Notes

How To Host A DIY Minecraft Server At Home Using Docker

My oldest son recently jumped into Minecraft. My son however plays Bedrock Edition on an iPad and a game console. He prefers Java Edition on an older computer. He launches it from his terminal! ) To play with MINECRAFT TOWNY SERVERS thought about running a Dockerized Minecraft server on my home server, and it was much easier than I expected.



Operating a dedicated server



The official server distribution comes with a single Javajar. It's likely to be simple to use. Before trying it, though, I searched for Docker images, and found a good one: itzg/minecraft-server.



You can start the container using a single docker run command and/or daemonize it. But, I've been keeping it simple by setting docker compose in byobu sessions.



Here's my current docker.yml file



There are a ton of available configuration options, but I'd like to highlight two things that I mentioned above:



The game's persistent data is written to a disk mounted to the host so we can easily access the files. The "WORLD" option is handy for importing the save file that was originally created on another computer.



Connecting to the Server



After a couple of seconds, the server is ready to accept connections, however my clients aren't able to see it for some reason. Minecraft will remain on the "Scanning for games on your local network" screen for a long time. You can still "Add Server" to manually add it, and voila!



Web Map



My Minecraft knowledge is a decade old. But, I'm aware that third-party tools can produce an online representation of a Minecraft world that is similar to the ones in Google Maps. After searching around it appears that Minecraft Overviewer is the prominent one of the moment.



As I mentioned before, the installation is pretty simple but I discovered a Docker image that's a lot easier. This is a single-shot (not permanent) procedure, so we'll use docker to run:



Leaflet will create a web map that has read-only access to game data from the other container, and another volume to write it to. This directory can be linked to a web-served directories on the host, such as the directory /var/www/public_html for ease of access from any web browser.



It takes just a few minutes to run, but the results are quite impressive:



Makefile



In the end, in line with my own wishes I added a few shortcuts to the Makefile to make it easier to access.



Motives to build Dockerized Minecraft Server



A DIY dedicated server is probably unnecessary for most people. If you're looking to play locally with multiplayer and one of your computers is sufficiently powerful, you can simply "Open to LAN" directly from the game. If you're looking to play with a larger number of folks outside your household it's best to go using a hosted server that is paid for. This could be the official "Realms" or one of a variety of third-party alternatives.


My Website: https://minecraft-servers.biz/towny/