PiMinecraftAuto

The easy way to setup and run a safe minecraft server on raspberry pi

This project is made for people that want to easily have a running server at home

Note that you'll need a raspberry pi runing last raspbian operating system If you don't have much memory (if you have less than 1Gb memory), you can disable gui mode. Note that 16Gb is a minimum size for the memory card

Prerequisite

1. You'll need to ensure you're running the latest raspbian version
2. You'll need java 16 or earlier. See this website to download an arm32 java version, and this website to manually install the package
3. You'll need screen to be installed : sudo apt-get install screen
4. Download the latest buildtools.jar to generate a spigot.jar file

Minecraft server

Before thinking to save a server, you'll have to setup your server

There are lot of tutorial on the internet on how to easily setup this kind on server. I'll only leave you the run.sh script. See the previous link for installation

For the latest spigot version, please see Spigot wiki. Remember that the saving script can help you for updates. You can find more help for configuration and parameters on spigot wiki

Remember that the first launch will build all the data needed by the server (map,...).

My advice : Put your server in a dedicated folder like "myServer".

Systemd

First, you'll need to know what is systemd. It will help us in many things :

1. Run the server when raspberry start
2. Run automatic saves
3. Stop the server when shutting down the raspberry pi

NB : all the systemd files will be put in the /etc/systemd/system directory

Here are the 3 files :

1. server.service : That's the service that launch your server when raspberry starts and that manage to properly stop the server when needed
2. save.service : That's the service that will stop the server and launch the save script
3. save.timer : that's the timer that will automaticaly launch save.service (replace cronjob)

It's important that the .timer file have the same name as the .service to launch

You can rename all the files as you wish, but the directory can only be /etc/systemd/system

You can modify run.sh file if you're using a raspberry pi 4. If you do that, you can allow the server to use more memory.

The core script

It's the script that's launched when the save.service is activated. Its first goal is to copy you're server folder as an archive.

Note that I added some optional improvements to simplify my use of the server. All this improvements are optional :

1. Saving logs

It could be usefull to save the server logs so I added a script line that save the two latest logs into a specific folder.

2. Uploading the latest saves on dropbox and keep the only 2 latest saves

For the save to be complete, I thought it could be interesting to have a server save on the internet. If the raspberry burn, you can still use the latest save ! This functionality use the dropbox_uploader script by @andreafabrizi.

Remember that all this scripts are launched as root, so you'll need to setup dropbox_uploader as root. A simple sudo dropbox_uploader.sh is enough.

3. Automatic server update

Spigot offers the opportunity to build your spigot version. Using the buildtools.jar tool, you can get the latest version. This functionality use the buildtools script by spigot.

How to use it

You can use sudo su instead of using sudo You'll need to open a terminal and copy this command : sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NykoTera/PiMinecraft/master/install.sh && bash install.sh && rm install.sh

The script Will ask you a few things :

1. Where you want to download and install dropbox_uploader
2. Where spigot will create temporary files
3. Where you want to locate your server (by using a relative or an absolute path)
4. Where you want to locate your save
5. How you want to name the systemd file (.service)
6. How you want to name the saves files (.service and .timer)

When the script will end you'll have to end manually :

1. Setting up dropbox_uploader : open a terminal and type sudo xxxx/dropbox_uploader.sh and follow instructions (replace xxxx by the path to the dropbox_uploader folder). Please see Dropbox-Uploader github page for further details
2. Download buildtools : sudo wget -nd https://hub.spigotmc.org/jenkins/job/BuildTools/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/target/BuildTools.jar -O yyyy/BuildTools.jar (replace yyyy by the path to the spigot folder)
3. Launch buildtools : cd yyyyand then sudo java -Xmx1024M -jar BuildTools.jar --rev 1.16.1 you can change memory (-Xmx) and version (--rev) to match your needs (replace yyyy by the path to the spigot folder) Please see Spigot wiki for further details about versions
4. Copy spigot to your server folder : sudo cp spigot-* zzzz/spigot.jar (replace yyyy by the path to the spigot folder and zzzz by the path to the server folder)
5. Finaly, launch your server : cd zzzz and then sudo sh run.sh (replace zzzz by the path to the server folder). Note that the first time you launch your server it will return this message : You need to agree to the EULA in order to run the server. Go to eula.txt for more info. All you have to do now is to modify this eula.txt file : sudo nano eula.txt and replace eula=false by eula=true. To close nano, press ctrl + X, type Y to validate changes and press enter to keep the file's name. You can now relaunch your server sudo sh run.sh. At this point, another way to launch your server is by using systemctl command : sudo systemctl start yourservice.service (launch the server service, not the save service !))

If you want to use an existing server, replace the folders and files created on your raspberry by your own files and folders.

Future developments

You can actualy only use a new server, but I'll modify install.sh script to let you re-use your own existing server by downloading files.