One of the most requested features in my Raspberry Pi Minecraft server guide is support for the Bedrock edition of Minecraft. This is the edition that powers Minecraft on iOS / Android / Xbox / Nintendo Switch as well as the free Windows 10 edition.
There’s one big problem though. The official Minecraft Bedrock dedicated server is only compiled for Windows and Ubuntu X86_64. Without ARM support it seems impossible to run the Bedrock dedicated server on a Raspberry Pi. I couldn’t find a documented instance of anyone doing it anywhere.
So naturally today in this guide we are going to do the impossible. But right off the bat let me point out that there is an asterisk in my article title. Why you ask? That is because unlike my other guides this one will not yield you a well performing server. That is because we will be emulating a x86_64 processor on ARM. This is slow. VERY slow.
What’s the point?
So if the server doesn’t perform well and it’s too slow why did I even bother to write this article?
Basically “too slow” is only in the context of today’s hardware and software we currently have available to us. Both hardware and software for ARM have been evolving at a furious pace. ARM powers smartphones which means it is not going anywhere and will continue to have tons of R&D money put into it and it may not be long before the hardware is powerful enough.
There’s also the possibility that by sharing this work that someone who reads this may know or discover ways to speed things up and build on what I present here. If you’re one of those people drop me a comment or send me an email and I will gladly credit and share your work!
And last but not least, the techniques I use here can be used to run other x86_64 binaries on Raspberry Pi. Many applications will perform just fine even on current generation gear.
The script is working on Raspberry Pi but if you use the Raspberry Pi OS’s Debian repositories the QEMU version in there will give a bus error. If you compile a newer QEMU from source or use a different operating system it works (very slowly)!
You may need to build the dependencies yourself if you are getting segfaults from my prepackaged depends.zip. This is because I generated a static dump of dependencies at a snapshot in time and they’ve likely been updated to a point they are no longer compatible. See the “Satisfying Dependencies” section for how to build the dependencies!
Hardware
This is the hardware I used for the server. I always recommend using solid state storage for the best performance. To see why check out the Raspberry Pi storage benchmarks section. This contains benchmarks submitted by others who ran the benchmark so you can see what other people are using and provides the best performance.
Here’s the recommendations:
Recommended Gear
Raspberry Pi 4
The Raspberry Pi 4 is available in different memory configurations all the way up to 8 GB. It’s about the size of a credit card and uses an extremely low amount of power making it ideal for all sorts of projects and ideas!
The Raspberry Pi 400 kit includes everything you need for a full Pi 400 desktop build. The Pi 400 is the fastest Raspberry Pi ever released and comes in the form factor of a keyboard!
The Kingston A400 has been a great drive to use with the Pi for years. It’s 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 pibenchmarks.com and is the #1 most popular SSD among the Pi community!
The USB 3.1 variant of the StarTech 2.5″ SATA adapter works well with the Pi 4. The USB 3.0 variant doesn’t have firmware updates available and is not recommended.
The SanDisk Extreme Pro USB SSD is a true solid state drive. This is different than a typical “flash drive” which uses extremely cheap memory and has very low random I/O performance/throughput compared to a real solid state drive. I’ve used both the USB 3.1 and USB 3.2 variants with the Pi successfully and they benchmark very well!
The SanDisk Extreme A1-A2 SD card has the best scoring SD card on Pi Benchmarks for years and is second in popularity only to the SanDisk Ultra (often included in combo kits). The application class (A1) means random I/O speeds (very important when running an OS) have to meet a higher standard. There’s no benefit on the Pi for A2 right now so get whichever is cheaper/available.
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!
For this to work it is required that we use a 64 bit aarch64/arm64 distribution. This is because when we try to emulate 32 bit ARM we will get a “bus error” as soon as the server tries to start. This is likely because QEMU 32 bit is missing some support we need to emulate the x86_64 architecture.
You can also use the Debian “Buster” preview which has the advantage of having QEMU 3.1 available in the apt repository right now which will save you several steps later of having to acquire a newer static binary of QEMU the “evil” way.
Raspbian will not work with this method unless you use the 64 bit beta because it is only 32 bit. You will get a segmentation fault when you run it on a 32 bit ARM system instead of a 64 bit one.
Automatic Setup Script
If you just want to get your hands on the finished working server my Minecraft Bedrock Dedicated Server guide already supports ARM and will setup the dependencies and download the server for you. It also supports the following:
Sets up 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
Updates automatically to the latest version when server is started
Easy control of server with start.sh, stop.sh and restart.sh scripts
Optional scheduled daily restart of server using cron
Run the automatic setup script by pasting / typing the following on the command line:
Before you join the server for the first time make sure the server has started by typing:
screen -r
You should be inside the Minecraft server console. What you want to look for before you try to join is that the server has completely finished starting. This can take a while on ARM. The line we want to see to know it’s ready is this:
[INFO] Server started.
The first time it joins will be very very slow. You may have to try several times as the server generates the starting area. Eventually you’ll get in and be able to move around. You’re able to break blocks but there’s definitely a delay when you break blocks and things are pretty laggy.
Manual Instructions
You only need to follow the manual instructions if you want to recreate my process step by step. Here are the steps:
mkdir bedrock
cd bedrock
wget https://minecraft.azureedge.net/bin-linux/bedrock-server-1.16.0.200.zip
unzip -o bedrock-server-1.16.0.200.zip
We now have the Bedrock dedicated server unzipped into a folder called “bedrock”. However, if we try to run it by typing ./bedrock_server we get:
bash: ./bedrock_server: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error
This is because we are on the ARM architecture and this file type is compiled for x86_64. In Linux we can get the file type format of any executable by using the file command:
Now that we know what target architecture we need to run we need to get QEMU.
Installing QEMU Host Mode Emulator
You may have used QEMU before in the past to create virtual machines. But QEMU has another less known operating mode called user mode emulation. User mode emulation is faster than a virtual machine because it takes advantage of the host operating system to do a lot of functions rather than emulate an entire operating system.
