Minecraft Bedrock Edition is the version of Minecraft that powers the iPhone / Android versions (formerly Minecraft Pocket Edition), the Xbox / PlayStation / Nintendo Switch editions and the free Windows 10 Minecraft edition.
Mojang has released a dedicated server which is considered to be in alpha testing. I have found it to be very stable and able to run on a wide variety of hardware.
This script and guide are written to help you get a robust Minecraft Bedrock dedicated server up and running in only a few minutes!
This is the standalone version. The easiest and most problem-free way to run this is using Docker (installed as simply as sudo apt install docker.io): Legendary Minecraft Bedrock Container
Sets up the official Minecraft Bedrock Server (currently in alpha testing)
Fully operational Minecraft Bedrock edition server in a couple of minutes
Ubuntu / Debian distributions supported
Sets up Minecraft as a system service with option to autostart at boot
Automatic backups when server restarts
Supports multiple instances — you can run multiple Bedrock servers on the same system
Updates automatically to the latest or user-defined version when server is started
Easy control of server with start.sh, stop.sh and restart.sh scripts
Adds logging with timestamps to “logs” directory
Optional scheduled daily restart of server using cron
Requirements
A computer with a 64 bit processor (if you are trying to use ARM read my article on the limitations). 32 bit binaries of the official server are not available so it needs to be 64 bit!
1 GB of RAM or higher
The only officially supported platform by Microsoft is Ubuntu 22.04 / 20.04 (current LTS, recommended)
Other Linux flavors supported by this script as well as long as they use systemd (for the service). The script assumes apt is installed but there are minimal dependencies so you could install these on another distro (that doesn’t have apt present) and use the script normally.
Recommended Gear
Game Editions
Minecraft: Bedrock Edition is the “Windows 10” version of Minecraft as well as the version of Minecraft on the Xbox / Playstation / Switch. The versions of Minecraft for Android and iOS are also the Bedrock edition.
All of these versions support cross-platform play with each other (but not with the Java edition).
Minecraft Bedrock Digital Code
This is the PC Minecraft for Windows 10 (Bedrock) edition of Minecraft. It is able to play cross-platform with other players on Android / iOS / Playstation / Xbox / Switch. Available as a code that is instantly activated to give you permanent access to the game!
I strongly recommend a Solid State drive (SSD) for your server. This is because Minecraft is constantly reading/storing chunks to the disk which makes I/O performance very important.
These are much cheaper than they used to be. Here’s a decent 120 GB one (higher capacity options are available) at a very low price:
Kingston A400 2.5″ SATA SSD
The Kingston A400 is reliable, widely available around the world, has low power requirements and performs very well. It’s also very affordable. This drive has been benchmarked over 1000 times at Pi Benchmarks and is the #1 most popular SSD among the community!
If you have a M.2 NVME slot in your motherboard you can go with a high end drive. This will give your server maximum performance even if a large number of players are running around on the server changing blocks and triggering disk writes.
This is the one I have in my machine. These range from 250 GB to 2 TB depending on how big your server might grow:
The Samsung 980 Pro (NVMe) is a professional grade SSD and one of the fastest in the world. The Samsung NVMe drives have been at the top of this category for a long time and are well trusted for both their performance and reliability / long life.
Almost any PC made in the last few years will be a x86_64 bit computer. If you have an older computer around that isn’t being used then it will most likely have the right CPU and amount of memory (as well as fast storage) to run a basic server.
Throwing a SSD in one of these older computers will provide an excellent server experience for small and larger player counts.
The speed of your storage will make the largest difference. Older HDDs are going to have significantly slower performance than any modern SSD even with all other hardware equal. This is because the Minecraft server is constantly reading/writing chunks of your world as well as updates to it to the disk so this tends to be the bottleneck.
Operating System
I highly recommend using Ubuntu Server to run the Minecraft dedicated server. It is available here.
At the time of writing the current version is Ubuntu Server 20.04. This is a secure and robust operating system and will leave plenty of resources available for the server to run.
The script should run on any Debian based flavor of Linux but since the Minecraft Bedrock server is compiled natively for Ubuntu I recommend sticking with it. If you have a GUI flavor of Ubuntu and a decent PC (>= 2 GB of RAM) the server will work just fine on it.
