minutemen

Build/Provision dedicated minecraft servers with forge mod support in seconds.

How this project came to be

I began work on minutemen when I offered to host a small modded minecraft server for some friends and I. I was unimpressed with the current opensource offerings I found online so I decided to build my own. Most of the scripts/tutorials I found on forums/blogs either went against Linux best practices or went as far as suggesting screen in lieu of a named pipe and proper init system. I found these solutions to be unacceptable.

Features

• Written 100% in Bash 💪 Depends only on common Linux utilities; no additional languages required
• Designed to be rerunnable with no repercussions
• Built with security in mind
• Supports Fedora and Ubuntu. If your distro of choice isn't compatible make an issue.
• Utilizes Systemd
• Does NOT depend on screen; instead named pipes are used
• Supports multiple concurrent minecraft servers on a single host
• Supports multiple versions of ForgeMod. Each instance can run a different version.

Installaton

Quick and Dirty

curl | bash is indefensible. Just because the transport is over HTTPS doesn't guarantee the content hasn't been maliciously modified on the server. It also doesn't guarantee that you won't receive a partial download that happens to stop at some inopportune time.

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/egladman/minutemen/master/bootstrap.sh | bash

The Proper Way

git clone git@github.com:egladman/minutemen.git
cd minutemen
./bootstrap.sh -v -e 28.1.0

Note: Checkout manifest.json to see all supported forgemod versions. Other versions can be added with minimum effort.

Tips and Tricks

1. Run the help utility for more info

./bootstrap.sh -h

2. Override jvm max heap size in megabytes

./bootstrap.sh -m 4096M

3. Have you created a monster and don't know what to do?

Delete the main installation folder and rerun bootstrap.sh

rm -rf /opt/minecraft

4. Kill instance

Warning: You run the risk of data loss. Can you use systemctl stop minutemen@<uuid>?

systemctl kill -s SIGKILL minutemen@<uuid>

5. If you're running multiple builds place the forge installer jar in /opt/minecraft/.cache to reduce network activity. The .jar is cached after the first install.

Configuration

Mods

1. If you add mods (i.e. .jar) to /opt/minecraft/instances/<uuid>/mods or /opt/minecraft/.forgemods be sure to set permissions

chown -R mminecraft:mminecraft /opt/minecraft/.forgemods
# or
chown -R mminecraft:mminecraft /opt/minecraft/instances/<uuid>/mods/

2. Mods placed in /opt/minecraft/.forgemods will be automatically be installed

Password

1. Generate a password with the following command:

#Tested againt mkpasswd 5.5.3 on Fedora31
mkpasswd --method=sha512crypt mySuperSecretPassword

Tip: Run mkpasswd --method=help to print all the available encryption algorthims. SHA-512 is by far the strongest provided by mkpasswd.

2. For example if you'd like user: mminecraft to have password: HelloWorld you'd run:

mkpasswd --method=sha512crypt HelloWorld

mkpasswd will return the following:

$6$RN.HLGL5BosPQ2ZS$kVfGYi709anfOLAn7Hc18zwTfhRhwEcLfSMvhKl2yVU1wIJV4P4sJTheebx8BMpzr0HWl/cIsp3GK8FO670v9.

Note: By default mkpasswd salts the string. So each time you run mkpasswd you'll get a different hash by design.

3. Pass the hash into bootstrap.sh as an environment variable

MC_USER_PASSWORD_HASH='$6$RN.HLGL5BosPQ2ZS$kVfGYi709anfOLAn7Hc18zwTfhRhwEcLfSMvhKl2yVU1wIJV4P4sJTheebx8BMpzr0HWl/cIsp3GK8FO670v9.' ./bootstrap.sh

Logging

1. The forge installer stdout is saved to /opt/minecraft/log/<uuid>

2. View process details

systemctl status minutemen@<uuid>

3. View logs that would typically be printed to stdout

journalctl -u minutemen@<uuid>.service -f

Console Commands

To run the following commands you'll need to authenticate as mminecraft

su - mminecraft

/opt/minecraft/bin
├── backup
├── backup-restore
├── cmd
├── save
├── start
└── stop

1. backup

• Summary: Copies /opt/minecraft/instances/<uuid> directory and saves it to /opt/minecraft/backups/<uuid> as <epoch-time>.tar.gz
• Example: /opt/minecraft/bin/backup <uuid>

2. backup-restore

• Summary: Recover from backup.
• Example: /opt/minecraft/bin/backup-restore <uuid> <epoch-time>

3. cmd

• Summary: Execute any console command. See full list here
• Example: /opt/minecraft/bin/cmd <uuid> say HELLO

4. save

• Summary: Executes console command save-all flush.
• Example: /opt/minecraft/bin/save <uuid>

5. start

• Summary: Skip systemd and run the server manually
• Example: /opt/minecraft/bin/start <uuid>

6. stop

• Summary: Executes console command stop
• Example: /opt/minecraft/bin/stop <uuid>