Minecraft Bedrock Edition – Ubuntu Dedicated Server Guide

Minecraft Bedrock Edition Logo
Minecraft: Bedrock Edition Logo

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

I’ve also released a way for Java and Bedrock players to play on the same server using Geyser: Minecraft Java + Bedrock Server Together – Geyser + Floodgate

It’s now possible to convert your worlds between Bedrock and Java versions. Check out my guide on Chunker here for more information.

Features

  • 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
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!

Links: Amazon.com*, Amazon.co.jp*, Amazon.co.uk*, Amazon.de*, Amazon.es*, Amazon.fr*, Amazon.it*

Minecraft Bedrock Playstation
Minecraft Bedrock Playstation

The Sony PlayStation version of Minecraft: Bedrock edition.

Links: Amazon.com*, Amazon.ca*, Amazon.com.au*, Amazon.co.jp*, Amazon.co.uk*, Amazon.de*, Amazon.es*, Amazon.fr*, Amazon.it*, Amazon.nl*, Amazon.se*, Amazon.sg*

Minecraft Bedrock Nintendo Switch
Minecraft Bedrock Nintendo Switch

This is the Nintendo Switch version of Minecraft: Bedrock edition.

Links: Amazon.com*, Amazon.ca*, Amazon.com.au*, Amazon.co.jp*, Amazon.co.uk*, Amazon.de*, Amazon.es*, Amazon.fr*, Amazon.it*, Amazon.nl*, Amazon.pl*, Amazon.se*, Amazon.sg*

Minecraft Bedrock Xbox One
Minecraft Bedrock Xbox One

This is the Microsoft Xbox version of Minecraft: Bedrock edition.

Links: Amazon.com*, Amazon.ca*, Amazon.com.au*, Amazon.co.uk*, Amazon.de*, Amazon.es*, Amazon.fr*, Amazon.it*, Amazon.nl*, Amazon.sg*

Recommended Storage (Solid State Drive)

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 SSD
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!

Links: AliExpress*, Amazon.com*, Amazon.ca*, Amazon.com.au*, Amazon.co.jp*, Amazon.co.uk*, Amazon.de*, Amazon.es*, Amazon.fr*, Amazon.it*, Amazon.nl*, Amazon.pl*, Amazon.se*, Amazon.sg*

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.

Links: AliExpress*, Amazon.com*, Amazon.ca*, Amazon.com.au*, Amazon.co.jp*, Amazon.co.uk*, Amazon.de*, Amazon.es*, Amazon.fr*, Amazon.it*, Amazon.nl*, Amazon.pl*, Amazon.se*, Amazon.sg*

Computer / CPU / Memory

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:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheRemote/MinecraftBedrockServer/master/SetupMinecraft.sh | bash

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.

[2019-03-30 20:25:12 INFO] Starting Server
[2019-03-30 20:25:12 INFO] Version 1.10.0.7
[2019-03-30 20:25:12 INFO] Level Name: Bedrock level
[2019-03-30 20:25:12 INFO] Game mode: 0 Survival
[2019-03-30 20:25:12 INFO] Difficulty: 1 EASY
[2019-03-30 20:25:20 INFO] IPv4 supported, port: 19132
[2019-03-30 20:25:20 INFO] IPv6 supported, port: 19133
[2019-03-30 20:25:23 INFO] Server started.

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:

cd ~/minecraftbe
./start.sh
./stop.sh
./restart.sh

-OR-

sudo systemctl start minecraftbe
sudo systemctl stop minecraftbe
sudo systemctl restart minecraftbe

Automatic Backups

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.

Installing Resource Packs / RTX Support

For instructions on how to install resource packs (including optional RTX support) view my step by step Minecraft Bedrock Dedicated Server Resource Packs guide here.

Scheduled Daily Reboots

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
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:

echo "bedrock-server-1.18.33.02.zip" > version_pin.txt

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:

sudo curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheRemote/PiBenchmarks/master/Storage.sh | sudo bash

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.

Have fun!

Other Resources

For a guide on how to set up resource packs check out my Minecraft Bedrock Resource Pack guide

If you’re trying to run this on the Raspberry Pi check out the Raspberry Pi specific guide here

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Leo
Leo
3 years ago

Hello, thank you very much for this great guide.

I have been using my server for several months, but now it does not work.

When I try to start the server: chown: invalid user: “userxname”

Can you help me? Thanks a lot

ALTELMA
ALTELMA
3 years ago

If someone still facing the issue server not running with version 16.220.xx.xx
Go to your server and change permission for bedrock_server with 755

Let’s compare with folder from the previous version.

