launcher fails to read certificate from server

[NextBlaubeere]

Hello and Happy New Year! :-)

I am trying to get ageLANServer running for an upcoming lanparty and i got stuck on the way unfortunately. I am currently testing everything on my local windows machine, so everything ongoing at the moment is on the same OS.

Hosting the server seems fine to me, but every time when the launcher tries to fetch the certificate it fails.

Enter the number of the 'server' (1-1): 1
Adding hosts to hosts file, authorize 'config-admin-agent' if needed...
Failed to read certificate from aoe-api.reliclink.com.
Killing 'agent' if needed...
Cleaning up...
Program finished with errors...

While on the server it seems to be fetched fine by the client.

[age2] [general] 192.168.1.100 - 00:05:16 - HEAD /test - 200 40
[age2] [general] 192.168.1.100 - 00:05:16 - HEAD /test - 200 40
[age2] [general] 192.168.1.100 - 00:05:16 - HEAD /test - 200 40
[age2] [general] 192.168.1.100 - 00:05:16 - GET /test - 200 40
[age2] [general] 192.168.1.100 - 00:05:18 - GET /cacert.pem - 200 0

I don't know if this is related, but also when I want to use ExecutableArgs = ['--overrideHosts={HostFilePath}'] in combination with the injected AgeFakeHost.dll I get this from the client:

Enter the number of the 'server' (1-1): 1
Saving hosts to 'C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\Temp\ageLANServer_host_308012619.txt' file...
Adding 'server' certificate to local store, authorize 'config-admin-agent' if needed...
Something went wrong, aoe-api.reliclink.com either points to the original 'server' or there is a certificate issue.
Killing 'agent' if needed...
Cleaning up...
Program finished with errors...

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Create Cert by double-click genCert.exe
2. Start Server AoE2
3. Start Launcher

Expected behavior
Certificate gets read and installed

Software Components
Check all that apply:

• Server
• Server certificate generator
• Launcher
• Launcher configurator

Games
Check all that apply:

• Age of Empires: Definitive Edition
• Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition
• Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition

Server

• OS and Architecture: Windows 11
• OS Version and architecture: 24H2 x64
• Server version: Latest Release v1.11.2
• Server Logs: Server-Logs.zip

Launcher

• OS: Windows 11
• OS Version and architecture: 24H2 x64
• Client version: Latest Release v1.11.2
• Launcher Logs: Launcher-Logs.zip

[luskaner]

Hello, nice report and happy new year to you too :)

On the first error:

It is a strange error, basically, the launcher tries to fetch the certificate by using the url https://<IP>/cacert.pem. You might try the following:

• Access the url with your browser to see if it works fine. Ignore any certificate error shown.
• Let the launcher start the server instead of you starting it beforehand.

On the second error:

It is being covered in #325 and scheduled to be released on the next version (~5 january).

On another note, a sponsor of this server, recently released v1 of a tool that auto configures the launcher (and companion) for portable installation and it may be useful for you ;)

[luskaner]

Oh now I see you attached the logs, I will responder further after investigating

[luskaner]

No additional details of that error in the log, could it be a firewall issue? well, try what I said in my first comment too ;)

[NextBlaubeere]

On another note, a sponsor of this server, recently released v1 of a tool that auto configures the launcher (and companion) for portable installation and it may be useful for you ;)

Thank you for the suggestion. It indeed streamlines the process of setting up the game and in addition saves a ton of time. 👍 I am also confident now, that I made no mistake, by letting the tool do its thing.

Unfortunately however it seems like the error was not in the setup of the game + server, as the error persists. I made sure the firewall is off and also that no anti malware program is active. It also results in the same issue when I let the launcher start the server.

When I access the URL https://<IP>/cacert.pem with LibreWolf (fork of firefox) i successfully get a certificate as result. It shows to lines with "Begin Certificate" and "End Certificate" and some random string in between. I also see it responding with 304 in the server window:

[age2] [general] 192.168.1.100 - 00:08:46 - GET /cacert.pem - 304 0

However, there is no connection and no output if I try to access via port 31978. Is this the expected behavior?

It is being covered in #325 and scheduled to be released on the next version (~5 january).

neat. is there a branch to get this compiled myself earlier? I had a look at DEVELOPMENT.md and it seems doable although I have no experience with Go as language,

If you could help me setting up an environment with a little bit more details (I have no idea of what to do with "GoReleaser") I could even debug it myself. (Preferred on Windows, because its the platform we play on and the error occurs.)

