Guide to Setting Up a Linux Minecraft Server

Beginners Guide to Setting up a Linux Minecraft Server

If you have a dedicated server, VPS or PC running linux:

Ok, this installation is actually fairly easy. With this guide it will hopefully be completely foolproof. For this guide I will be using Debian 6, but it will work on any linux version.

If you already own a server, you can jump down to ‘Installing Minecraft’

If you don’t already have a server, there are some cheap solutions which are not always as terrible as people always make out. You can find servers with 1GB guaranteed RAM and a dedicated IP address (important), from as little as $10 a month. I have used an Alvotech VPS in the past, they offer:

1GB guaranteed RAM

4GB burstable RAM

90GB storage

2 Dedicated IP addresses

and unmetered bandwidth on a 1gbps connection

for 7.90 euros.

(http://www.alvotech.de)

Okay, assuming you already have a server, you will need a terminal to connect to your server from your home PC. Putty is an excellent little program offering just that. Download link: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

Now you’re ready to go.

Installing Minecraft

Time to get your server up and running.

Firstly, connect and sign in to your server using putty. Then you need to add a line to your sources file to install java. Once you’re signed in, type the following command (without the speech marks):

‘nano /etc/apt/sources.list‘

This should open up your sources file, then go to the bottom and add the following lines:

‘deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free‘

and

‘deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free‘

It should look like this: 

Remember, this is for a Debian 6 linux installation, for other linux installations a quick google search will give you the required source addresses for non-free.

Save the sources, then type the following command in putty to update the sources:

‘apt-get update‘

Then you can install java to your server with the following command:

‘apt-get install sun-java6-jre‘

Now you will be ready to set up the minecraft server itself. You will need to download the server files onto your server. This is easily done with the following command:

‘wget http://s3.amazonaws.com/MinecraftDownload/launcher/minecraft_server.jar‘

You will also need to install screen on your server. This is so that the server will run continuously until you stop it. Again, easily done with the following command:

‘apt-get install screen‘

Now, to get the server going, type the following command into putty:

‘screen -S minecraftscreen java -Xms1024M -Xmx1024M -jar minecraft_server.jar nogui‘

In the command, where it says Xms1024M and Xmx1024M, this is where you set the minimum and maximum RAM that the minecraft server will use. On the current settings the min and max is both 1024 megabytes (or 1 GB). Xms….M changes the minimum and Xmx….M is the maximum. Make sure neither number exceeds the RAM of your server, or you will run into trouble.

Congratulations, the minecraft server is now running, you can connect to it by typing your server’s dedicated IP address into the minecraft client and you’re off.

After closing putty, if you want to open up the minecraft server again to type in commends, this is the putty command:

‘screen -d -r minecraftscreen‘

The list of minecraft server commands can be found at this address:

http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/SMP_Server_commands

I hope this helped.