Alex
Alex
3 years ago
Reply to  ALTELMA

This worked for me, but I had to do additional steps.

1) run the SetupMinecraft.sh script to update for good measure.
2) sudo chmod 755 /user/server/bedrock_server
3) sudo systemctl edit –full server.service
a) edit out the user=uxername with my user
4) sudo systemctl start server.service

Server is up and running, thanks James and ALTELMA.

Mat
Mat
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex

Sorry – I am totally new to this stuff…
I managed 1..!
I managed 2 but had to change the file path .. sudo chmod 755 minecraftbe is that right?
but i got stuck at 3…
Invalid unit name "–full" escaped as "\xe2\x80\x93full" (maybe you should use systemd-escape?).
No files found for \xe2\x80\x93full.service.
Run 'systemctl edit --force --full \xe2\x80\x93full.service' to create a new unit.

Any idea what it is i’m doing wrong?

Thanks
Mat

Leo
Leo
3 years ago
Reply to  Mat

Yes, I have the same problem.

Can You explain it step by step? There are people who do not know anything about linux. :p Sorry!

Thanks a lot!

Mario
Mario
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex

Thank you Alex! This was very helpful because my server was not working anymore since last night update.
Lets hope the next update is not overwriting this fix.

ergs of energy
ergs of energy
3 years ago

running 20.04 and your script (so fast to set it up) and had minecraft BE setup in under 20 mins including OS install.

next morning – after rebooting, running script manually, restarting the setup script, all come to nought.

i get the message

chown: invalid user: ‘username’

any suggestions?

Alex
Alex
3 years ago
Reply to  ergs of energy

Look at my message above. I believe your service might have uxername in the service file.

After an hour of troubleshooting, I am going to bed.

Good luck.

Fig
Fig
3 years ago
Reply to  ergs of energy

I had the same exact issue. Commenting the username out didn’t seem to help, but running chmod +x bedrock_server got me going. YMMV.

Good luck!

Michel Pelletier
Michel Pelletier
3 years ago

Hello James, thanks for your work. I installed a minecraft server on my computer to play with a friend. It worked great until today. Minecraft updated so I could nolonger connected to my “outdated server”. I tried updating the server with a stop and restart but the server no longer starts. I get ” /bin/bash: /home/maison/minecraftbe/thomas/bedrock_server: Permission denied” in the log file. Any ideas why?

JD Benoit
JD Benoit
3 years ago

James,
I’m dumb and did not shut down the server correctly. I didn’t use ./stop.sh to stop the Minecraft server and restarted the server. Now when I try to start the Minecraft server using ./start.sh or sudo ./start.sh it looks like Minecraft server is starting but it doesn’t start. The log file that is created shows the location of the server and Permission denied. Any idea on how to fix this?

JD Benoit
JD Benoit
3 years ago

Hey James,
I modified the permission, which weren’t an issue before, and restarted and still get the same cycle. I wonder if the patch they release today broke the BDS…

ALTELMA
ALTELMA
3 years ago
Reply to  JD Benoit

Yep +1, I think the root cause from new BD server I try to load and run by my self not running and got error permission when I was trying to run it.

dangle
dangle
3 years ago

after seeing this, i tried removing ‘/bin/bash …. LD_LIBRARY_PATH…’ from the game launch command in start.sh and no longer got the error but the game never started, only the screen session.
then i realized what had bad permissions on it, bedrock_server itself no longer had execute permissions.
reverted start.sh to it’s original state, chmod +x bedrock_server and she started right up!

JD Benoit
JD Benoit
3 years ago
Reply to  dangle

Dangle,
That worked!!! You all are awesome!! Does anyone know what would have changed the permission?
James you are amazing for setting this up. Dangle you are amazing for finding this issue.

Al
Al
3 years ago

Hi James, love the script and it’s largely working fine. However, I’m getting an error that I think is related to PAM:

When the server is restarted using restart.sh manually (or via the cron job), the server script comes up fine but the service then fails. Logs show this error occuring at the same time as the restart: pam_unix(sudo:auth): auth could not identify password for [localaccountusername].

Any thoughts?

dangle
dangle
3 years ago

same issue here.

