minecraft-init-script

by Jamie Bainbridge <jamie.bainbridge@gmail.com>

This is an initscript to run a Minecraft or CraftBukkit server on CentOS, Fedora, and Ubuntu.

Note

As of 2015, this script is no longer actively maintained. All the supported distros are moving to systemd, making the concept of an LSB initscript rather outdated. All issues I see are related to bugs in Ubuntu's implementation of Upstart, it works perfectly on CentOS. However I think you are much better learning to use containers like Docker to control a single process and its files. There are many instructions around the internet on how to do this.

Thanks to all supporters over the years. You are welcome to fork this repo if you wish to continue development.

Features

• Start, stop, restart CraftBukkit as a system service
• Automatic (via cron) and manual logfile rotation
• Automatic (via cron) and manual backups
• Backup compression and rotation (keeps 7 days worth of backups)
• Allows use of third-party backup solutions
• Check latest Recommended Build and update to it if required
• Information display including Java path, current memory usage, current TCP connections
• Able to run multiple separate instances of the server at once

Supported Distributions

• CentOS 6, CentOS 5, Fedora 14 (probably works on Fedora Core 6 and later, untested)
• Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS

Other distros which use SysV Init or Upstart will probably work.

Distros using systemd (Fedora 15+, Arch Linux, etc) may not work.

Requirements

• screen, rsync

  (you may need to install these)

• bash, chkconfig or sysv-rc, coreutils, cronie, curl, diffutils, grep, initscripts, net-tools, procps, tar

(these should all be installed by default)

• Oracle Java 7

• Enough disk space to save your map twice, plus another ~5 times for a week of compressed backup space.

ie: If your map is 1Gb then you probably need at least 7Gb, plus any space your plugins require and any additional backups you'll be making.

Installation

As the root user:

• Install Sun Java (CentOS/Fedora)

  Download the RPM from http://www.java.com/

  yum localinstall jre-<version>.rpm

• Install Sun Java (Ubuntu)

  sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get install oracle-java7-installer
  

• Confirm your JVM installation

  java -version
  

• Create a new user with a home directory

  useradd -m bukkit
  

• Save the script as /etc/init.d/minecraft and make it executable

  chmod +x /etc/init.d/minecraft
  

• Copy between the <<COMMENT and COMMENT lines and place the copy at /etc/default/minecraft

  If you need to edit settings, edit the /etc/default/minecraft file, not the initscript

• Allow the bukkit user to run the init script without needing root access

  Type visudo and add this line to the bottom:

  bukkit localhost=NOPASSWD:/etc/init.d/minecraft*
  

• Create an alias so you only have to type minecraft to run the script

  Add the following line to both root and bukkit's ~/.bashrc file:

  alias minecraft='/etc/init.d/minecraft'
  

• Start the server on system boot if desired (CentOS/Fedora)

  chkconfig --add minecraft
  chkconfig minecraft on
  

• Start the server on system boot if desired (Ubuntu)

  update-rc.d minecraft defaults
  

As the regular user, bukkit:

• Make the required paths

  mkdir -p ~/backups && mkdir -p ~/craftbukkit
  

• Put your craftbukkit.jar, world, plugins, server.properties, etc into ~/craftbukkit

Backups

• Create cron jobs to do regular backups and rotations around 4am

  Type crontab -e to open the cron interface and add the following

   0 4 * * * /etc/init.d/minecraft backup              # backup world at 4:00am
   5 4 * * * /etc/init.d/minecraft logrotate           # rotate logs at 4:05am
  15 4 * * * /etc/init.d/minecraft removeoldbackups    # remove old backups at 4:30am
  

• If you have multiple worlds, you can pass the worldname as a parameter to the regular backup

   0 4 * * * /etc/init.d/minecraft backup world1       # backup world1 at 4:00am
   5 4 * * * /etc/init.d/minecraft logrotate           # rotate logs at 4:05am
  15 4 * * * /etc/init.d/minecraft backup world2       # backup world2 at 4:15am
  30 4 * * * /etc/init.d/minecraft removeoldbackups    # remove old backups at 4:30am
  

• If you wish to use a third-party backup solution, just disable world writes

  minecraft save-off
  

  Then run your backup tool. Then re-enable world writes

  minecraft save-on
  

Multiple Instances

It is possible to run multiple instances, for example a Creative server and a Survival server, on the same system.

• Copy the script to two new files

  cp /etc/init.d/minecraft /etc/init.d/minecraft-creative
  cp /etc/init.d/minecraft /etc/init.d/minecraft-survival
  

• Edit the Provides section on Line 6 to the same as the new filename

  # Provides: minecraft-creative
  # Provides: minecraft-survival
  

• Create a settings file for each instance in /etc/default/ using the same name as the script

  /etc/default/minecraft-creative
  /etc/default/minecraft-creative
  

• Set an alias for each server in ~/.bashrc

  alias creative='/etc/init.d/minecraft-creative'
  alias survival='/etc/init.d/minecraft-survival'
  

• Add the new scripts to chkconfig or update-rc.d

• Set the paths of the separate maps in each script

  MCPATH="/home/bukkit/craftbukkit-creative"
  MCPATH="/home/bukkit/craftbukkit-survival"
  

• Change your screen session names in each script

  SCRNAME="creative"
  SCRNAME="survival"
  

Usage

• Start the server

  minecraft start
  

• Stop the server

  minecraft stop
  

• Restart the server

  minecraft restart
  

• Back up the map and executable

  minecraft backup
  

  The final compressed backup is done when the .md5 file appears in the backup directory.

• Back up multiple maps

  minecraft backup world1
  minecraft backup world2
  

• Check the server is running

  minecraft status
  

• Get some more info

  minecraft info
  
  * CraftBukkit (pid 9037) is running...
  - Java Path : /usr/java/jre1.6.0_31/bin/java
  - Start Command : java -Xms512M -Xmx3584M -jar craftbukkit.jar nogui
  - Server Path : /home/bukkit/craftbukkit
  - World Name : world
  - Process ID : 9037
  - Memory Usage : 742796 kb
  - Active Connections :
  Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State
  tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:25565 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
  tcp 0 0 192.168.2.99:25565 192.168.2.69:55507 ESTABLISHED
  

• Broadcast a message to the server

  minecraft say
  

  Note that some punctuation like 'apostrophes' will not work.

License

GNU GPLv3

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Contributors

• Jamie Bainbridge <jamie.bainbridge@gmail.com>
• Polhemic on GitHub
• Mooash on GitHub
• Jon Stephens

Initial concept based off

• http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/tutorial-centos-bukkit-installation.56371/
• http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/M3tal_Warrior_Server_Startup_Script
• http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/admin-linux-init-script-for-bukkit.53235/