Minecraft Java + Bedrock Server Together – Geyser + Floodgate

Minecraft Geyser + Floodgate Paper Minecraft Server
Minecraft Geyser + Floodgate Paper Minecraft Server

This is a new Docker container to automatically set up and run a Minecraft server that both Java and Bedrock players can connect to! This allows everyone to play on your server no matter which edition of Minecraft you are using. It uses the Geyser and Floodgate plugins to accomplish this.

Since it uses the Paper Minecraft server it also supports any additional plugins that are compatible with Paper / Spigot. This gives you the ability to do many things that are currently impossible to do in Bedrock if you are hosting the official Bedrock dedicated server.

It is fully compatible with my Paper Minecraft Java Server Container and you can swap between these two containers without changing any configuration.

The official GitHub page is located here.

The Docker Hub page for the container is located here.

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 fully operational Minecraft server that allows both Java and Bedrock clients to connect
  • Runs the highly efficient “Paper” Minecraft server
  • Runs Geyser to allow Bedrock clients to connect and Floodgate to allow them to authenticate with their Bedrock credentials to a Java server
  • Plugin support for Paper / Spigot / Bukkit
  • Uses named Docker volume for safe and easy to access storage of server data files (which enables more advanced Docker features such as automatic volume backups)
  • Installs and configures OpenJDK 18
  • Automatic backups to minecraft/backups when server restarts
  • Full logging available in minecraft/logs folder
  • Updates automatically to the latest version when server is started
  • Runs on all Docker platforms including Raspberry Pi

Usage

First you must create a named Docker volume. This can be done with:

docker volume create yourvolumename

Now you may launch the server and open the ports necessary with one of the following Docker launch commands.

With default ports:

docker run -it -v yourvolumename:/minecraft -p 25565:25565 -p 19132:19132/udp -p 19132:19132 --restart unless-stopped 05jchambers/legendary-minecraft-geyser-floodgate:latest

With custom ports:

docker run -it -v yourvolumename:/minecraft -p 12345:12345 -e Port=12345 -p 54321:54321/udp -p 54321:54321 -e BedrockPort=54321 --restart unless-stopped 05jchambers/legendary-minecraft-geyser-floodgate:latest

With a custom Minecraft version (add -e Version=1.X.X, must be present on Paper’s API servers to work):

docker run -it -v yourvolumename:/minecraft -p 25565:25565 -p 19132:19132/udp -p 19132:19132 -e Version=1.17.1 --restart unless-stopped 05jchambers/legendary-minecraft-geyser-floodgate:latest

With a maximum memory limit in megabytes (optional, prevents crashes on platforms with limited memory, -e MaxMemory=2048):

docker run -it -v yourvolumename:/minecraft -p 25565:25565 -p 19132:19132/udp -p 19132:19132 -e MaxMemory=2048 --restart unless-stopped 05jchambers/legendary-minecraft-geyser-floodgate:latest

Using a custom timezone:

docker run -it -v yourvolumename:/minecraft -p 25565:25565 -p 19132:19132/udp -p 19132:19132 -e TZ="America/Denver" --restart unless-stopped 05jchambers/legendary-minecraft-geyser-floodgate:latest

Skipping backups on a certain folder:

docker run -it -v yourvolumename:/minecraft -p 25565:25565 -p 19132:19132/udp -p 19132:19132 -e NoBackup="plugins" --restart unless-stopped 05jchambers/legendary-minecraft-geyser-floodgate:latest

Skipping permissions check:

docker run -it -v yourvolumename:/minecraft -p 25565:25565 -p 19132:19132/udp -p 19132:19132 -e NoPermCheck="Y" --restart unless-stopped 05jchambers/legendary-minecraft-geyser-floodgate:latest

Change number of backups:

docker run -it -v yourvolumename:/minecraft -p 25565:25565 -p 19132:19132/udp -p 19132:19132 -e BackupCount=1 --restart unless-stopped 05jchambers/legendary-minecraft-geyser-floodgate:latest

Configuration / Accessing Server Files

The server data is stored where Docker stores your volumes. This is typically a folder on the host OS that is shared and mounted with the container. I’ll give the usual locations here but if you’re having trouble just do some Googling for your exact platform and you should find where Docker is storing the volume files.