On top of being much faster, this will allow us to run a x86_64 binary on the ARM platform without having to install a full blown x86_64 operating system inside a QEMU container.
At the time of writing the binaries provided in Ubuntu Server and Raspbian are too old and don’t have the x86_64 support we need. The binaries available in apt are QEMU 2.8 and we need 3.0 or higher.
Check what the latest version of QEMU available for your distribution is by typing:
sudo apt search qemu-user-static
On my system this yielded the result:
qemu-user/stable 1:2.8+dfsg-6+deb9u4 armhf
QEMU user mode emulation binaries
qemu-user-static/stable 1:2.8+dfsg-6+deb9u4 armhf
QEMU user mode emulation binaries (static version)
Notice the version is 2.8 and not 3.0 or higher. If your version is 3.0 or higher you can (and should) install qemu-user-static from apt.
Mine aren’t, so we are going to cheat. But before we cheat, I am going to explain why we are violating the Holy Sacred Linux Bylaws by doing what I’m about to show you and explain why it should basically never be used. If you are using the Debian Buster distribution you can skip the next section since QEMU 3.1 is already available in apt for Debian.
Evil way to get latest QEMU
The proper thing to do in this situation is to download QEMU from source and build the newer version yourself. The problem is QEMU takes forever and a day to compile. Even just trying to compile the user mode binaries I came back to my Pi a full 24 hours later and it still wasn’t even close to done.
Okay so building this binary in the Pi is too slow. So what is the proper thing to do then? The proper thing to do would be to set up a development machine for cross compiling on your main more powerful system and compile it that way. The downside? Unless you already have a system set up with a cross compiling chain this is going to also take a lot of research and effort to get set up.
So where could we possibly get precompiled binaries for our system? Well, since we are using a Debian based Linux distribution we are downstream from Debian proper. So let’s take a look at Debian’s repository and see what is available: https://packages.debian.org/buster/qemu-user-static
Well look at that. The upcoming Debian Buster repository contains QEMU 3.1! We can just grab it from there. But wait… RED ALERT!
Captain Picard disliked that
This is very bad practice. The reason we can get away with it in this case is because qemu-user-static is statically compiled and only has one dependency (binfmt-support). All of the current stock Raspberry Pi distributions don’t have anything that depends on either of these packages. This makes qemu-user-static and binfmt-support relatively self contained. Nothing else in our system depends on them and they aren’t a part of any dependency chains.
Have you ever tried to install a package and been stopped by some little dependency? It may be tempting to use this technique in situations like that. However, when you introduce foreign packages into your package tree you will very likely break your entire system. If anything depends on those packages apt will go haywire since it won’t be able to resolve the dependency chains and you will lose the ability to update or install new packages. Many packages have dozens of dependencies and a single wrong one in the chain will break everything. Therefore this technique should almost never be used.
Okay, with all that out of the way, let’s proceed. First we are going to grab a prebuilt QEMU package for our ARM architecture. We can get these from the Debian repository. These links change often so you will need to navigate to the repository yourself and see what the latest available QEMU repository is. First we need to find qemu-user-static. Here’s where that will be in the Debian repository:
http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/q/qemu/
Make a note of the exact name of the package. You will need it in the next step. Now we need to find one more package which is binfmt-support from here:
You should now have QEMU installed. You can verify this with the following:
# qemu-x86_64-static --version
qemu-x86_64 version 3.1.0 (Debian 1:3.1+dfsg-7)
Copyright (c) 2003-2018 Fabrice Bellard and the QEMU Project developers
Your version should be a lot newer than mine since this output is from the date of publication but if you didn’t get an error you should be all set to move on to the next step.
Satisfying Dependencies
Now that we have QEMU installed if we try to run bedrock_server we get the following:
# ./bedrock_server
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2: No such file or directory
This is progress. We’re no longer getting an error that the system can’t read the binary format of the file. We are now met with a dependency error.
This is to be expected because we are running on a ARM system and don’t have any x86_64 dependencies installed. The Minecraft server executable is dynamically linked as we learned earlier with the file info tool. This means that we will need to provide some libraries for the executable to work.
The easiest and fastest way to get them is to install Ubuntu x86_64 on a virtual machine using something like VirtualBox or on a spare machine. If you want to download my copy of the dependencies and skip this step I have them zipped up at Minecraft Bedrock Server Dependencies – depends.zip
One alternative would be to set up a chroot environment containing a x86_64 environment but I have had nothing but problems trying to create such an environment on ARM. Usually the chroot will crash out QEMU and when you google the crash codes you will come across bug posts where the QEMU authors state that ARM to x86_64 isn’t used all that often and some things are unimplemented. This is also why we need to use QEMU 3.0 or higher to get the support we need to run the server as the support was improved in that version.
Once you have set up a x86_64 environment download the server like we did earlier and we will use the ldd tool to look up the dependencies. On your x86_64 installation type ldd bedrock_server:
Yikes. This thing has a ton of dependencies! This is because it is dynamically linked executable so none of the source code is compiled into the binary for any of these dependencies.
Fortunately I have a bash one liner that will gather a copy of all these dependencies and put it into a folder:
Now zip or tar this folder and move it to your Raspberry Pi. We are going to put the dependencies right in the root of the bedrock folder that we created earlier. Your file structure on the Pi should now look something like this:
Now for the last step there is one more dependency we need to resolve that won’t be included in the command we executed. This dependency is the linker dependency ld-2.28.so (your version may be different/newer) and the trick we just used to get the other dependencies won’t work on it. On the x86_64 machine copy ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 like this:
cd depends
cp /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 ld-2.28.so
cp /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 ld-2.31.so
If you have a different version of the linker you can find it with:
ldd --version
The version of the linker your system is using will be at the end of the very first line of the output from that command.
On the Pi use these commands to set up the linker:
This will install the linker binary where it needs to be for us to run the application by creating a symbolic link. The rest of the dependencies will be able to be in the folder that the server is running.
