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.
1,556 thoughts on “Minecraft Bedrock Edition – Ubuntu Dedicated Server Guide”
Dwampre
Hi, thanks a lot for the guide and script! Everything works fine for a single server. I also have two minecraftbe servers running at the same time, however I am unable to have them both start at boot using systemd. If I enable both services, one of them fails (the server isn’t running and systemctl shows me “Failed” after the timeout). However, I can enable one only and then use start.sh to start the other one and both seem to be available to clients. Any ideas for getting them both to start at server boot?
Can someone explain how to resolve this? Got this message not long after agreeing to start up the server upon opening, and backup the server at 4am every day.
./SetupMinecraft.sh: line 279: screen: command not found
I am up and running but having trouble finding or opening the server.properties file. I set up mostly with these instructions but used Ubuntu and Bedrock.
I’m relatively new to command line interface. Thanks for the great article!
This link is pretty interesting. It looks like a fully cloud instanced server that you pay Google for the storage, bandwidth, computing resources, etc.
This guide does not look like it is for Bedrock edition though. You install Java on here which would definitely be for the regular Java version (server.jar). Bedrock is written in C++ and does not use Java.
That being said, it looks like your server.properties should be located in /home/minecraft. You should be able to get to it with:
cd /home/minecraft
ls
nano server.properties
After the ls command you should see server.properties as well as some other configuration files.
Definitely check out my Java Minecraft server article as well here as a lot of the information there should be more relevant to your setup: Raspberry Pi Minecraft Server Script w/ Startup Service 1.14.4. The guide is for Raspberry Pis but all the configuration information would be the same!
Thanks! To clarify, I did not install Java which is likely the core of my problem in trying to match up too many separate instructions. I’m getting a [ Directory ‘.’ is not writable ] error in Nano. If I precede it with Sudo I get a [ New File ] that is empty. I think I may wipe it and start fresh and see if I can get a little farther. Any other insights you might have are appreciated!
This is a great catch! That instruction is from before multiple server support was added and needs to be updated. I’ll definitely put this in the next update!
Is there a way to change or import a map? i see a worlds folder but i do not see the bedrock world export format. i am still looking as i have just found this. Very nice by the way.
Hi, thanks a lot for the guide and script! Everything works fine for a single server. I also have two minecraftbe servers running at the same time, however I am unable to have them both start at boot using systemd. If I enable both services, one of them fails (the server isn’t running and systemctl shows me “Failed” after the timeout). However, I can enable one only and then use start.sh to start the other one and both seem to be available to clients. Any ideas for getting them both to start at server boot?
I got both to run at boot by adding differing delays to the services i.e.
#/etc/systemd/system/mcbeservername.service
ExecStartPre=/bin/sleep 30 #and 60 for the second one
If there’s a better solution I’d still be glad to hear it! Thanks
This is strange. I will take a look at it here in the next couple of days!
is there a give commond it keeps giveing me errors “commond give no found” thanks
Can someone explain how to resolve this? Got this message not long after agreeing to start up the server upon opening, and backup the server at 4am every day.
./SetupMinecraft.sh: line 279: screen: command not found
I am up and running but having trouble finding or opening the server.properties file. I set up mostly with these instructions but used Ubuntu and Bedrock.
I’m relatively new to command line interface. Thanks for the great article!
Hey Andrew,
This link is pretty interesting. It looks like a fully cloud instanced server that you pay Google for the storage, bandwidth, computing resources, etc.
This guide does not look like it is for Bedrock edition though. You install Java on here which would definitely be for the regular Java version (server.jar). Bedrock is written in C++ and does not use Java.
That being said, it looks like your server.properties should be located in /home/minecraft. You should be able to get to it with:
cd /home/minecraftls
nano server.properties
After the ls command you should see server.properties as well as some other configuration files.
Definitely check out my Java Minecraft server article as well here as a lot of the information there should be more relevant to your setup: Raspberry Pi Minecraft Server Script w/ Startup Service 1.14.4. The guide is for Raspberry Pis but all the configuration information would be the same!
Thanks! To clarify, I did not install Java which is likely the core of my problem in trying to match up too many separate instructions. I’m getting a [ Directory ‘.’ is not writable ] error in Nano. If I precede it with Sudo I get a [ New File ] that is empty. I think I may wipe it and start fresh and see if I can get a little farther. Any other insights you might have are appreciated!
Great script, thanks for the work on it. The instructions say to start, stop and restart using this format
sudo systemctl start minecraftbeIt’s actually
sudo systemctl start [server-name]Hey JJ,
This is a great catch! That instruction is from before multiple server support was added and needs to be updated. I’ll definitely put this in the next update!
Is there a way to change or import a map? i see a worlds folder but i do not see the bedrock world export format. i am still looking as i have just found this. Very nice by the way.
Great! Thanks.
A question though:
I got two IPv4 and IPV6 ?
Is this normal?
[2019-09-09 18:02:41 INFO] Level Name: Bedrock level[2019-09-09 18:02:41 INFO] Game mode: 0 Survival
[2019-09-09 18:02:41 INFO] Difficulty: 1 EASY
[2019-09-09 18:02:43 INFO] IPv4 supported, port: 19132
[2019-09-09 18:02:43 INFO] IPv6 supported, port: 19133
[2019-09-09 18:02:43 INFO] IPv4 supported, port: 48847
[2019-09-09 18:02:43 INFO] IPv6 supported, port: 44032
[2019-09-09 18:02:45 INFO] Server started.
Looks normal!