Apr 06 23:39:52 bedrockdmz sudo[3661]: bedrock : TTY=pts/0 ; PWD=/home/bedrock ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/systemctl status BedrockDMZ
Apr 06 23:39:52 bedrockdmz sudo[3661]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root by bedrock(uid=0)
Apr 06 23:39:52 bedrockdmz systemd[1]: Configuration file /etc/systemd/system/BedrockDMZ.service is marked executable. Please remove executable permission bits. Proceeding anyway.
Apr 06 23:39:52 bedrockdmz sudo[3661]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Apr 06 23:39:56 bedrockdmz multipathd[659]: sda: add missing path
Apr 06 23:39:56 bedrockdmz multipathd[659]: sda: failed to get udev uid: Invalid argument
Apr 06 23:39:56 bedrockdmz multipathd[659]: sda: failed to get sysfs uid: Invalid argument
Apr 06 23:39:56 bedrockdmz multipathd[659]: sda: failed to get sgio uid: No such file or directory

dangle
dangle
3 years ago

no joy

— Reboot —
Apr 07 00:45:25 bedrockdmz sudo[891]: pam_unix(sudo:auth): Couldn't open /etc/securetty: No such file or directory
Apr 07 00:45:25 bedrockdmz bash[891]: sudo: a terminal is required to read the password; either use the -S option to read from standard input or configure an askpass helper
Apr 07 00:45:25 bedrockdmz sudo[891]: pam_unix(sudo:auth): conversation failed
Apr 07 00:45:25 bedrockdmz bash[884]: Backing up server (to minecraftbe/BedrockDMZ/backups folder)
Apr 07 00:45:25 bedrockdmz sudo[891]: pam_unix(sudo:auth): auth could not identify password for [bedrock]

this is all i find in the instance log
/bin/bash: /home/bedrock/minecraftbe/BedrockDMZ/bedrock_server: Permission denied

Al
Al
3 years ago

Confirmed: user account is in the sudoers group.
Password is set on the account (and it fails after a reset also).

Just tried the script on a clean install of linux too – same error. Looks like something’s been changed with PAM in the past week or two that’s crippled the script; it was running beautifully until quite recently.

Al
Al
3 years ago
Reply to  Al

pam_unix(sudo:auth): conversation failed
pam_unix(sudo:auth): auth could not identify password for [myusername]

lilyland.service - lilyland Minecraft Bedrock Server
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/lilyland.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Wed 2021-04-07 16:57:10 BST; 4min 10s ago
Process: 15696 ExecStartPre=/bin/chown -R $myusername /home/$myusername/minecraftbe/lilyland (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 15697 ExecStart=/bin/bash /home/$myusername/minecraftbe/lilyland/start.sh (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 15720 ExecStop=/bin/bash /home/$myusername/minecraftbe/lilyland/stop.sh (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

Al
Al
3 years ago
Reply to  Al

Found where one issue is triggered by the startup script; it’s your network detection check; commenting that out allows it to run.

The other is the line to take permission of the folders; that’s the one that’s triggering the PAM request (& only instance of sudo that I can find).

Running the fixpermissions.sh script once to set the permissions straight after running the install script and then commenting out the line in start.sh is a workaround.

DaHooka
DaHooka
3 years ago

You’re a great man!
Thanks a bunch for making this so easy 🙂

Wook
Wook
3 years ago

JC,

Thank you so much for making minecraft install so easy. I have used it a number of times so far.

I don’t really know what I am doing, just following your scripts.
I installed it again yesterday, so that I could have a fresh world, and got the following error:

Setup is complete. Starting Minecraft server...
Job for WookNew.service failed because the control process exited with error code.
See "systemctl status WookNew.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.
Minecraft server failed to start after 20 seconds.
There is no screen to be resumed matching WookNew.

I had said yes to auto backup and to auto restart.
I do have version installed from the minecraft.net website, but that was not running when your version was installed.

I am using an old-ish PC, now with Groovy Gorilla.

Regards
Wook

Wook
Wook
3 years ago

Thank you for your reply.

this is what it returns:
Linux ubuntu2 5.8.0-48-generic #54-Ubuntu SMP Fri Mar 19 14:25:20 UTC 2021 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

It used to run Windows Home Premium 64bit, with an Intel core i5 2310

I shall try reinstalling your version, because now that I have dropped back to using the version from Minecraft.net, the whole system fails every day, and I have to press the power button for 6 seconds to stop/start it again.

Regards
Wook

Wook
Wook
3 years ago
Reply to  Wook

no luck.

How do I uninstall the server?
So far I have renamed minecraftbe to …._old, but I still get the same error.

Regards
Wook

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