Hosting a Mumble server with DynDNS on Windows 7

Last week my Mumble host decided to shutdown operations completely unannounced. Which was just awesome...but that aside I decided to try and host a server myself. Here's how I got it working on a dedicated Windows 7 box.

First, download and install Mumble. The server software, called Murmur is inside (something that wasn't obvious when I started). Install it and select the packages you want, Murmur for sure, Mumble if you want.

Once that's ready, head on over to DynDNS and setup an account. Once you've activated it, click on "My Services".

On that page, click "Add Hostname", and run through their process. This used to be free (no credit card), but it appears they require it now-a-days. After activation, simply cancel your order within 14-days and you won't be billed, but you keep your hostname. For this I selected spawnroom.dyndns.org.

Continuing with DynDNS, make sure to download the client updater and install it on the machine hosting the Mumble server. The client looks like this once you login and synchronize:

Alright, so we have Murmur installed and DynDNS installed. Next we need to configure the "murmur.ini" file. There's quite a few settings in here, but the main ones you'll want to look into are these:

welcometext=The text I want to welcome someone with when they join my server! HTML can be used here.
port=64738 or whatever port you want to use for the server. This can be whatever you like, however make sure it's something you're not already using. You can find out what ports you're using by opening a command prompt and typing "netstat". Browse the listed ports and select something NOT listed.
#host=Keep this commented out so the server will bind to all available connections.
serverpassword=Set a password here if you don't want "randoms" joining without the password.
users=20 or whatever number of user slots you want. This will vary depending on your bandwidth. For my 20 mbps business line I have ran 10 concurrent users with no noticeable lag. I'll try and update this post in the future with more information about what I am able to handle.
registerName=My Mumble Server or whatever you want the main channel of your Mumble server to be called. This is generally what people associate with the actual name of the server. So for my website, my main channel name is The Spawn Room.

This is all I changed in the ini. If you want to mess with other settings look at the Mumble documentation for more information.

Note: make sure to double check if a line has the # sign. If it does, that means it's commented out and won't work!

Now let's make a SuperUser password before moving on. Open a command prompt and enter:

<path to murmur.exe> -ini <path to configuration file> -supw <password>

This is how mine looked:

"c:\Program Files <x86>\Mumble\murmur.exe" -ini "c:\Program Files <x86>\Mumble\murmur.ini" -supw mySuperUserPassword

Note: the quotes are needed this time.

Port forwarding time! I'm not actually going to go into detail here because everyone has different routers, but here's the general concept. You'll want to log into your router which is probably at an address like: 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1. If you've never logged in before, the default username and password can be found through Google with a search like "my router name/model default password".

Once you've successfully logged in, find a section for Port Forwarding. Now you'll need to add an entry for Mumble/Murmur (name it whatever you like), with the appropriate information. IP of the machine (command prompt -> ipconfig /all -> 192.168.x.x), the port (or port range) you selected for the Murmur server, and whatever else it asks for.

Again, depending on your router, you may need to restart to apply the settings. Do this now.

Once you're back up and running, it's time to launch the Murmur server and see if everything's working. Find murmur.exe in your Mumble folder, launch it and right-click the icon in the taskbar. Select "Show Log".

If you get "Server listening on 0.0.0.0" that's fine. I thought this meant it wasn't working, but it does. If you're getting an IP with "failed: The address is not available" after it, then it's NOT working. Or at least it wasn't working for me. I tried changing the port and ensuring that the #host= line was commented out.

Another important note here is that, for whatever reason, I was ONLY able to connect over LAN. Trying to connect to my DynDNS IP from the local network DID NOT work. If anyone knows why, I would love to hear it. But for those of you just trying to get this working, don't waste a bunch of time wondering why it's not working. Ask a friend to try and connect to the server first before making assumptions.

That's it! I got it working this way and was able to have a number of friends join to play some games. You can proceed from here with the SuperUser account to create channels, add admins/mods, manipulate ACL's, etc. (I may cover these things more in future tutorials).

Thanks for reading! If you have any questions or want to point out something unclear/wrong, post a comment.