Raible Designs

I actually tried setting up a Minecraft server on Digital Ocean...it worked well enough, but a big enough droplet instance to support as many users as I needed to support, using a customized server modpack, was at least $40 a month.

I wound up doing better with a dedicated Minecraft-hosting service, Bisect Hosting. I pay about $20 a month for a server which can support 60 users (far more than we need), and it fully supports customized server modpacks.

For future exploration, you might look at Minecraft mods and modpacks. Mods are, like Minecraft itself, written in Java, and there's a fairly-standard API (Minecraft Forge) that most of them use. We use a customized modpack that I created (easy enough to do with the Technic Launcher system), with about 60 mods. They extend the game in various nifty ways. If you've ever wanted to have a nuclear reactor in Minecraft, there are mods that let you do that...

Posted by Erbo on August 05, 2015 at 03:30 PM MDT #

Posted by Netizen on April 08, 2016 at 01:37 PM MDT #

Posted by Matt Raible on May 02, 2016 at 08:30 AM MDT #

Posted by Matt Raible on June 28, 2016 at 06:31 PM MDT #

A AWS Micro server will not be enough to sufficiently and reliably host more then 2-4 users... if you plan to host the server seriously and have any significant amount of users playing then you'll need to add a bit more Ram (16GB) and Storage (I run about 500Gb, just in case) during the instance setup process and choose one of the medium or large instances.

Also you can do this (Ubuntu) to have it auto-start and also run as a service.

(read this article) https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Tutorials/Ubuntu_startup_script

Goes through and shows you how to create a separate user and group under ubuntu to have the server running, and also sets up a /etc/init script to run on reboot.

Note: the article doesn't explicitly say it and assumes you have upstart installed already but if it's a new server you'll need to run these commands first.

sudo apt install upstart 
sudo apt-get install upstart-sysv

Posted by Rob Wence on August 27, 2017 at 12:36 AM MDT #

Posted by Matt Raible on November 27, 2017 at 07:21 AM MST #

Posted by Jay Drake on April 21, 2019 at 10:30 AM MDT #

Posted by Your Mom on October 13, 2019 at 04:49 PM MDT #

Did this in Terraform. 3 commands, 5 minutes, good to go. 2 commands and 5 more minutes and it's all gone. Working on backup/restore to S3 on destroy/deploy to maintain world persistence between sessions.

provider "aws" {
  region = "us-east-2"
}

 resource "aws_eip_association" "eipa-minecraft" {
  instance_id   = "${aws_instance.ec2-tf-minecraft.id}"
  allocation_id = "eipalloc-0f3358f991f948098"
}

resource "aws_security_group" "instance" {
  name     = "sec-minecraft"

  ingress {
    from_port   = 22
    to_port     = 22
    protocol    = "tcp"
    cidr_blocks = ["ip"]
  }

  ingress {
    from_port   = 25565
    to_port     = 25565
    protocol    = "tcp"
    cidr_blocks = ["ip"]
  }
  
  egress {
    from_port   = 0
    to_port     = 0
    protocol    = "-1"
    cidr_blocks = ["0.0.0.0/0"]
  }
}


resource "aws_instance" "ec2-tf-minecraft" {
  ami                    = "ami-0dacb0c129b49f529"
  instance_type          = "t2.medium"
  key_name               = "AWSKey2"
  vpc_security_group_ids = [aws_security_group.instance.id]
  subnet_id              = "subnet-bc9db7d4"
  
    tags = {
    Name = "ec2-tf-minecraft"
  }
 
  user_data = <<-EOF
  
#!/bin/bash

yum update -y && yum upgrade -y
yum install git wget "Development Tools" java-1.8.0-openjdk-headless git -y

mkdir -p /opt/minecraft/{backups,tools,server}
useradd -r -m -U -d /opt/minecraft -s /bin/bash minecraft
usermod -aG wheel minecraft