Note: People have reported in the comments that Ubuntu 16.x is no longer working with the latest official Mojang binaries. Ubuntu 18.04 is the minimum requirement for the latest versions, and 20.04 is recommended!
Installation
Log into your Linux server either using SSH or a mouse and keyboard and paste/type the following command:
The script will setup the Minecraft sever and ask you some questions on how to configure it. I’ll explain here what they mean.
The first question will be the installation path. This is the root installation path for ALL servers you will have. If you add additional servers later you should select the exact same installation path. It should always be left as the default (~).
The only exception is if you have something like a completely dedicated disk for the Minecraft server. In that case you should always use the same root path of /mnt/yourdrive or wherever the path is for every new/additional server you install.
“Start Minecraft server at startup automatically (y/n)?” – This will set the Minecraft service to start automatically when your server boots. This is a great option to set up a Minecraft server that is always available.
“Automatically restart and backup server at 4am daily (y/n)?” – This will add a cron job to the server that reboots the server every day at 4am. This is great because every time the server restarts it backs up the server and updates to the latest version. See the “Scheduled Daily Reboots” section below for information on how to customize the time or remove the reboot.
That is it for the setup script. The server will finish configuring and start!
First Run
The server will start up and start displaying output to the console.
Once you see the “Server started” line you will be able to connect from the client.
To add the server to the client open Minecraft and click “Play”. Then at the top of the screen select the “Servers” tab and click “Add Server”.
This will ask you for a Server Name and Server IP Address. For the name you can put anything and for the server IP address put the address of your Linux server. Leave the port as the default 19132. For more information on how to let people from outside your network on go to the “Port Forwarding” section below.
Now choose the server you just added in the list and connect!
Start, Stop and Restart Server
The server can be started, stopped and restarted two different ways. You can use the provided scripts in the Minecraft folder or you can use systemctl. Here are the commands:
The server backs up each time it starts. This helps you recover easily if something goes wrong. This system works best if you configured the server to restart daily since it means you will have a backup every day.
To access these backups type:
cd ~/minecraftbe/backups ls
When a backup is made the filename will be the date and time the backup was taken. If you need to restore a backup it’s very easy. Substitute the timestamp in my example to the backup you want to roll back to. Type:
cd ~/minecraftbe
./stop.sh
rm -rf worlds
tar -xf backups/2019.02.15.22.06.30.tar.gz
./start.sh
Your world has now been restored! It’s a good idea to download these backups off the server periodically just in case the server’s storage fails.
The daily reboots are scheduled using cron. It’s very easy to customize the time your server restarts.
To change the time that the server restarts type: crontab -e
This will open a window that will ask you to select a text editor (I find nano to be the easiest) and will show the cronjobs scheduled on the server. The Minecraft one will look like the following:
0 4 * * * /home/ubuntu/minecraftbe/restart.sh
Crontab’s syntax layout
There are 5 fields here. The default restart time is set to reboot at 0 minutes of the 4th hour of the day (4 AM). The other 3 fields are left as * to represent every day of every month. Make any desired changes here and press Ctrl+X to exit nano and update the cronjob.
To remove the daily reboot simply delete the line and save.
Reconfigure / Update Scripts
The scripts can always be reconfigured and updated by downloading the latest SetupMinecraft.sh and running the installer again. It will update all of the scripts in the Minecraft directory and reinstall the startup service for you.
Running SetupMinecraft.sh again will also give you a chance to reconfigure options such as the memory dedicated to the server, daily reboots, starting the server on boot, etc.
This will not overwrite your world or any other data so it is safe to run!
Port Forwarding
If everyone on your server is on the same LAN or WiFi network as you then you don’t need to do this. If you want people to connect from outside your local network then you need to set up port forwarding on your router.
The process for this is different for every router so the best thing to do is just look at your router and find the model # and put that in google with port forwarding for easy instructions on how to do it for your specific router.
You want to forward port 19132. The type of connection is both TCP and UDP. On some routers you need to do both a TCP entry and then a second entry as UDP.
