Minecraft Server Template

This template shows how to setup a Minecraft server as a systemd service, with RCON, tty support and optional log display to screen.

Setup

Server

create the directory /srv/minecraft and put your server files there, renaming the executable to server.jar

User, Group

Following best practices, create a user, and group to run the server

groupadd minecraft
useradd -g minecraft minecraft

After you've placed all the files the sevrer needs in the /srv/minecraft/ directory, change their owner to the created user

chown -R minecraft:minecraft /srv/minecraft/

Services

Copy all the files located in /etc/systemd/system from the repository to the exact same path in the filesystem. This will only work on systems with systemd enabled, namely Ubuntu 18.10 and newer. (my machines run Ubutnu 20.04) The directory /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service is optional, in case you plan on attaching a screen to the server, but not on using it for input, as this will bind a readonly stream to the output of the display.

Finally, To run the server and the execute the following commands

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable minecraft
sudo systemctl start minecraft
sudo systemctl restart getty@tty1.service # optional