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 score list. Most NetHack servers usually also add some interface patches and bug fixes; this list will not specify those. 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 such as PuTTY.
List of public servers
Server | Location | Games | How to connect |
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nethack.alt.org (NAO) | California, United States |
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sporkhack.com | Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States | ||
hack.eotl.org | Dallas, Texas, United States |
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nethack.fi | Finland |
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feorar.org | Germany |
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SLASH'EM@Pallas | Nuremberg, Germany |
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un.nethack.nu |
Sweden |
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Cafe / Veekun NetHack | Dallas, Texas, United States |
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nethack.proles.net | Germany |
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acehack.us | Virginia, United States |
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nethack.eu | Germany |
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Amulet of Yendor | Pennsylvania, United States |
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NetHack on Facebook | Finland |
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grunthack.org | Virginia, United States | ||
nethack4.org | France |
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nethack.segvault.de | Germany | ||
games.libreplanet.org | Boston, Massachusetts, United States |
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60hz.fr | France |
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Setting up 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.
PuTTY hints
Something to be aware of is that PuTTY (win32 telnet/ssh client) sets its TERM= as 'xterm'. This breaks a lot of things, including the unicode support in nethack4. It's best to change its advertised termcap capabilites to 'linux'.