Once you do this people will be able to connect to your Minecraft server through your public IP address. This is different than your local IP which is usually a 192.x.x.x or 10.x.x.x. If you don’t know what that is just go to google and type “what’s my ip” and Google will kindly tell you!
Version Override
You can revert to a previous version with the revert.sh script included in your directory like this:
james@jamesgigabyte-linux:~/minecraftbe/james$ ./revert.sh
Set previous version in version_pin.txt: bedrock-server-1.19.10.20.zip
If you have a specific version you would like to run you can also create version_pin.txt yourself like this:
The version hold can be removed by deleting version_pin.txt. This will allow it to update to the latest version again!
Wired vs. Wireless
Going with an ethernet (wired) connection is going to be faster and more reliable. There’s so much wireless traffic and other interference in the air that running your server on WiFi is not recommended.
Even if it is working great 99% of the time it can ruin your experience very quickly if the WiFi drops for a couple of seconds and you get blown up by a creeper!
All that being said, the server works fine on wireless. The script will work fine as is with a wireless connection.
Benchmarking / Testing Storage
If you’re getting poor performance you may want to run my storage benchmark with:
PC results won’t show up on the site yet (it’s meant for Raspberry Pi) but it will run on Linux just fine and give you a score. If you search for the model of your drive on Pi Benchmarks you can compare your score with others and make sure the drive is performing correctly!
Troubleshooting Note – Oracle Virtual Machines
A very common problem people have with the Oracle Virtual Machine tutorials out there that typically show you how to use a free VM is that the VM is much more difficult to configure than just about any other product / offering out there.
It is because there are several steps you need to take to open the ports on the Oracle VM. You need to both:
Set the ingress ports (TCP/UDP) in the Virtual Cloud Network (VCN) security list
*and* set the ingress ports in a Network Security Group assigned to your instance
Both of these settings are typically required before you will be able to connect to your VM instance. This is purely configuration related and has nothing to do with the script or the Minecraft server itself.
I do not recommend this platform due to the configuration difficulty but the people who have gone through the pain of configuring an Oracle VM have had good experiences with it after that point. Just keep in mind it’s going to be a rough ride through the configuration for most people.
Troubleshooting Note – Hyper-V
There is a weird bug in Hyper-V that breaks UDP connections on the Minecraft server. The fix for this is that you have to use a Generation 1 VM with the Legacy LAN network driver.
Conclusion
The Minecraft Bedrock Edition dedicated server runs much better than previous third party servers in the past that were missing critical features. The performance is very good even on low end hardware. It has never been easier to set up a Minecraft Bedrock server.
If you have any feedback or suggestions let me know in the comment section. A lot of the changes and developments in this script and guide are directly from readers.
Your Minecraft Bedrock client should say 1.16.200 in the bottom right corner of the main menu screen which is the current version and the server should be the same.
1.16.4 is the current Java version. If you are running Java you may need to check out my Minecraft Java Server Guide! It works the same as this but it will work with version 1.16.4 since you will have a matching Java server! It’s meant for Raspberry Pis but it works just fine on most distros.
If you’re absolutely positive you have Minecraft Bedrock (the one for Android, iOS, Switch, Playstation, Xbox and the special “Windows 10” edition from the Microsoft App Store) then you probably enrolled in the RTX beta version.
If you enrolled in the beta you need to go back into the Xbox Insider app, then you need to unenroll from the beta and go back to normal version. Then you need to delete your Minecraft app and redownload it from the store. This might take a few tries, I had to do it like 5 times before it finally gave me the normal version again.
There is no dedicated server available for the beta. It was never released, so if you are on the beta all it will do now is make it so you can’t play with any of your friends that aren’t on the PC beta version and can’t host a dedicated server. Hopefully that helps!
Thanks for letting us know, I’m always super curious what these issues end up being. It helps me revise the guides/scripts to help others not experience the same problems when they try it and I learn a lot from them. Cheers!
This is great! Thank you for putting all of this together.
I am currently running BDS on a Windows 10 PC and will be using your solution to deploy a linux version. Do you have any information on how to import my map and how to edit the various server properties?
On the Windows version, this would be the server.properties, permissions.json, whitelist.json, etc. Are these the same file names in linux?
