Raspberry Pi Tutorial: Host A Minecraft Server On Ubuntu Desktop

Welcome to the second in our collection of Linux gaming posts within the run as much as the holidays. This week, we’ve put together a tutorial that teaches you learn how to create a primary Minecraft Server on a Raspberry Pi with Ubuntu Desktop, so you can play regionally with your pals.

This is a great afternoon project to work on with a pal or family member!

Internet hosting a Minecraft server unlocks a tonne of extra management over the way you play Minecraft with your pals. You may change the game rules and difficulty, the behaviour of enemies and determine how players interact.

Setting up a server can also be an important strategy to learn extra about Linux. Linux is all about tinkering and making an attempt new things. Whereas it will possibly appear intimidating at first, the instructions you’ll comply with for this challenge will assist you to approach extra advanced Linux tasks in the future!

On this tutorial, we’ll be using a Raspberry Pi four 4GB with a 32GB SD card, but you may as well comply with alongside on pretty much any laptop or Computer that has Ubuntu Desktop put in. You may even use a Virtual Machine.

Take a look at these tutorials for getting started with Ubuntu Desktop on these platforms:

Pc tutorial

VirtualBox tutorial

Raspberry Pi tutorial


Observe: We’ll be using Ubuntu Desktop 21.10 for Raspberry Pi on this tutorial, and suggest you observe along with Ubuntu Desktop 21.10 on whatever machine you use.

Of course, you’ll also need another Laptop or laptop with Minecraft Java Edition put in so you'll be able to hook up with your server as soon as you’ve created it!

Let’s bounce in.

Set up Ubuntu on your Raspberry Pi and update

If you’ve adopted the Raspberry Pi set up tutorial, you’ll be just about ready to go, however every time we begin a brand new undertaking, it’s at all times essential to ensure all the pieces is up to date.

Go forward and open a terminal (ALT+T or click the Terminal icon in your sidebar) and kind:

Enter your password and press Y when prompted.

This will test whether your model of Ubuntu is updated and obtain and install any new packages.

Install Java

Minecraft servers are primarily based on Minecraft Java Version, the unique model of Minecraft, so our subsequent step is to put in Java on our Raspberry Pi. The default Java on Ubuntu is older than the one used for Minecraft Servers, so we have to specifically set up the latest Java Runtime Setting (jre), which is version 18:

Sort your password and press Y when prompted.

Create a folder to your server

Now you need a spot to place the Minecraft server on your Pi. We might do it the ‘Windows’ way by opening the file manager, proper-clicking, and creating a brand new Folder named Minecraft. However we’re already within the terminal, so let’s keep typing right here!

The above will do precisely the same thing as utilizing the file manager. In actual fact, you'll be able to verify the file supervisor your self to verify that the brand new folder has appeared!

Since we’re going to install our server inside the new folder, we want to tell our terminal that we’re going to work there.

In the event you type

You'll be able to see that we’re still in the house listing of our Computer. You’ll see your Documents and Downloads folders, in addition to the brand new Minecraft folder you created. To get inside this folder, we'd like to change Listing (cd), so type:

In case you sort ls again, you'll be able to see that now nothing is returned, as a result of we’re inside an empty folder. You’ll also see that your immediate now includes the Minecraft folder identify:

Download Minecraft Server!

Go away your terminal open, but now you also have to open your internet browser.

In your browser, go to this page: https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/download/server

We wish to obtain the server linked here, but as a substitute of left-clicking it, let’s Proper-Click on and choose Copy Hyperlink.

This may be sure to at all times get the most recent model of the server when following this tutorial!

Leave that web page open, as we’ll come again to it shortly. Now return to the terminal window, ensuring we’re nonetheless in the Minecraft folder, and inform the terminal to download the server to this folder.

And then Proper-Click and Paste the link to the server. It ought to look one thing like this:

Then press ENTER. This command instructs your Pi to ‘get’ (obtain) whatever file is linked at that net handle you gave it.

You will notice the download complete, and in case you then sort:

You’ll see we now have a server.jar file in our Minecraft folder!

Start your server!

Go back to https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/obtain/server, and this time copy the Java directions listed into your terminal.

Press ENTER and… Error??

That’s because we just informed our Pi to run a file called minecraft_server.1.18.jar, however you can see from our last ls that when we put in the server it was simply known as server.jar.

That’s a simple repair.

If you happen to press UP on the keyboard, your final instruction shall be repeated. Try this now, and then edit the filename to server.jar and press ENTER again.

