Notes

Managing A Simple Family Minecraft Server

In summary I utilize my ratcraft script to manage the Minecraft server in the "cloud".



Virtual hardware



I have a Linode shared virtual instance with the following specs: 4GB RAM 2 Cores, 80 GB SSD, and a price of $20 per month. The less expensive instances might work, but we've experienced no issues with four or more people playing on this instance.



Hosting on a personal computer works fantastic (and is cheaper after about a year or so) However, having the "cloud" instance is much simpler to manage and getting your friends outside of the home is 100% easier.



The instance runs Slackware Linux and I do all server management from the command line via SSH.



I also gave it a DNS subdomain, so it's easy to tell friends how to access it.
Minecraft Online


Minecraft Server



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



Launching the server



The server is an Java executable and needs to be kept running in an ongoing process. I have chosen to manage the process by using the GNU terminal multiplexer monitor. This is the start command.



I don't believe I can write that many times, so I wrote a small Bash script to manage it for me.



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



Server upgrades



The Minecraft clients automatically update to the latest version as soon as it's out.



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 longer manually rename the server to the version number and keep the old ones around. Instead, I let the downloaded server.jar overwrite the previous version. This saves me a step, and I haven’t needed to downgrade (yet).



This is why I no longer have to manually edit the ratcraft script in order to make sure that the server version is up to date.



Then I simply restart (stop and start) the server using ratcraft:



In a matter of minutes, the server is in good shape for the new clients.



It's not a solution for commercial use It's:



Easy enough for me, when I return to it every few months



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



Backups



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



The backup instructs the Minecraft server to stop saving, creates an .tgz by using tar -cpvzf in the "world" directory and saves it to a "backups" directory.



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



Getting/Upgrading the JDK



You can run the Java executable on your system, and then update using the help of a package manager. In my experience, it's a bit more manual.



More advanced and modern versions of the JVM are required for Minecraft server upgrade. I don't keep up with the Java world any more however, it appears that the most effective location to get the JVM is:



http://jdk.java.net/



I don't see where you can get just the JRE (runtime environment with JVM that is all that should be required to run the Minecraft server). It's not that important. The JDK is a larger download because it contains a superset JRE as well as libraries and compilers.


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