cd /opt/minecraft/tools && git clone https:/github.com/Tiiffi/mcrcon.git && cd /opt/minecraft/tools/mcrcon
gcc -std=gnu11 -pedantic -Wall -Wextra -O2 -s -o mcrcon mcrcon.c
./mcrcon -h 

cd /opt/minecraft/server
wget https://launcher.mojang.com/v1/objects/4d1826eebac84847c71a77f9349cc22afd0cf0a1/server.jar

java -Xmx1024M -Xms512M -jar server.jar nogui
pkill -f '/usr/bin/java -Xmx1024M -Xms512M -jar server.jar nogui'
rm /opt/minecraft/server/eula.txt -f
echo "#By changing the setting below to TRUE you are indicating your agreement to our EULA (https:/account.mojang.com/documents/minecraft_eula)." >> /opt/minecraft/server/eula.txt
echo "#Sun May 19 23:41:45 PDT 2019" >> /opt/minecraft/server/eula.txt
echo "eula=true" >> /opt/minecraft/server/eula.txt
rm /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties -f

echo "#Minecraft server properties" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "#Sat Dec 07 21:18:52 UTC 2019" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "spawn-protection=16" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "max-tick-time=60000" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "query.port=25565" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "generator-settings=" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "force-gamemode=true" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "allow-nether=true" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "enforce-whitelist=false" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "gamemode=creative" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "broadcast-console-to-ops=true" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "enable-query=false" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "player-idle-timeout=0" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "difficulty=easy" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "spawn-monsters=true" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "broadcast-rcon-to-ops=true" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "op-permission-level=4" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "pvp=true" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "snooper-enabled=true" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "level-type=default" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "hardcore=false" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "enable-command-block=false" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "max-players=20" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "network-compression-threshold=256" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "resource-pack-sha1=" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "max-world-size=29999984" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "function-permission-level=2" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "rcon.port=25575" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "server-port=25565" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties

ip_address=$(ifconfig | sed -En 's/127.0.0.1//;s/.*inet (addr:)?(([0-9]*\.){3}[0-9]*).*/\2/p')

echo "server-ip=$ip_address" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "spawn-npcs=true" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "allow-flight=false" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "level-name=world" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "view-distance=10" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "resource-pack=" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "spawn-animals=true" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "white-list=false" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "rcon.password=strong-password" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "generate-structures=true" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "max-build-height=256" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "online-mode=true" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "level-seed=" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "use-native-transport=true" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "prevent-proxy-connections=false" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "enable-rcon=true" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties
echo "motd=A Minecraft Server" >> /opt/minecraft/server/server.properties

echo "[Unit]" >> /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service
echo "Description=Minecraft Server" >> /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service
echo "After=network.target" >> /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service
echo " " >> /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service
echo "[Service]" >> /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service
echo "User=minecraft" >> /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service
echo "Nice=5" >> /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service
echo "KillMode=none" >> /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service
echo "SuccessExitStatus=0 1" >> /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service
echo "InaccessibleDirectories=/root /sys /srv /media -/lost+found" >> /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service
echo "NoNewPrivileges=true" >> /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service
echo "WorkingDirectory=/opt/minecraft/server" >> /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service
echo "ReadWriteDirectories=/opt/minecraft/server" >> /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service
echo "ExecStart=/usr/bin/java -Xmx1024M -Xms1024M -jar server.jar nogui" >> /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service
echo "ExecStop=/opt/minecraft/tools/mcrcon/mcrcon -H 127.0.0.1 -P 25575 -p strong-password stop" >> /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service
echo " " >> /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service
echo "[Install]" >> /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service
echo "WantedBy=multi-user.target" >> /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service

chown minecraft:minecraft /opt/minecraft -R
chmod 755 minecraft:minecraft /opt/minecraft -R

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl start minecraft && systemctl enable minecraft

/opt/minecraft/tools/mcrcon/mcrcon -H 127.0.0.1 -P 25575 -p strong-password -t

              EOF
			  
}

Posted by Mike R on January 04, 2020 at 10:44 AM MST #

Posted by sharniff on April 03, 2020 at 10:59 AM MDT #