Running the Server
Now we have all our dependencies in place and are ready to run the server. I can’t wait to issue a ./bedrock_server! Let’s try it:
# ./bedrock_server
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2: No such file or directory
Ugh. It’s looking for the dependencies in the wrong place! So how do we fix that? The trick is actually on the Minecraft Bedrock server dedicated server download page. We need to change the library load path to our local directory. So the proper way to run the server will be like this:
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. ./bedrock_server
Now that we run the server this way we see the following output:
As we can see QEMU does complain about several missing QEMU_IFLA types. These messages relate to certain functionality not being implemented in QEMU yet. These can be safely ignored for now but hopefully if QEMU implements these later it will provide a speed boost to the server.
Another thing to note is the timestamps. The server takes some time to load when using emulation. The total time to reach the “Server started.” line was about 5 minutes. I told you it was slow!
You may now connect to the server but expect it to time out many of your connection attempts. When you do get in monsters will be very slow and glitchy. Breaking blocks will have a significant delay.
Benchmarking / Testing Storage
If you want to verify your drive’s performance you may want to run my storage benchmark with:
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!
Conclusion
With the tools and hardware that are available to us today we are able to run the Minecraft Bedrock dedicated server on Pi but it is too slow.
Improvements in hardware and software such as more updates and better implemented of x86_64 emulation on the ARM platform will likely change this in the near future.
Another game changer would be if Mojang chooses to distribute a native ARM binary that we can run on the Pi. This would be *much* faster and would be the ideal scenario. Definitely send them an email or leave a comment on their feedback form if you want to see this!
I will update this article as things change going forward. If you are experimenting with this and find a way to speed things up definitely leave a comment here so I can credit you and publish your findings!
If your goal with this project was to have a small self contained Minecraft server that doesn’t use a lot of power I do have some alternative recommendations below to use in the mean time for getting a well performing Bedrock server!
Hello, I installed this on a whim, and THEN read about your Docker Floodgate version that sounds much more appealing for cross-platform players. What is the best way to cleaning uninstall this server and all its dependencies? I assume it’s best practice to fully uninstall this one before installing Floodgate?
Basically you just need to remove the old folder and then there is a startup service at /etc/systemd/system/yourserver.service to remove as well. After you remove the service run:
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
That’s all there is to it for the removal!
Abd
2 years ago
So for anyone wanting to do this with better performance you can use box64.
You will find it in github and the steps to compile in the wiki are easy to follow “or you can use the provided binaries”.
After that instead of typing “LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. ./bedrock_server” to launch just use “BOX64_LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. box64 ./bedrock_server”
You won’t have to find it in GitHub, you won’t have to compile it and you won’t have to launch it with crazy syntax. Like all things Docker it will “just work”.
Alex
2 years ago
Hello together.
What I want to know is, how can I install the Minecraft Bedrock Server with the automatic setup script on my SSD on my Pi4 which is connected via USB? When I run the script the Server is always installed on the SD card.
Now we just need to edit the file. You can use nano or vi to do this like this:
nano SetupMinecraft.sh
Look for the following:
# You can override this for a custom installation directory but I only recommend it if you are using a separate drive for the server
# It is meant to point to the root folder that holds all servers
# For example if you had a separate drive mounted at /newdrive you would use DirName='/newdrive' for all servers
# The servers will be separated by their name/label into folders
DirName=$(readlink -e ~)
Now you can see what to do but I want to mention to not be too specific on the directories you want to use. Typically you’d want to use the root of your SSD like /mnt/yourssd or wherever you have it mounted. It will create the rest of the folders for you if that makes sense. It only wants the “root” folder. When people try to overthink this and make it too many levels deep it will break things so just keep in mind that if you get it to the SSD it will do the rest and create the folders for you.
Once you’re done with that press Ctrl+X and then “y” to save. Now simply run SetupMinecraft.sh with:
./SetupMinecraft.sh
The path should never change once you make the custom SetupMinecraft.sh no matter how many servers you want to create. It will just have subfolders with the servers split up if that makes sense and the script handles this for you.
I generally don’t recommend this as you can probably tell from my comments in the file but your use case is exactly what this override is for. You are exactly the situation I have in mind to use the custom installation directory (in order to put the server on a SSD which will definitely be faster). I do recommend doing exactly what you’re trying to do here for your use case. Hopefully that helps!
maybe I did something wrong. so I want to install the server on “/mnt/sda”. where I have to change this in your script? I tried it but the whole program is installed on my SD everytime I try. =(
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheRemote/MinecraftBedrockServer/master/SetupMinecraft.sh | sed 's+DirName=$(readlink -e ~)+DirName=/mnt/sda+g' | bash
This does the exact same thing as my previous instructions. All we are doing is setting DirName=(readlink -e ~) to DirName=/mnt/sda. It’s just a text file with instructions and this is a different way to change the text file. That’s all there is to it basically!
If it seems awkward it’s because my primary recommendation would be installing your OS on your SSD as well and having it be the boot OS for your entire system. In this scenario it simply uses the home folder still and it’s all on the SSD. It’s totally fine if this is not your setup but you could absolutely switch to SSD booting altogether to solve this alternatively.
It’s actually not incredibly common to just plug in a SSD for this purpose (without just installing the OS on the SSD as the OS for the Pi is not very big relative to a SSD so you might as well upgrade everything) but it is still a totally legitimate use case. It’s just a little awkward because Raspberry Pi OS is only 1-2GB or so in size so usually people move the entire OS on there as well (which will speed up the whole Pi more than just using it for the server as the entire OS will also be getting the improved I/O speeds from the SSD).
I definitely recommend using the SSD for your OS not only for the improved performance but this would sidestep this issue as well. Usually only people plugging in a totally separate SSD from their boot OS just for the server would have to go this far theoretically. You are mostly doing it since your setup is a little different from what most people’s will be (usually a full OS install on the SSD which makes the home folder already be on the SSD). It should work though if you have your reasons for sticking with this setup!