Success!

Type of. Now now Screamyguy.net have one other error. We have to conform to the tip Person License Agreement (EULA) before we can get started.

So where’s the EULA?

Well let’s use our trusty

on our Minecraft listing yet another time. You’ll see the set up course of has created a set of recent information. This is nice, because these information are what permits us to play around with the game rules! However before we can get to the fun stuff, let’s signal the EULA.

We will do this directly in the terminal (you are able to do every thing within the terminal, that’s why it’s so cool) utilizing a textual content editor referred to as nano. Sort:

This may open the eula.txt file in your terminal window. Now you just want to change the eula line to true as a substitute of false.

Then we press CTRL+S to save and CTRL+X to exit again to the Command Line.

Let’s attempt the server once more!

When you press UP a number of occasions on your keyboard, we will repeat the instruction from earlier without typing it out once more.

However let’s make one final change earlier than we run things and double the -Xmx1024M and -Xms1024M in our command to -Xmx2048M and -Xms2048. Xmx and Xms discuss with the quantity of memory the server will use. The extra we give it, the higher the performance.

Now we press ENTER once more and the server ought to begin correctly!

This subsequent bit is going to take a while. And also you most likely won’t be capable to browse Fb while you’re waiting, as a lot of the Raspberry Pi shall be focussed on standing up the server.

Once your server has finished establishing, you’ll probably get a few messages like this depending on how much reminiscence you assigned it within the earlier command. It’s regular to have a few of those at startup no matter happens, so don’t fear an excessive amount of.

High Tip: Better hardware means a better server. If you’re considering protecting your server round, or using it with lots of people, an 8GB Raspberry Pi 4 (with elevated Xmx and Xms numbers) will perform better. Attaching an SSD through a USB3.Zero port will even help.

Eventually, as players be a part of, you’ll be capable of see key occasions seem on the terminal as they occur in the game world.

Ouch.

You'll be able to stop your server any time by typing

within the Terminal. This will even save your world so you may resume once more at a later time.

Joining the Minecraft server over your local network

If you’ve invited your folks to affix your server on their laptops, they’re most likely a bit impatient to get going by now. But we’re finally prepared!

In your (or your friend’s) laptop computer or Computer, be certain that you're operating the Java Version of Minecraft (which you'll be able to install from the official Minecraft site - just download it and double-click on).

Then they should navigate to Multiplayer > Direct Connection.

Now they should enter the native IP handle of the server which is… hmmm. We don’t know.

Let’s go back to our server terminal!

To seek out out the server’s native IP, it's worthwhile to open a second terminal window, or a new tab in the current terminal (or simply stop your server for this bit and restart it after).

This will produce a string of numbers, however you solely need the first set.

Trying on the above, my local IP is 192.168.1.222. Yours can be related but not the identical.

So that’s what my company ought to add of their video games:

As soon as your guests have entered your server IP, they just must click Join Server and they’re in!

Sadly for my server, I spawned proper next to a spider. And it was raining.

Modifying your Server Settings

If you wish to play regular Minecraft regionally with your folks, then you’re all done - congratulations! But the best part of working a server is you could play god with the sport world!

Let’s shut the server (stop, remember?) and do some tweaking.

This time, we wish to do the identical factor as we did to sign the EULA however this time we’re going to edit a file known as server.properties (you might need spotted it the last time we used ls).

Kind:

This could deliver up all of the configuration choices in your server. In case you scroll down there’s fairly a few!

I won’t go into detail on every possibility, however you may examine them on the Minecraft Wiki.

Personally, I simply need to show off the spiders and change the server’s message of the day, so I’m going to make the next tweaks:

Simply as before, we press CTRL+S and then CTRL+X to save lots of and exit!

High Tip: If you'd like to start out a brand new Minecraft server, just delete the World folder out of your Minecraft directory, or rename the level-name in server.properties. This can create a brand new gameworld folder with the up to date identify subsequent time the server begins, and you may change back to the outdated one any time!

Connecting to your Minecraft server remotely

On this undertaking, we’ve proven you the best way to set up and customise a Minecraft server in your Raspberry Pi 4, and the way players on the identical Wi-Fi network can connect domestically to your gameworld.

You’ve also discovered some helpful Linux commands, like ls, nano, and mkdir!

But what if your folks need to attach remotely, from their very own homes?

When we think about gamers connecting over the web, we have to talk about more advanced concepts like port forwarding. We additionally need to think about security and what internet strangers might do in the event that they gained access to your Raspberry Pi.