How to set up a Minecraft server on Linux

A Minecraft server on Linux (in this case: Ubuntu 20.04) is quick and easy to set up. Once you have the right hardware ready for hosting, all you need is a current Java version and the latest program files of the sandbox computer game. You can obtain both con­ve­nient­ly via the terminal in Linux.

Hosting options where you can choose between Windows and Linux as the server operating system are available from a wide range of providers — including IONOS. Here, the vServer or VPS (Virtual Private Server) server model is rec­om­mend­ed for an easy start with a smaller Minecraft Linux server for a few people. For a low monthly fixed price, you get access to vir­tu­al­ized hardware resources that you can scale up and down at any time. As a generally suitable plan with the required computing power, we recommend VPS M.

In the table below you can find three concrete example use cases for a Minecraft server with Linux including matching server options from IONOS.

If you want to run your Minecraft server on a Linux dis­tri­b­u­tion, the choice is yours. The usual suspects such as Debian, Ubuntu, or OpenSUSE are possible as a system base as well as Arch Linux, Solus, Gentoo Linux or other, less common Linux dis­tri­b­u­tions. In the following tutorial, we show the in­di­vid­ual steps for setting up a Minecraft server using Ubuntu 20.04 as an example.

Connect to your Linux server by setting up a remote desktop con­nec­tion or by making an SSH con­nec­tion with PuTTy.

Once the con­nec­tion is es­tab­lished, your first step is to install the ad­di­tion­al com­po­nents required to run a Minecraft server via the terminal.

To do this, first update the package index of the package manager APT:

In the next step, you install the minimal OpenJDK Java runtime en­vi­ron­ment (headless), which is mandatory for running the Minecraft server ap­pli­ca­tion pro­grammed in Java:

To keep the Minecraft server active when you leave the terminal, also install the full-screen window manager Screen:

After you have installed the basic com­po­nents for your Minecraft server on Linux, the next step is to enable TCP port 25565. By default, the server ap­pli­ca­tion uses this port to com­mu­ni­cate with clients, so a cor­re­spond­ing firewall rule is essential. Use the following command to add the new policy:

Now find the in­stal­la­tion files behind the copied link using wget:

After you have down­loaded the server.jar file, you can run the server ap­pli­ca­tion at any time. Use the window manager screen installed in the first step, which you start with the following command:

Confirm the start of the manager with the space bar. Af­ter­wards you will see the familiar terminal interface, which is now ready for the start of the Minecraft server. To do this, execute the following input:

So, on the one hand, the eula.txt file could not be loaded, and on the other hand, the Minecraft server is missing con­fig­u­ra­tion in­for­ma­tion that is to be defined by default in the server.prop­er­ties file.

The End User License Agreement (EULA) consent file is sub­se­quent­ly generated directly in the current directory. You can open the file as follows:

Once you have agreed to the license agreement, you can turn to the server.prop­er­ties con­fig­u­ra­tion file. This was also created in the current directory when the server ap­pli­ca­tion was started for the first time. Open the file with the text editor nano:

After you have agreed to the EULA con­di­tions and saved your in­di­vid­ual server con­fig­u­ra­tion, you can now type the command already used in Step 4 for starting the Minecraft server in the Linux terminal one more time:

After suc­cess­ful startup process — which takes some time — the terminal displays the message:

Once you have the Minecraft server up and running on Linux, you will of course want it to remain active when you dis­con­nect remotely from the server. To initiate this, first exit the screen session with the key com­bi­na­tion [Ctrl] + [A] + [D].

Then run the following command to display all active screen sessions:

Now, to keep this session active even if you log off the server later, enter the following into the terminal — replacing the value “2385” with the in­di­vid­ual ID of your screen session:

Now you can close the screen window at any time with the key com­bi­na­tion [Ctrl] + [A] + [D] and log out of your server without closing the Minecraft server.