You can find your exact path by typing:

docker volume inspect yourvolumename

This will give you the fully qualified path to your volume like this:

{
        "CreatedAt": "2022-05-09T21:08:34-06:00",
        "Driver": "local",
        "Labels": {},
        "Mountpoint": "/var/lib/docker/volumes/yourvolumename/_data",
        "Name": "yourvolumename",
        "Options": {},
        "Scope": "local"
}

On Linux it’s typically available at:

/var/lib/docker/volumes/yourvolumename/_data

On Windows it’s at

C:\ProgramData\DockerDesktop

but may be located at something more like

\wsl$\docker-desktop-data\version-pack-data\community\docker\volumes\

if you are using WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux).


On Mac it’s typically

~/Library/Containers/com.docker.docker/Data/vms/0/

If you are using Docker Desktop on Mac then you need to access the Docker VM with the following command first:

screen ~/Library/Containers/com.docker.docker/Data/com.docker.driver.amd64-linux/tty

You can then normally access the Docker volumes using the path you found in the first step with docker volume inspect.

Most people will want to edit server.properties. You can make the changes to the file and then restart the container to make them effective.
Backups are stored in the “backups” folder
Log files with timestamps are stored in the “logs” folder.

Plugin Support for Paper / Spigot / Bukkit

This is a “Paper” Minecraft server which has plugin compatibility with Paper / Spigot / Bukkit.

Installation is simple. There is a “plugins” folder on your Docker named volume.

Navigate to your server files on your host operating system (see accessing server files section if you don’t know where this is) and you will see the “plugins” folder.

You just need to drop the extracted version of the plugin (a .jar file) into this folder and restart the container. That’s it!

Some plugins have dependencies so make sure you read the installation guide first for the plugin you are looking at.

A popular place to get plugins is: dev.bukkit.org

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 easy workaround for this is that you have to use a Generation 1 VM with the Legacy LAN network driver.

There is a second fix that was shared by bpsimons here. For that fix you need to install ethtool first with sudo apt install ethtool. Next in your /etc/network/interfaces file add “offload-tx off” to the bottom as the issue appears to be with TX offloading.

Here’s an example:

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.5
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.1.0
broadcast 192.168.1.255
gateway 192.168.1.1
offload-tx off

This can also be done non-persistently with the following ethtool command:

ethtool -K eth0 tx off

Additional Support

The comments section right here is the best place for support. The second best place is the GitHub issues section.

I will add additional documentation based on what problems people are running into / questions people are asking because right now I’m not really sure what those will be yet. Definitely let me know if you need any of these things!

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AnthonyKellyYip
AnthonyKellyYip
4 months ago

Hi James,

I’ve just had Bedrock 1.20.5 pushed to my phone and Geyser no longer let’s me join the server. At the end of the server logs it tells me that Geyser needs an update.

In the comments below, you mentioned that you’d pushed a new version that should pull the updated Geyser version. Do I need to do anything special to get that? This is what I run when I spin up my container…

docker run -it -v akycraft:/minecraft -p 25565:25565 -p 19132:19132/udp -p 19132:19132 -e TZ=”Asia/Hong_Kong” –restart unless-stopped 05jchambers/legendary-minecraft-geyser-floodgate:latest

Is it safe for me to try to manually apply the latest version of Geyser on top of what I have? Would my current container try to revert it back on reboot?

Thanks for your help

AnthonyKellyYip
AnthonyKellyYip
4 months ago

Never mind, please ignore my message 😂

I just found out that Docker images don’t automatically update when containers start 😂😂

Container deleted and new image now pulled… and the server is running great on my phone again

Tony-54610
Tony-54610
4 months ago

Hi! I just used that command to pull the latest. It looked like it downloaded and extracted, but when I restarted the server, I still cannot connect with bedrock 1.20.50.

