This project defines a template systemd service unit file for hosting several minecraft servers via docker. Since once you have one, you are going to want another ;)

This system runs the minecraft server in a docker container as such you must first install docker.

Run make install as root and the systemd units files and minecraftctl script will be copied to the appropriate locations.

You should also create a minecraft user to own the server files.

useradd minecraft

NOTE: grep and sed are also required in order to watch the minecraft logs for various events.

You can find an AUR package here.

With this project installed you can run multiple different minecraft worlds on the same host. Each is given a name and can be configured in an /etc/minecraft/<name> file.

Minecraft requires that you accept the EULA in order to run a server. Either add EULA=true to all your /etc/minecraft/<name> files, or edit the minecraftctl.sh script to set EULA=true for all worlds.

To start a new server run:

sudo systemctl start [email protected]

To enable the server on boot run:

sudo systemctl enable [email protected]

You can customize the configuration of a server by setting environment vars in /etc/minecraft/<name>

For example to run on a different port and version you could use:

PORT=25566
VERSION=1.8.9

in the file /etc/minecraft/survival.

All server.properties are available to be set.

If you want to host a specific puzzle or adventure world you can use both the EPHEMERAL and WORLD vars.

EPHEMERAL=true
WORLD=https://minecraft.example.com/myworld.zip

Now every time the server is started, it will download a fresh copy of the world and launch it. Without the EPHEMERAL var the world will only be downloaded the first time.

Along with the service template a systemd.timer is provided to run backups of a server.

For example:

sudo systemctl enable [email protected]
sudo systemctl start [email protected]

This will enable weekly backups of the survival server. Backups are stored in $DATA_DIR/$BACKUP_DIR which is /srv/minecraft/<name>/backups by default. If you want to copy them off-site you will need to manage that yourself.

Not everything that is possible to customize has been mentioned here. Take a look at the minecraftctl.sh script as it is written to be extensible.

These scripts work on my host ;) (arch linux). I have not tested them anywhere else, if you run into a bug please file an issue here on github or better yet submit a PR.

This project leverages the work of the https://hub.docker.com/r/itzg/minecraft-server/ docker container for minecraft. Also many of these concepts in the minecraftctl.sh script where inspired by https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/minecraft-server/. Many thanks to both projects for making this one possible.