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 with the following specs: 4GB RAM 2 Cores, 40 GB SSD, at $20 per month. Although less expensive instances might be a good idea, we have no problems with four or more people using this virtual instance.



Hosting on an in-house computer is fantastic and will be less expensive after an entire year. However having a "cloud" instance is much simpler to manage and simpler to connect with your people outside of the home.



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



It also includes a DNS subdomain, making it easy to share with friends how to connect to it.



Minecraft Server



We've tried mods (and creating them) and have run Spigot servers locally. However, on our family server, we run the so-called "vanilla" Minecraft server (Java Edition).



Launching the server



The server is an Java executable and needs to be maintained running as the form of a 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 type that many times , so I came up with a tiny Bash script to manage it for me.



It's about 130 lines of Bash and includes a handful of commands:



Server upgrades



Minecraft clients automatically upgrade to the most recent version as soon as it becomes available.



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 in accordance with the version number. The old ones are still available. Instead, I let the server.jar that I downloaded server.jar overwrite the previous version. This is a time-saving step, and I've not required to downgrade (yet).



So I no longer have to do this step: manually edit the script in ratcraft to update the server version:



Then I just restart (stop and start) the server with ratcraft:



The server will be available in a matter of moments for the new clients.



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



- Easy enough to understand for me to return to it every few months



- Automated enough to not be a hassle to use



Backups



The backup function in the ratcraft script is accessible. I use it daily by calling the cron job that is located in Slackware's /etc/cron.daily directory. The script just calls:



The backup informs the Minecraft server to stop saving, then creates a.tgz by using tar –cpvzf from the "world" directory, and saves it into the folder "backups".



The backup command can also perform simple backup rotations in order to ensure that the server doesn't overflow. Sometimes, we may want to save the most important time in our lives and so I change the name of one of the backups so it won't be removed during the rotation.



How do I upgrade the JDK



You could just run the java executable on your system and update with a package manager. In my case, it's a little more manual.



More advanced and modern versions of the JVM are required for Minecraft server upgrade. Minecraft java I don't keep up with the Java world at all anymore However, it appears the most effective place to get the JVM is:



http://jdk.java.net/



I don't think you'll be able to locate the JRE (runtime environment without JVM), which is all you require to run the Minecraft server. It's not a huge deal. The JDK is a larger download as it comes with a superset JRE as well as compilers and libraries.


Here's my website: http://53vv.com/