Previous to this, I tried replacing the old geyser.jar with the new. That didn’t work either.
I’ve also made a new volume and container. Still nada.

What am I doing wrong?

Tony-54610
Tony-54610
4 months ago

Thanks for getting back to me! I ended up re-reading some of the other comments and (after a deep breath) deleted the container and that worked. I’ll keep the version tag in mind if it happens again. Thanks for keeping this going, learning how to get my pi and server going has been as much fun as playing the game!

AnthonyKellyYip
AnthonyKellyYip
4 months ago
Reply to  Tony-54610

@Tony – It took me a while to come to grips with deleting containers *not* usually being a bad thing 😂

At first I was so scared that it would break something or that work would be lost. Now I’m confident they I’ve got the run command saved away if I ever need it, and even if I lose that we’ve got all these great examples on this page

AnthonyKellyYip
AnthonyKellyYip
4 months ago

How do y’all get pretty avatars in these comments? I’m stuck here with a silhouette and no obvious way to change it XD

AnthonyKellyYip
AnthonyKellyYip
4 months ago

Ah, now it makes sense

Thanks for the info

AnthonyKellyYip
AnthonyKellyYip
4 months ago

And now I have a profile picture ☺️

Josh
Josh
4 months ago

Just want to say this was an absolute breeze to set up. I have yet to test out Geyser. I don’t play much and set this up for my kids, any advice on where I could go to find good ideas for plugins? Thanks so much for putting this together!

AnthonyKellyYip
AnthonyKellyYip
5 months ago

Hi James,

I made a world using this container, and after it generated I manually changed it from survival to creative in server.properties

Interestingly, if I connect with Java it is now in creative mode, but bedrock clients seem to see it as a survival world.

Is this expected behaviour or even a bug, or might I be doing something wrong?

Thanks for taking the time to answer these tech-support comments =)

Anthony

Arathi
Arathi
5 months ago

I left mine in survival, granted myself OP, and then changed gamemode to creative. hat might help prevent the issue you’re seeing.

AnthonyKellyYip
AnthonyKellyYip
5 months ago
Reply to  Arathi

Thanks for the suggestion, Arathi

I’m just wondering how best to manage it as I’ll hopefully have some friends joining me if the server is robust enough for us to migrate away from our Bedrock Realm. Would I have to make everyone OP? XD

Arathi
Arathi
5 months ago

Nope! Mine is for my kids and I, and once you set their gamemode to creative, it stays that way until you change it back. We’re the same, the server is in survival, but we’re in creative often, and only in survival when we want. haha

Arathi
Arathi
4 months ago

Welcome!

Arathi
Arathi
5 months ago

Also James, in response to your ask to Alex about geyser after you updated.

As it loads, it says Geyser is updated, and then at the end of loading sys that there is a geyser update available

Arathi
Arathi
4 months ago

Appreciate it! Thanks James!

Arathi
Arathi
5 months ago

Hi James, I’m playing around more with additional plugins and such and Citizens 2 apparently needs to be able to use NPC’s. Apparently, they’re not the same as Villagers. Is this build capable of summoning NPC’s?

Alex
Alex
5 months ago

Hi James,

Really like this and have been using it a long time now; thanks for working on it (and the original bedrock server on linux scripts you wrote too, which I also used for yonks).

It looks like there’s been an update to Geyser, as both the container console and when joining the game there’s a notification about it. I’ve manually pulled the latest container image which hasn’t updated Geyser either.

This is the first thing I’ve run in Docker, so just wondering two things:

1. Is there a dependency within the image on particular versions of Geyser/Paper/Spigot, or is this simply a (very understandable) ‘time is limited, images get updated when I can’ issue?

2. If there aren’t dependencies, is it possible to edit the image locally to include updated versions of Geyser etc and then start a new instance of the updated image and if so, how would that be reconciled (if at all) by docker if the image in your repo was later updated?