If you aren’t running a 64-bit OS this would be a perfect opportunity to install the 64-bit version of your OS for the Pi directly onto the SSD (the Raspberry Pi Imager can do this for both Raspberry Pi OS and Ubuntu if you plug the SSD into your PC or another Pi running the Pi Imager). The performance is quite slow on 32-bit ARM (it can’t use Box64 and has to use QEMU on 32-bit) so I figured I’d mention this as well so that if you do try to do a full OS install that you don’t end up having to do it twice to achieve the performance you’re looking for because you installed the 32-bit version instead of the 64-bit version (which is the other big thing that will hold it back other than the storage). Hopefully that helps!
Excellent, I’m glad you got it working! I’d honestly recommend my Docker container that has Geyser + Floodgate installed. This allows Bedrock players to connect and runs a lot faster on the Pi! You’d just install Docker first with sudo apt install docker.io.
There isn’t any way to set the RAM in the Bedrock edition basically. It works in C++ and shouldn’t use very much memory (vs. Java where you can choose how much memory to use). The Bedrock server is not going to get much faster than on a SSD with a 64-bit OS for sure. I’d imagine you’d be better off just running the Java + Floodgate version!
There basically isn’t a reason to run the Bedrock server anymore since I released that container. The Java server will do everything that Bedrock can and much more and the Floodgate client lets both Bedrock and Java players play (it doesn’t care which client they’re using). It also allows for plugins and other things that Bedrock can’t do. Since it is in Java it runs much faster than the Bedrock version because Microsoft never released an ARM version. This has to use emulation via Box64 and QEMU so it will never be as fast as the Java version for ARM (unless Microsoft releases an ARM binary for Minecraft Bedrock). I highly recommend giving it a try!
so what is the best way in your opinion for me to run a server on the pi 4 to play minecraft bedrock. the situation is, that i play bedrock on my laptop and my wife and my son on the nintendo switch and xbox.
It’s a Docker container. It works pretty similarly to this. There’s no standalone version of the Floodgate/Geyser script as these have a lot of complications so I’m not really making ones like this anymore. You wouldn’t have had any of the problems you’ve had so far working with Docker and that is exactly why I don’t make versions like this anymore. I no longer personally run any standalone versions and use Docker on my own servers. There’s a million configuration issues it could be when people have problems with this and Docker pretty much solves them all.
You need to read the link to have any chance of success with this. If we have to cover each issue one at a time you will be here for another 20-30 replies but it’s all in the article. It’s actually more simple to install than this one. It’s as simple as:
That’s it. You now have a running Floodgate server. Please read my link though as it will tell you how to access the server files if you want to edit server.properties and everything like that. If you just type those lines though you’re going to have more questions that are all covered in the guide so make sure to check it out first. It’s easy but not without reading the guide/documentation first.
You don’t have to do any of this if you are happy with the performance but it sounds like you aren’t. You are going to need to read the links though as it will be different than this. I wrote this version 5-6 years ago (it predates this article on GitHub for sure) and it’s honestly obsolete vs. the Geyser Docker containers which will always be faster than emulation.
This version is mostly just maintained for the people using it (which doesn’t include myself anymore, this is slow compared to Geyser and I’ve ran that for all of my servers since the day I made it and saw how fast it actually was). I definitely don’t have any intention of running the native Bedrock server again as there is just no reason to take the performance hit as well as lose the capabilities that you get from Paper / Geyser / Java. Hopefully that helps!
docker volume create dockerssd
Got permission denied while trying to connect to the Docker daemon socket at unix:///var/run/docker.sock: Post "http://%2Fvar%2Frun%2Fdocker.sock/v1.24/volumes/create": dial unix /var/run/docker.sock: connect: permission denied
You can also add your user to the Docker group with sudo adduser youruser docker and then reboot the system. I’d just put sudo in front of the commands though!
The best way is to just run SetupMinecraft.sh again. This will completely redownload the scripts and reinstall anything related to the startup service, etc.
It’s designed to do this safely. You can also remove the “downloads” folder to make it redownload the server again. Hopefully that helps!
Kristoffer
2 years ago
hello me again 🙂
my wife played for 13 hours and 2 days later everything she had done was gone, what could be the reason?
the server is making backups soon, how can I start a backup from 2 days ago.
Thanks
Oh no! So basically the backups are stored in the backups folder for your server which will look something like:
/home/yourname/minecraftbe/yourservername/backups
Before trying anything I would move the backups to a safe location. To restore the backup you pretty much just extract that file over the top of a new server (instructions in the guide for a step by step). In a nutshell though you will just extract the backup and everything else it needs is in there.
A couple of reasons this has happened in the past is that if you ran SetupMinecraft.sh multiple times the server might not be where you think it is. These are usually easy to find. It should still be in your ~/minecraftbe folder. Each server gets it’s own folder so a lot of the times with these missing server cases it will end up being a different folder in there.
The Minecraft map files are actually individual physical files so there’s nowhere for them to really go / get lost to unless there’s some kind of corruption issue. What I mean by this is that your world on the disk looks like this:
root@jamesgigabyte-linux:/home/james/minecraftbe/james/world/'Bedrock level'/region# ls
advancements datapacks DIM1 level.dat paper-world.yml poi session.lock uid.dat
data DIM-1 entities level.dat_old playerdata region stats
Basically you can see all the different chunks there on the disk. They’re physical files. It’s not a database or anything like that where these can be easily lost/overwritten. There is an individual file for each chunk / region which protects against losing work like this really well (but it’s not impossible).
If the server is corrupted it usually manifests as the server crashing though so I don’t think that’s the case here. My guess is they are either hiding under a different server folder or a backup should restore these.
Hopefully that helps and let me know if you need more help!
Martin
2 years ago
Hi James
I’ve tried several things from several pages on your site here. The furthest I got was [INFO: Server started] or something like that, but couldn’t join from my Minecraft game.