That’s a really good question that I don’t think I’ve been asked before! The server folders are completely identical other than bedrock_server.exe and bedrock_server.pdb being present on the Windows version vs the flat bedrock_server binary on Linux as well as a libCrypto.so library. My initial gut instinct when you asked this is that you could literally just copy the entire folder over verbatim and then just put the Linux bedrock_server executable and libCrypto.so in a copy of your existing Windows folder. I snagged a screenshot to show the different folder structures:
Even with it looking so promising I didn’t dare tell you this would actually work until I tried it, so I moved my Linux server over to Windows and just dropped bedrock_server.exe and bedrock_server.pdb in there leaving everything else unchanged. And….
It’s working! I’m stranded on top of the exact same tree (which just so happened to be this world’s spawn point) in the dark as I was before I took the server down on Linux. There was a warning when I started the server that detected “corruption” and was going to automatically repair it. I closed the server and opened it again and the warning was gone, so apparently it was successfully repaired.
I did one last test and sent the server back up to Linux after running it inside Windows. This one fired right up. I didn’t even get the corruption warning / repair going back to Linux. It was just good to go!
So after testing this, here’s what I would try. First make sure you have backups. Lots of backups. Then install the Bedrock server on Linux using this script. Once that’s done, do a screen -r and close that server and then overwrite the entire folder with your Windows one. Let it replace everything that has a conflict. cp winbackupfolderhere ~/minecraftbe/yourserverlabel should do the trick! I actually just used WinSCP from Windows and SFTP’d into the Pi so I could drag and drop the existing server files on top of the new ones. Hopefully that helps!
CIFS is very handy! I just recently added log rotation as a lot of people (including myself) would fill up the storage with backups. CIFS will be great for pulling longer term backups off periodically if you want to save historical snapshots or anything like that.
Hi there,
I have a brand new installation but “Unable to connect to world” error from Minecraft PE on android. Any suggestions on how to troubleshoot this please?
So typically there isn’t too much that can go wrong in the basic setup. What do you see when you type screen -r? Do you see the server console or does it say there’s no screens available?
Are you using a firewall on your distro? Does your distro have UFW or another firewall enabled or built-in that you have to do something like a ufw allow 19132 to open the Minecraft server port up (may vary based on distro, might have to Google to see if it has a firewall)? Did you use the default ports or put something different in? Is the distro a fresh install or is it doing other things? Are you connecting to your private IP address (something like a 192.x or 10.x) and not your public IP address?
Is this some sort of shared internet connection like one built into an apartment complex/school/business/etc.? Can you log into the router interface or is it outside your control?
Are you trying to connect by IP address or are you trying to let the Android server browser autodiscover the server? Can you ping the server, etc?
It’s almost certainly going to be a configuration issue. This script is several years old at this point and all things equal on a working network with a fresh distro it will fire right up!
I did test it on Android today just to make sure it was still working. The only trouble I had was the first time I added the server it would not connect. After I force closed Minecraft (by swiping up when you’re in app switch mode) and reloaded it it would. Maybe it’s worth a try to force close it and let it reopen with your server saved in there. This got it in for me.
Good Morning James, Are in game chats able to be logged in the daily log file? I’m been told to the server file/logs and extract the gz files. I cannot location a chat log. Requested on your Raspberry PI document chat as well. I used both your scripts to create Java and Bedrock servers for my kids and their friends during COVID-19.
Had an instant where another parent asked to see the chat log. So far I’m coming up blank.
This will list all the logs in the folder. There is a “latest.log” which will be the current log. Then there will be logs organized by date if you need to go back a little ways like this:
mesh@mesh:~/minecraft$ cd logs
mesh@mesh:~/minecraft/logs$ ls
2020-11-06-2.log 2020-11-12-2.log.gz 2020-11-27-2.log.gz
2020-11-12-1.log.gz 2020-11-27-1.log.gz latest.log
The gz ones are compressed (a gzip file) and the regular .log files are just plain text. You’ll see the chat messages in those files. To get the messages out of the gz one use this command:
gunzip 2020-11-12-2.log.gz
And this will turn it back into a log file. You can open it using sudo nano 2020-11-12-2.log. Hopefully that helps!
