Notes

Managing A Simple Family Minecraft Server

In short, I use my ratcraft script to manage the Minecraft server in the "cloud".



Virtual hardware



I have a Linode shared virtual instance that has the following specs: 4 GB RAM, 2 Cores, 80 GB SSD, and a price of $20 per month. Although cheaper instances might be a good idea, we have no issues with more than four people using this particular instance.



Hosting on your own computer is fantastic and will cost less after an entire year. However, having a "cloud" instance is so much simpler to manage and it is more convenient to connect with friends who are not in the house.



The server runs Slackware Linux, and I manage the server through SSH.



I also gave it the DNS subdomain so it's real easy to let friends know how to access it.



Minecraft Server



We've tried mods (and creating them) We've also run Spigot servers locally. On the server for our family, we have the "vanilla" Minecraft server (Java Edition).



The server is launched



The server is a Java executable that must be maintained running as a process. I have chosen to manage the process with the GNU terminal multiplexer monitor. The start command will appear like this:



I don't believe I can type that many times so I came up with a tiny Bash script to manage it for me.



It has about 130 lines of Bash and a few commands.



Server upgrades



Minecraft clients automatically upgrade to the latest version as soon as it is released.



Getting the latest server to match is as simple as grabbing the tarball link from minecraft.net/download/server and downloading it on the host:



UPDATE: I no more manually change the server's name to the version number and keep the old ones around. Instead, I let the server.jar downloaded server.jar overwrite the previous one. This saves me a step, and I haven't had any need to downgrade (yet).



This is why I no longer have to manually edit the script of ratcraft to update the server version.



Then, I just restart the server (stop and start) using the ratcraft program.



In just a few minutes, the server is in good shape for the new clients.



While it's not a solution that can be used commercially, it is:



Easy enough for me to understand when I come back to it each couple of months



- Simple to use and automated enough to not cause any discomfort



Backups



The backup function in the ratcraft script is in place. I call it daily via a cron job in Slackware's /etc/cron.daily directory. The script simply calls:



The backup informs the Minecraft server to stop saving, creates an .tgz with tar -cpvzf of the "world" directory and saves it to a "backups" directory.



The backup command can also perform simple backup rotations to ensure that the server doesn't overflow. Sometimes, we want to preserve a significant moment in our world. To do this, I just rename one backup to ensure that it doesn't disappear from the rotation.



How to get/upgrade the JDK



Perhaps you can use the Java executable on your system and update using an application manager. In my universe it's more manual.
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Newer and more advanced versions of the JVM are required for Minecraft server upgrades. While I'm not keeping up with Java world, it appears that the best place to get the JVM currently is:



http://jdk.java.net/



I don't believe you can locate the JRE (runtime environment ) without JVM) which is all you need to run the Minecraft server. But not a big deal. The JDK is a more substantial download since it includes a superset JRE plus libraries and compilers.


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