I see the Box64, Linux, Ubuntu, ARM and so and some guides are based of something you’ve – but I’m not quite hitting the goal here.
I’m trying the “How to get a free Minecraft server on Oracle Cloud”. The easy way would be using fx AMD cpu but that’s limited to 1 GB of RAM.
So of course I want the Ubuntu/Oracle Linux where I can get “4 CPU’s and 24 GB RAM”.
But then I mess around in your guides never succeeding.
I know it’s too much to ask for the correct commands and so on, but if you could tell me what guides/pages I should look on and how to get the better performance from the Box64 (as I understand it)?
I started here and that stops when installing the Minecraft server since it’s for Java and I need the Bedrock for me and my son. (I’m so close just paying the $2 some random place).
Then I searched and found your site and began with and you script was fine I guess my as mentioned I couldn’t connect from my client. It was just “Localizing”.
Sorry for the long text but I’m lost and about to give up, but again, it can’t be THAT hard and it seems a lot have got it to work.
Definitely forget about all those. It’s just a simple Oracle configuration issue that has come up many, many, many times here. This issue has been coming up almost every day to be honest with you (but not in this article so don’t take this as me saying you should have seen it as that’s not what I mean, they were in the other ones + there’s thousands of comments across them). I only mean to say that you’re right that lots of people are doing this and it’s really popular. Everyone wants to use the free Oracle VM and if you do you should understand it *requires* additional configuration that nobody else / nothing else does that I’ve ever seen.
The Oracle VM isn’t really free (other than the monthly rate) as you will pay for it in time / configuration. That being said everyone has said it was worth it in the end so I’m not saying it’s not worth it. I wouldn’t call it free though! Any other solution would fire up easier and faster but to be honest not very many people/companies will give you a free VM hosted in a datacenter. Due to this it’s a fantastic offer. Just know that there’s a catch though which is it’s not easy to configure. At all. Nobody has more trouble with anything than Oracle using these scripts and it’s not even close.
The good news is that this road has been traveled before and I can think of a dozen people at least that did end up getting this successfully configured (and they left notes for others!). If a dozen of them left comments you can be sure statistically speaking that there are hundreds of people doing this that did not comment on the site over the years!
in the oracle VNIC settings you need to create a network security group (with ingress for your minecraft ports), and then add this group to you instance – hey presto it works! So hopefully this helps anyone else trying to get working!
The very last person had firewalld installed on theirs and they had to add exceptions to the ports for the firewall. If your VM deployment has ufw or firewalld installed then you need to open the firewall. My guess is it’s just the security group though because it is the security group literally every time or at least that is one of the things they have to get and there may be several.
There’s nothing wrong with the server or the scripts or anything to do with this project. It’s just Oracle configuration and it’s not too bad once you know what to do. If you don’t know the trick I don’t know how anyone would figure it out without being an Oracle developer or a professional that works with the product every day. The people who finally cracked the Oracle case a while ago were extremely smart professionals and they shared how to get it going.
My guess is that you are extremely, extremely close here. Like one key step, maybe even just the security group with the ingress settings for the Minecraft ports or possibly opening ufw or firewalld. If you’re able to get it let me know which (if any, I’ve learned over the years it can *always* be something totally new and never seen) of these it was as I think the documentation would benefit from an Oracle configuration section to catch some of these / help everyone out. Hopefully that helps!
Kristoffer
2 years ago
Hi,
It worked perfectly, how can I set the coordinates to be displayed to me?
Welcome, I’m glad it’s working well for you! The coordinates can be shown like this:
/gamerule showcoordinates true
or if you haven’t “opped” yourself in-game you can type that in the console (screen -r should bring up your console) without the forward slash like this:
Hello, I installed this on a whim, and THEN read about your Docker Floodgate version that sounds much more appealing for cross-platform players. What is the best way to cleaning uninstall this server and all its dependencies? I assume it’s best practice to fully uninstall this one before installing Floodgate?
Hey Ryan,
Basically you just need to remove the old folder and then there is a startup service at /etc/systemd/system/yourserver.service to remove as well. After you remove the service run:
sudo systemctl daemon-reloadThat’s all there is to it for the removal!
So for anyone wanting to do this with better performance you can use box64.
You will find it in github and the steps to compile in the wiki are easy to follow “or you can use the provided binaries”.
After that instead of typing “LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. ./bedrock_server” to launch just use “BOX64_LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. box64 ./bedrock_server”
Hello Abd,
Might I suggest not doing that at all and using my Docker container that uses Box64.
You won’t have to find it in GitHub, you won’t have to compile it and you won’t have to launch it with crazy syntax. Like all things Docker it will “just work”.
Hello together.
What I want to know is, how can I install the Minecraft Bedrock Server with the automatic setup script on my SSD on my Pi4 which is connected via USB? When I run the script the Server is always installed on the SD card.
What should I do?
Hey Alex,
Great question! The way you do this is first download a copy of SetupMinecraft.sh like this:
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheRemote/MinecraftBedrockServer/master/SetupMinecraft.shNow we just need to edit the file. You can use nano or vi to do this like this:
nano SetupMinecraft.shLook for the following:
# You can override this for a custom installation directory but I only recommend it if you are using a separate drive for the server# It is meant to point to the root folder that holds all servers
# For example if you had a separate drive mounted at /newdrive you would use DirName='/newdrive' for all servers
# The servers will be separated by their name/label into folders
DirName=$(readlink -e ~)
Now you can see what to do but I want to mention to not be too specific on the directories you want to use. Typically you’d want to use the root of your SSD like /mnt/yourssd or wherever you have it mounted. It will create the rest of the folders for you if that makes sense. It only wants the “root” folder. When people try to overthink this and make it too many levels deep it will break things so just keep in mind that if you get it to the SSD it will do the rest and create the folders for you.