Wow! Thank you so much, having no experience with the likes of linux/command line/ip adresses, etc, I actually did it!
My 12 yo son is super impressed with me too.
I would like to learn more about customising and adding mods assuming it’s possible
Would appreciate it if someone could point me in right direction.
I’ve been using your script for quite some time and it’s great, but now I’m wanting to move to using docker. I’ve been trying to get more and more efficient with my homelab over the last couple of years and I’ve recently migrated most things to a couple of minimalistic, low power, and low cost servers. I’m a beginner with docker and maybe there’s an obvious solution, but do you know of a way to “dockerize” this setup? I’m currently testing with a container and it’s pretty simple to set up, but It would be nice to have scripts that mimic what your current scripts do. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
James,
Thank you for putting this together. However, I am unable to connect due to my version being different. Is it possible to change the server version?
For example, I am running 1.16.4 but the server is running 1.16.2.
Hey Ansh,
Your Minecraft Bedrock client should say 1.16.200 in the bottom right corner of the main menu screen which is the current version and the server should be the same.
1.16.4 is the current Java version. If you are running Java you may need to check out my Minecraft Java Server Guide! It works the same as this but it will work with version 1.16.4 since you will have a matching Java server! It’s meant for Raspberry Pis but it works just fine on most distros.
If you’re absolutely positive you have Minecraft Bedrock (the one for Android, iOS, Switch, Playstation, Xbox and the special “Windows 10” edition from the Microsoft App Store) then you probably enrolled in the RTX beta version.
Being in the RTX beta is now absolutely pointless because NVIDIA released it on the *main* Bedrock version in 1.16.200 on December 8th.
If you enrolled in the beta you need to go back into the Xbox Insider app, then you need to unenroll from the beta and go back to normal version. Then you need to delete your Minecraft app and redownload it from the store. This might take a few tries, I had to do it like 5 times before it finally gave me the normal version again.
There is no dedicated server available for the beta. It was never released, so if you are on the beta all it will do now is make it so you can’t play with any of your friends that aren’t on the PC beta version and can’t host a dedicated server. Hopefully that helps!
Hi!
Thanks for your reply! I was running a old version of Bedrock and had not updated to the latest one! Thanks for all your help!
Hey Ansh,
That’s awesome I’m glad you got it working!
Thanks for letting us know, I’m always super curious what these issues end up being. It helps me revise the guides/scripts to help others not experience the same problems when they try it and I learn a lot from them. Cheers!
James,
This is great! Thank you for putting all of this together.
I am currently running BDS on a Windows 10 PC and will be using your solution to deploy a linux version. Do you have any information on how to import my map and how to edit the various server properties?
On the Windows version, this would be the server.properties, permissions.json, whitelist.json, etc. Are these the same file names in linux?
Hey Jim,
That’s a really good question that I don’t think I’ve been asked before! The server folders are completely identical other than bedrock_server.exe and bedrock_server.pdb being present on the Windows version vs the flat bedrock_server binary on Linux as well as a libCrypto.so library. My initial gut instinct when you asked this is that you could literally just copy the entire folder over verbatim and then just put the Linux bedrock_server executable and libCrypto.so in a copy of your existing Windows folder. I snagged a screenshot to show the different folder structures:
Even with it looking so promising I didn’t dare tell you this would actually work until I tried it, so I moved my Linux server over to Windows and just dropped bedrock_server.exe and bedrock_server.pdb in there leaving everything else unchanged. And….
It’s working! I’m stranded on top of the exact same tree (which just so happened to be this world’s spawn point) in the dark as I was before I took the server down on Linux. There was a warning when I started the server that detected “corruption” and was going to automatically repair it. I closed the server and opened it again and the warning was gone, so apparently it was successfully repaired.
I did one last test and sent the server back up to Linux after running it inside Windows. This one fired right up. I didn’t even get the corruption warning / repair going back to Linux. It was just good to go!