//edit:
I just loaded the project into intelliJ and installed all the requirements mentioned in DEVELOPMENT.md but have no clue how to attach a debugger from here.

PS C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\ageLANServer> task debug-prepare-server
task: [debug:prepare-server-base] powershell New-Item -Path "build/server/resources" -ItemType Directory -ErrorAction Ignore -Force


    Verzeichnis: C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\ageLANServer\build\server


Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name                                                                                                          
----                 -------------         ------ ----                                                                                                          
d-----        03.01.2026     01:58                resources                                                                                                     


task: [debug:prepare-server-base] powershell Copy-Item -Path "server/resources/*" -Destination "build/server/resources" -Recurse -ErrorAction Ignore -Force      
task: [debug:prepare-server-base] go build -o build/server/bin/genCert.exe ./server-genCert
go: cannot find main module, but found .git/config in C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\ageLANServer
        to create a module there, run:
        go mod init
task: Failed to run task "debug-prepare-server": task: Failed to run task "debug:prepare-server-base": exit status 1

PS C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\ageLANServer> go mod init
go: cannot determine module path for source directory C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\ageLANServer (outside GOPATH, module path must be specified)

Example usage:
        'go mod init example.com/m' to initialize a v0 or v1 module
        'go mod init example.com/m/v2' to initialize a v2 module

Run 'go help mod init' for more information.

[luskaner]

Hi:

The fix is already in the v1.12 branch if you want to checkout that. So what I do to debug is simply use Goland and in the run/debug configuration windows adding as Before Launch -> Run External tool -> and then tasks as needed (and documented in DEVELOPMENT.md). You don't attach the debugger just compile the program in 'debug' mode if that makes sense.
The program is defined as monorepo, so at most at the root doing go work sync should work. Going module by module is not necessary or recommended.

As for your troubleshooting is kinda puzzling as to why the launcher cannot read the cacert.pem if you checked it is properly being send by the server, if you can debug it I would be very thankful ;)

The 31978 is just an UDP connection used for discovery, does not matter in this issue (you already detect the server just fine)

[NextBlaubeere]

Okay I managed to setup the project in my IDE. Thanks for explaining. :-)

Something seems off indeed. So now when I run the launcher I reliably get Failed to add hosts. on stdout.
A breakpoint gives me these variables at this moment:

and this output:

Enter the number of the 'server' (1-1): 1
Adding hosts to hosts file, authorize 'config-admin-agent' if needed...
Failed to add hosts.
Error message: fork/exec C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\JetBrains\IntelliJIdea2025.2\tmp\GoLand\bin\config.exe: Der Verzeichnisname ist ungültig.
Killing 'agent' if needed...

I can not really make sense out of this error message but ...\bin\config.exe does not exist, Not even the bin folder.

PS C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\JetBrains\IntelliJIdea2025.2\tmp\GoLand> ls

    Verzeichnis: C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\JetBrains\IntelliJIdea2025.2\tmp\GoLand

Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                 -------------         ------ ----
-a----        03.01.2026     05:20       12801536 ___10Debug_Launcher.exe
-a----        03.01.2026     04:58       12806656 ___1Debug_Launcher.exe
-a----        03.01.2026     04:59       12806656 ___2Debug_Launcher.exe
-a----        03.01.2026     05:30       14377984 ___8Debug_Launcher.exe
-a----        03.01.2026     05:00       12806656 ___9Debug_Launcher.exe
-a----        03.01.2026     04:58              4 ___Debug_Launcher.exe

So there definitely is some trouble editing the hosts file. I think maybe Writer.io is null?! But i dunno.

I also noticed that executor.isAdmin() is returning false even though I literately use the Administrator account. I even have UAC disabled. Nothing changes however, when i make it always return true.

[NextBlaubeere]

Is there a built in way to skip this step entirely, so I could do the dns entries on my dns server manually / edit the host file manually?

[luskaner]

Hello @NextBlaubeere :

Currently, there is no way to disable the checks :(
Aside from that, the issue here is that config.exe is not being compiled, so it's not found, remember you need to run all of these tasks before debugging:

• task debug:prepare-launcher
• task build-config-admin-agent
• task build-config-admin
• task build-config-all

If you can properly debug the software it should be pretty easy to disable any check that fail afterwards even if you cannot diagnose the underlying issue, but it'd be amazing if you could