Once you’re done with that press Ctrl+X and then “y” to save. Now simply run SetupMinecraft.sh with:
./SetupMinecraft.shThe path should never change once you make the custom SetupMinecraft.sh no matter how many servers you want to create. It will just have subfolders with the servers split up if that makes sense and the script handles this for you.
I generally don’t recommend this as you can probably tell from my comments in the file but your use case is exactly what this override is for. You are exactly the situation I have in mind to use the custom installation directory (in order to put the server on a SSD which will definitely be faster). I do recommend doing exactly what you’re trying to do here for your use case. Hopefully that helps!
Hello,
maybe I did something wrong. so I want to install the server on “/mnt/sda”. where I have to change this in your script? I tried it but the whole program is installed on my SD everytime I try. =(
No worries. Let’s try it a different way:
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheRemote/MinecraftBedrockServer/master/SetupMinecraft.sh | sed 's+DirName=$(readlink -e ~)+DirName=/mnt/sda+g' | bashThis does the exact same thing as my previous instructions. All we are doing is setting DirName=(readlink -e ~) to DirName=/mnt/sda. It’s just a text file with instructions and this is a different way to change the text file. That’s all there is to it basically!
If it seems awkward it’s because my primary recommendation would be installing your OS on your SSD as well and having it be the boot OS for your entire system. In this scenario it simply uses the home folder still and it’s all on the SSD. It’s totally fine if this is not your setup but you could absolutely switch to SSD booting altogether to solve this alternatively.
It’s actually not incredibly common to just plug in a SSD for this purpose (without just installing the OS on the SSD as the OS for the Pi is not very big relative to a SSD so you might as well upgrade everything) but it is still a totally legitimate use case. It’s just a little awkward because Raspberry Pi OS is only 1-2GB or so in size so usually people move the entire OS on there as well (which will speed up the whole Pi more than just using it for the server as the entire OS will also be getting the improved I/O speeds from the SSD).
I definitely recommend using the SSD for your OS not only for the improved performance but this would sidestep this issue as well. Usually only people plugging in a totally separate SSD from their boot OS just for the server would have to go this far theoretically. You are mostly doing it since your setup is a little different from what most people’s will be (usually a full OS install on the SSD which makes the home folder already be on the SSD). It should work though if you have your reasons for sticking with this setup!
If you aren’t running a 64-bit OS this would be a perfect opportunity to install the 64-bit version of your OS for the Pi directly onto the SSD (the Raspberry Pi Imager can do this for both Raspberry Pi OS and Ubuntu if you plug the SSD into your PC or another Pi running the Pi Imager). The performance is quite slow on 32-bit ARM (it can’t use Box64 and has to use QEMU on 32-bit) so I figured I’d mention this as well so that if you do try to do a full OS install that you don’t end up having to do it twice to achieve the performance you’re looking for because you installed the 32-bit version instead of the 64-bit version (which is the other big thing that will hold it back other than the storage). Hopefully that helps!
Thanks for your help.
I installed the OS on the SSD now and all is fine.
It takes a long time if I try to connect with my client on the server… Is there a possibility where I can set the RAM for the server?
Hey Alex,
Excellent, I’m glad you got it working! I’d honestly recommend my Docker container that has Geyser + Floodgate installed. This allows Bedrock players to connect and runs a lot faster on the Pi! You’d just install Docker first with
sudo apt install docker.io.There isn’t any way to set the RAM in the Bedrock edition basically. It works in C++ and shouldn’t use very much memory (vs. Java where you can choose how much memory to use). The Bedrock server is not going to get much faster than on a SSD with a 64-bit OS for sure. I’d imagine you’d be better off just running the Java + Floodgate version!
There basically isn’t a reason to run the Bedrock server anymore since I released that container. The Java server will do everything that Bedrock can and much more and the Floodgate client lets both Bedrock and Java players play (it doesn’t care which client they’re using). It also allows for plugins and other things that Bedrock can’t do. Since it is in Java it runs much faster than the Bedrock version because Microsoft never released an ARM version. This has to use emulation via Box64 and QEMU so it will never be as fast as the Java version for ARM (unless Microsoft releases an ARM binary for Minecraft Bedrock). I highly recommend giving it a try!
so what is the best way in your opinion for me to run a server on the pi 4 to play minecraft bedrock. the situation is, that i play bedrock on my laptop and my wife and my son on the nintendo switch and xbox.
Hey Alex,
The Docker container with Floodgate should be the best for this setup. That will let everyone connect and play and it will run quickly!
Hello James,
and so I have to install the minecraft java or bedrock server edition. is there an automatic scirpt for it?
Hey Alex,
It’s this link here.
It’s a Docker container. It works pretty similarly to this. There’s no standalone version of the Floodgate/Geyser script as these have a lot of complications so I’m not really making ones like this anymore. You wouldn’t have had any of the problems you’ve had so far working with Docker and that is exactly why I don’t make versions like this anymore. I no longer personally run any standalone versions and use Docker on my own servers. There’s a million configuration issues it could be when people have problems with this and Docker pretty much solves them all.
You need to read the link to have any chance of success with this. If we have to cover each issue one at a time you will be here for another 20-30 replies but it’s all in the article. It’s actually more simple to install than this one. It’s as simple as:
sudo apt install docker.iodocker run -it -v yourvolumename:/minecraft -p 25565:25565 -p 19132:19132/udp -p 19132:19132 05jchambers/legendary-minecraft-geyser-floodgate:latest
That’s it. You now have a running Floodgate server. Please read my link though as it will tell you how to access the server files if you want to edit server.properties and everything like that. If you just type those lines though you’re going to have more questions that are all covered in the guide so make sure to check it out first. It’s easy but not without reading the guide/documentation first.
You don’t have to do any of this if you are happy with the performance but it sounds like you aren’t. You are going to need to read the links though as it will be different than this. I wrote this version 5-6 years ago (it predates this article on GitHub for sure) and it’s honestly obsolete vs. the Geyser Docker containers which will always be faster than emulation.