So after testing this, here’s what I would try. First make sure you have backups. Lots of backups. Then install the Bedrock server on Linux using this script. Once that’s done, do a screen -r and close that server and then overwrite the entire folder with your Windows one. Let it replace everything that has a conflict. cp winbackupfolderhere ~/minecraftbe/yourserverlabel should do the trick! I actually just used WinSCP from Windows and SFTP’d into the Pi so I could drag and drop the existing server files on top of the new ones. Hopefully that helps!
James
You are a legend – I am going to try this tomorrow!
I am happy to hear that WinSCP works for this too!
I have a CIFS that I will mount to linux with the intent to maybe use along side your backup feature.
I will keep you posted on the progress.
CIFS is very handy! I just recently added log rotation as a lot of people (including myself) would fill up the storage with backups. CIFS will be great for pulling longer term backups off periodically if you want to save historical snapshots or anything like that.
Definitely let us know how it goes!
Hi there,
I have a brand new installation but “Unable to connect to world” error from Minecraft PE on android. Any suggestions on how to troubleshoot this please?
Thanks
So typically there isn’t too much that can go wrong in the basic setup. What do you see when you type screen -r? Do you see the server console or does it say there’s no screens available?
Are you using a firewall on your distro? Does your distro have UFW or another firewall enabled or built-in that you have to do something like a ufw allow 19132 to open the Minecraft server port up (may vary based on distro, might have to Google to see if it has a firewall)? Did you use the default ports or put something different in? Is the distro a fresh install or is it doing other things? Are you connecting to your private IP address (something like a 192.x or 10.x) and not your public IP address?
Is this some sort of shared internet connection like one built into an apartment complex/school/business/etc.? Can you log into the router interface or is it outside your control?
Are you trying to connect by IP address or are you trying to let the Android server browser autodiscover the server? Can you ping the server, etc?
It’s almost certainly going to be a configuration issue. This script is several years old at this point and all things equal on a working network with a fresh distro it will fire right up!
I did test it on Android today just to make sure it was still working. The only trouble I had was the first time I added the server it would not connect. After I force closed Minecraft (by swiping up when you’re in app switch mode) and reloaded it it would. Maybe it’s worth a try to force close it and let it reopen with your server saved in there. This got it in for me.
Good Morning James, Are in game chats able to be logged in the daily log file? I’m been told to the server file/logs and extract the gz files. I cannot location a chat log. Requested on your Raspberry PI document chat as well. I used both your scripts to create Java and Bedrock servers for my kids and their friends during COVID-19.
Had an instant where another parent asked to see the chat log. So far I’m coming up blank.
Hey RJDaPirate,
The log files can be seen by going to:
cd ~/minecraft/logs
ls
nano latest.log
This will list all the logs in the folder. There is a “latest.log” which will be the current log. Then there will be logs organized by date if you need to go back a little ways like this:
mesh@mesh:~/minecraft$ cd logsmesh@mesh:~/minecraft/logs$ ls
2020-11-06-2.log 2020-11-12-2.log.gz 2020-11-27-2.log.gz
2020-11-12-1.log.gz 2020-11-27-1.log.gz latest.log
The gz ones are compressed (a gzip file) and the regular .log files are just plain text. You’ll see the chat messages in those files. To get the messages out of the gz one use this command:
gunzip 2020-11-12-2.log.gzAnd this will turn it back into a log file. You can open it using sudo nano 2020-11-12-2.log. Hopefully that helps!
Hopefully that helps!
Wow! Thank you so much, having no experience with the likes of linux/command line/ip adresses, etc, I actually did it!
My 12 yo son is super impressed with me too.
I would like to learn more about customising and adding mods assuming it’s possible
Would appreciate it if someone could point me in right direction.
So glad I found your site.
I’ve been absent for a while, but now I remember why I used to love this web site. Thanks, I’ll try and check back more frequently.
I’ve been using your script for quite some time and it’s great, but now I’m wanting to move to using docker. I’ve been trying to get more and more efficient with my homelab over the last couple of years and I’ve recently migrated most things to a couple of minimalistic, low power, and low cost servers. I’m a beginner with docker and maybe there’s an obvious solution, but do you know of a way to “dockerize” this setup? I’m currently testing with a container and it’s pretty simple to set up, but It would be nice to have scripts that mimic what your current scripts do. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
BTW, this thread deserves a donate button imo 🙂