minecraft-server-docker

A simple template to quickly set up your own Minecraft server in a Docker container! This has been done on my home server running Ubuntu Server.

Setting-up the server

Nginx configuration

Firstly, install and enable nginx on your host with:

sudo apt install nginx
sudo systemctl start nginx
sudo systemctl enable nginx

Then, in minecraft.conf replace to_fill with your server domain (either IP or domain name). You can optionally change you dynmap port if you want to.

Now, it's time to add the minecraft nginx configuration file to /etc/nginx/conf.d:

sudo ln -s path/to/minecraft-server-docker/minecraft.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/ # replace with your actual path to minecraft-server-docker

Test the nginx conf file with sudo nginx -t. If the file is correct, reload nginx with sudo nginx -s reload.

Start your server!

You're almost there! Have a look at docker-compose.yml where you can:

• name your docker container
• set environment variables to configure your server and override some server properties. It is here that you can select your server type, server version, and do some other useful configuration.
• configure your ports. The syntax is exposed_port:container_port. 25565 is the default Minecraft server port, and 8123 is the port I choose for dynmap.

Run your server with docker-compose up -d. The first start is taking a while because it is setting up everything, you can check the status by running docker-compose logs -f.

To stop the server, run docker-compose down.

To see the server logs in real time, use docker logs -f <container_name>.

To launch server commands, use docker exec -it <container_name> /bin/bash. Then input rcon-cli <command>.

The server has been configured to allow only whitelisted players. To manage the whitelist, you can use whitelist add <user>, whitelist remove <user>, and whitelist list. You can access all whitelist info in the data/whitelist.json file. Use /whitelist reload to apply changes made to this file. If you don't want this, set WHITELIST: "FALSE" in docker-compose.yml.

Add an admin: op <player_name>

Server Worlds

The worlds are in their respective folders world, world_nether, and world_the_end. To recreate a new world, simply delete these directories, create empty new ones and restart the server.

Configure the server

You can edit some server properties using environment variables provided in the docker-compose.yml file. You can find the list here.

But you can't edit everything with the aforementionned technique. For more control, you can edit /minecraft/data/server.properties to configure what you want.

For example:

• Add bonus_chest=true to enable it.
• Set online_mode=false to allow cracked versions to connect (If true, I advise you to add a plugin for authentication)
• "motd" is the server name
• "difficulty" can be set to peacefull, easy, normal, hard
• force-gamemode=true so that users can't use the /gamemode command

*Note: the JVM_DD_OPTS: "disable.watchdog:true" variable is to tell the server to not start the watchdog server, which crashes the server when using autopause because it thinks the tick is taking forever.

Server Plugins

To add a plugin, simply download the .jar file, and place it inside the /minecraft/plugins folder. Then restart the server and the plugin will automatically be launched.

Dynmap

Download the .jar file, then upload it to the server in the plugins directory.

Restart the server, it will set-up the plugin and create a dynmap folder.

In this folder, you can edit configuration.txt to configure dynmap. Here is what I configured:

• Change deftemplatesuffix to vlowres for better performances
• Change your webserver-port to any number over 1024, I used 8123 (be consistent with your docker-compose.yml and in minecraft.conf)
• Change the image format to jpg
• In the dynmap/worlds.txt folder, enable your world like showed in the template. I just used:

worlds:
  - name: world
    title: "Your server name"
    enabled: true 

Now, restart the server.

• Go to the server console and type dynmap fullrender <worldname>, or as a player in the server run dynmap fullrender
• Go to the web browser at address server_ip:dynmap_port

You can now see your map in the web browser!

Commands

• Pause rendering: /dynmap pause all
• Resume rendering: /dynmap pause none
• Toggle render messages: /dynmap quiet

You can also add markers to the map:

• /dmarker add " (icon:)"
• /dmarker delete ""
• /dmarker delete id:
• /dmarker list
• /dmarker icons

Luckperms

This plugin is used to manage users permissions. You can find it here: Luckperms.

The admin user may need to be an op.

Here are the commands:

• Get a UI for managing everything: /lp editor all
• Create a group: /lp creategroup <group>
• Add an user to a group: /lp user <username> parent add <group>
• Add permissions to a group: /lp group <groupname> permission set <permission> true
• Get group infos: /lp group <groupname> info
• Get user infos: /lp user <username> info
• Get all groups: /lp listgroups
• Export to see everything in a file: /lp export

Examples:

/lp creategroup admin
/lp group admin permission set luckperms.* true
/lp group admin permission set minecraft.command.* true
/lp creategroup default
/lp group default permission set minecraft.command.* false
/lp group default permission set luckperms.* false
/lp user Route_Goudronnee parent add admin

EssentialsX

EssentialsX provides lots of useful commands and is lightweight, in my case I use it to protect my world from new non identified players.

To install it, simply download essentialsX and essentialsXAntiBuild, and put the .jar files inside the /plugins folder.

After restarting the server, the config is located into /plugins/Essentials/config.yml, in the "AntiBuild" section.

Thanks to luckperms, we can set essentials.build.* command to false for the default group to disallow them all interactions with our world. You can do that with /lp editor all. Create another group than default for your trusted users.

Server backup

Stop the server.

Run sudo tar -cvzf path/to/backup.tar.gz path/to/minecraft-server-docker/minecraft to create a full backup of the server. You can automate it using cron, I let you do your own researches for that.

Updating to new Minecraft version

• First, stop the server
• Create a backup of the server
• Delete old plugins .jar files
• Update the new ones in minecraft/plugins folder
• Update the docker-compose.yml to use the new Minecraft version
• Start the server

Re-generate a part of the world

To do so, you can use the very cool app Amulet.

Make sure to do a backup of your world server before attempting anything.

Then, open amulet (amulet_app.exe), and open your world. On the left, open "3D Editor". You can then move as you want in your world. You can switch between 3D/2D view, and between normal selection and chunk selection. If you want to delete and regenerate a part of the world, just select it, and click "suppr". After you finished, don't forget to save.

You can then just replace the old "world" folder with the new one saved from amulet. All deleted parts will be reloaded like it was originally.