This version is mostly just maintained for the people using it (which doesn’t include myself anymore, this is slow compared to Geyser and I’ve ran that for all of my servers since the day I made it and saw how fast it actually was). I definitely don’t have any intention of running the native Bedrock server again as there is just no reason to take the performance hit as well as lose the capabilities that you get from Paper / Geyser / Java. Hopefully that helps!
I do not know why but I gues docker will not run.
this happens:
docker volume create dockerssdGot permission denied while trying to connect to the Docker daemon socket at unix:///var/run/docker.sock: Post "http://%2Fvar%2Frun%2Fdocker.sock/v1.24/volumes/create": dial unix /var/run/docker.sock: connect: permission denied
Hey Alex,
Put sudo before your Docker commands:
sudo docker volume create dockerssdYou can also add your user to the Docker group with
sudo adduser youruser dockerand then reboot the system. I’d just put sudo in front of the commands though!Thx. I gues now it will work. Installation will take aprox 20min?
Hey Alex,
It depends on your internet speed but it’s usually pretty quick. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes or a few minutes I’d say!
Dear James,
How do we reinstall the software?
Hey Swedenstyle34,
The best way is to just run SetupMinecraft.sh again. This will completely redownload the scripts and reinstall anything related to the startup service, etc.
It’s designed to do this safely. You can also remove the “downloads” folder to make it redownload the server again. Hopefully that helps!
hello me again 🙂
my wife played for 13 hours and 2 days later everything she had done was gone, what could be the reason?
the server is making backups soon, how can I start a backup from 2 days ago.
Thanks
Hey Kristoffer,
Oh no! So basically the backups are stored in the backups folder for your server which will look something like:
/home/yourname/minecraftbe/yourservername/backupsBefore trying anything I would move the backups to a safe location. To restore the backup you pretty much just extract that file over the top of a new server (instructions in the guide for a step by step). In a nutshell though you will just extract the backup and everything else it needs is in there.
A couple of reasons this has happened in the past is that if you ran SetupMinecraft.sh multiple times the server might not be where you think it is. These are usually easy to find. It should still be in your ~/minecraftbe folder. Each server gets it’s own folder so a lot of the times with these missing server cases it will end up being a different folder in there.
The Minecraft map files are actually individual physical files so there’s nowhere for them to really go / get lost to unless there’s some kind of corruption issue. What I mean by this is that your world on the disk looks like this:
root@jamesgigabyte-linux:/home/james/minecraftbe/james/world/'Bedrock level'/region# lsadvancements datapacks DIM1 level.dat paper-world.yml poi session.lock uid.dat
data DIM-1 entities level.dat_old playerdata region stats
root@jamesgigabyte-linux:/home/james/minecraftbe/james/world/'Bedrock level'/region# ls
r.0.0.mca r.-11.-2.mca r.-13.5.mca r.2.2.mca r.3.-6.mca r.-5.7.mca r.-7.9.mca
r.0.-1.mca r.-11.2.mca r.-13.6.mca r.-2.-3.mca r.-3.7.mca r.-5.8.mca r.-8.0.mca
r.0.1.mca r.-11.-3.mca r.-13.7.mca r.-2.3.mca r.-3.8.mca r.-5.9.mca r.-8.10.mca
r.0.-2.mca r.-11.3.mca r.-13.8.mca r.2.-3.mca r.-3.9.mca r.-6.0.mca r.-8.11.mca
r.0.2.mca r.-11.4.mca r.-13.9.mca r.2.3.mca r.-4.0.mca r.-6.10.mca r.-8.12.mca
r.0.-3.mca r.-11.5.mca r.-1.-3.mca r.-2.-4.mca r.-4.10.mca r.-6.11.mca r.-8.13.mca
r.0.3.mca r.-11.6.mca r.-1.3.mca r.-2.4.mca r.-4.11.mca r.-6.12.mca r.-8.-1.mca
r.0.-4.mca r.-11.7.mca r.1.-3.mca r.2.-4.mca r.-4.12.mca r.-6.-1.mca r.-8.1.mca
r.0.4.mca r.-11.8.mca r.1.3.mca r.2.4.mca r.-4.13.mca r.-6.1.mca r.-8.-2.mca
r.0.-5.mca r.-11.9.mca r.-14.0.mca r.-2.-5.mca r.-4.-1.mca r.-6.-2.mca r.-8.2.mca
r.0.5.mca r.-1.-1.mca r.-14.-1.mca r.-2.5.mca r.-4.1.mca r.-6.2.mca r.-8.-3.mca
r.0.6.mca r.-1.1.mca r.-14.1.mca r.2.-5.mca r.-4.-2.mca r.6.-2.mca r.-8.3.mca
r.-10.0.mca r.1.-1.mca r.-1.-4.mca r.-2.6.mca r.-4.2.mca r.-6.-3.mca r.-8.-4.mca
r.-10.10.mca r.1.1.mca r.-1.4.mca r.-2.-7.mca r.-4.-3.mca r.-6.3.mca r.-8.4.mca
r.-10.11.mca r.-12.0.mca r.1.-4.mca r.-2.7.mca r.-4.3.mca r.-6.-4.mca r.-8.5.mca
r.-10.12.mca r.-12.10.mca r.1.4.mca r.-2.8.mca r.-4.-4.mca r.-6.4.mca r.-8.6.mca
r.-10.-1.mca r.-12.11.mca r.-15.0.mca r.-2.9.mca r.-4.4.mca r.-6.-5.mca r.-8.-7.mca
r.-10.1.mca r.-12.12.mca r.-15.-1.mca r.-3.0.mca r.-4.-5.mca r.-6.5.mca r.-8.7.mca
r.-10.-2.mca r.-12.13.mca r.-15.1.mca r.3.0.mca r.-4.5.mca r.6.5.mca r.-8.8.mca
r.-10.2.mca r.-12.1.mca r.-1.-5.mca r.-3.10.mca r.-4.-6.mca r.-6.6.mca r.-8.9.mca
r.-10.-3.mca r.-12.2.mca r.-1.5.mca r.-3.11.mca r.-4.6.mca r.-6.7.mca r.-9.0.mca
r.-10.3.mca r.-12.3.mca r.1.-5.mca r.-3.12.mca r.-4.7.mca r.-6.8.mca r.-9.10.mca
r.-10.-4.mca r.-12.4.mca r.1.5.mca r.-3.-1.mca r.-4.-8.mca r.6.-8.mca r.-9.11.mca
r.-10.4.mca r.-12.5.mca r.-1.6.mca r.-3.1.mca r.-4.8.mca r.-6.9.mca r.-9.12.mca
r.-10.-5.mca r.-12.6.mca r.1.6.mca r.3.-1.mca r.-4.9.mca r.-7.0.mca r.-9.13.mca
r.-10.5.mca r.-12.7.mca r.-1.7.mca r.3.1.mca r.-5.0.mca r.-7.-10.mca r.-9.-1.mca
r.-10.6.mca r.-12.8.mca r.1.-7.mca r.-3.-2.mca r.5.0.mca r.-7.10.mca r.-9.1.mca
r.-10.7.mca r.-12.9.mca r.-1.8.mca r.-3.2.mca r.-5.10.mca r.-7.11.mca r.-9.-2.mca
r.-10.8.mca r.-1.-2.mca r.-1.9.mca r.3.-2.mca r.-5.11.mca r.-7.12.mca r.-9.2.mca
