Finland	NetHack 3.4.3 with many interface patches SporkHack 0.6.2 Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup 0.5.2 Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup trunk version	ssh rl@rl.heh.fi (password is empty) telnet rl.heh.fi

Setting up your own server

A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:

"How to setup your own server?"

There are several ways to manage your public NetHack server, but the most common is to use dgamelaunch, which manages user accounts and runs the NetHack processes in a chroot jail when a user telnets into the server.

For FreeBSD, there is a work-in-progress document describing how to set up a Nethack server with dgamelaunch, and also provides patches to make auto-login work with FreeBSD telnetd.