This article is no longer maintained, but probably still works. #

Minecraft server on Proxmox #

Hey there! I've recently set up a few Minecraft servers, and am running them of off my Proxmox host. Today I'll write a little post about my set up process. Requirements:

Debian GNU/Linux based box (or you can adjust the commands to your liking, but for my server I run Proxmox which is Debian based)
Systemd (for the first method)
Some basic GNU/Linux skills and/or common sense.
Have the appropriate Java version installed and added to path.
Have port 25565 free and open. You can however use a different port if you would want to.

Method 1: Systemd and baremetal #

Let's make a folder for your server. I've done this on 50MB/s spinning rust drives to 3000MB/s NVMe's, it doesn't really mater. Having this said, lets start on the /fast mount (for me this is a raid array of SSD's, but it could be any folder.)

1sudo su
2cd /fast
3mkdir minecraft
4cd minecraft

Now we'll install Paper. Paper is "the next generation of Minecraft servers, compatible with Spigot plugins, offering uncompromising performance." as of their website. I use Paper because of the performance gain I get.

1wget https://api.papermc.io/v2/projects/paper/versions/1.18.2/builds/387/downloads/paper-1.18.2-387.jar
2mv paper-1.18.2-387.jar paper.jar
3touch eula.txt
4echo "eula=true" >> eula.txt

Now we'll start the server and test if everything works, if it does, we will make it a service using Systemd.

1java -Xms32G -Xmx32G -jar paper.jar -o true op yourusername

Now log into the server on your Minecraft client using the servers IP. Now test if everything works and if it does, type stop and continue to the next step.

systemd #

Now we'll add the server to Systemd to let it come up at boot. To do so, follow up.

1apt install screen
2touch /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service
3nvim /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service

Now copy the following text into it:

 1[Unit] Description=Minecraft Server
 2After=network.target
 3
 4[Service] WorkingDirectory=/fast/minecraft/
 5
 6User=root
 7Group=root
 8
 9Restart=always
10
11ExecStart=/usr/bin/screen -DmS mc /usr/bin/java -Xmx32G -jar paper.jar nogui
12
13ExecStop=/usr/bin/screen -p 0 -S mc -X eval 'stuff "say The Minecraft server you're currently playing on is going down for either maintenance or another reason."\015'
14ExecStop=/bin/sleep 10 ExecStop=/usr/bin/screen -p 0 -S mc -X eval 'stuff "save-all"\015'
15ExecStop=/usr/bin/screen -p 0 -S mc -X eval 'stuff "stop"\015'
16
17[Install]
18WantedBy=multi-user.target

boot and management #

Now, lets start the server and make it automatically start at boot using the following commands:

1systemctl start minecraft.service
2systemctl enable minecraft.service

If you are wondering how the server is doing, you can type:

1sudo systemctl status minecraft.service

Method 2: #

This video sums it up about perfectly. Go watch that instead please!