r.-10.9.mca r.-1.2.mca r.-2.0.mca r.3.2.mca r.-5.12.mca r.-7.13.mca r.-9.-3.mca
Basically you can see all the different chunks there on the disk. They’re physical files. It’s not a database or anything like that where these can be easily lost/overwritten. There is an individual file for each chunk / region which protects against losing work like this really well (but it’s not impossible).
If the server is corrupted it usually manifests as the server crashing though so I don’t think that’s the case here. My guess is they are either hiding under a different server folder or a backup should restore these.
Hopefully that helps and let me know if you need more help!
Hi James
I’ve tried several things from several pages on your site here. The furthest I got was [INFO: Server started] or something like that, but couldn’t join from my Minecraft game.
I see the Box64, Linux, Ubuntu, ARM and so and some guides are based of something you’ve – but I’m not quite hitting the goal here.
I’m trying the “How to get a free Minecraft server on Oracle Cloud”. The easy way would be using fx AMD cpu but that’s limited to 1 GB of RAM.
So of course I want the Ubuntu/Oracle Linux where I can get “4 CPU’s and 24 GB RAM”.
But then I mess around in your guides never succeeding.
I know it’s too much to ask for the correct commands and so on, but if you could tell me what guides/pages I should look on and how to get the better performance from the Box64 (as I understand it)?
I started here and that stops when installing the Minecraft server since it’s for Java and I need the Bedrock for me and my son. (I’m so close just paying the $2 some random place).
Then I searched and found your site and began with and you script was fine I guess my as mentioned I couldn’t connect from my client. It was just “Localizing”.
Sorry for the long text but I’m lost and about to give up, but again, it can’t be THAT hard and it seems a lot have got it to work.
Hey Martin,
Definitely forget about all those. It’s just a simple Oracle configuration issue that has come up many, many, many times here. This issue has been coming up almost every day to be honest with you (but not in this article so don’t take this as me saying you should have seen it as that’s not what I mean, they were in the other ones + there’s thousands of comments across them). I only mean to say that you’re right that lots of people are doing this and it’s really popular. Everyone wants to use the free Oracle VM and if you do you should understand it *requires* additional configuration that nobody else / nothing else does that I’ve ever seen.
The Oracle VM isn’t really free (other than the monthly rate) as you will pay for it in time / configuration. That being said everyone has said it was worth it in the end so I’m not saying it’s not worth it. I wouldn’t call it free though! Any other solution would fire up easier and faster but to be honest not very many people/companies will give you a free VM hosted in a datacenter. Due to this it’s a fantastic offer. Just know that there’s a catch though which is it’s not easy to configure. At all. Nobody has more trouble with anything than Oracle using these scripts and it’s not even close.
The good news is that this road has been traveled before and I can think of a dozen people at least that did end up getting this successfully configured (and they left notes for others!). If a dozen of them left comments you can be sure statistically speaking that there are hundreds of people doing this that did not comment on the site over the years!
Here’s some links: #1
#2
The answer:
in the oracle VNIC settings you need to create a network security group (with ingress for your minecraft ports), and then add this group to you instance – hey presto it works! So hopefully this helps anyone else trying to get working!The very last person had firewalld installed on theirs and they had to add exceptions to the ports for the firewall. If your VM deployment has ufw or firewalld installed then you need to open the firewall. My guess is it’s just the security group though because it is the security group literally every time or at least that is one of the things they have to get and there may be several.
There’s nothing wrong with the server or the scripts or anything to do with this project. It’s just Oracle configuration and it’s not too bad once you know what to do. If you don’t know the trick I don’t know how anyone would figure it out without being an Oracle developer or a professional that works with the product every day. The people who finally cracked the Oracle case a while ago were extremely smart professionals and they shared how to get it going.
My guess is that you are extremely, extremely close here. Like one key step, maybe even just the security group with the ingress settings for the Minecraft ports or possibly opening ufw or firewalld. If you’re able to get it let me know which (if any, I’ve learned over the years it can *always* be something totally new and never seen) of these it was as I think the documentation would benefit from an Oracle configuration section to catch some of these / help everyone out. Hopefully that helps!
Hi,
It worked perfectly, how can I set the coordinates to be displayed to me?
Hey Kristoffer,
Welcome, I’m glad it’s working well for you! The coordinates can be shown like this:
/gamerule showcoordinates trueor if you haven’t “opped” yourself in-game you can type that in the console (
screen -rshould bring up your console) without the forward slash like this:gamerule showcoordinates trueThat should take care of it for you!