Minecraft 1.17 (Caves and Cliffs Update) is here! This script and guide are written to help you get a great performing Raspberry Pi Minecraft server up and running in only a few minutes.
This is the standalone version. It runs on most flavors of Linux and should work on most architectures as well (arm, aarch64, etc.).
I highly recommend using Docker over the standalone version for most people. Installing Docker is as simple as sudo apt install docker.io. There are 3 Docker options available:
Sets up Minecraft as a system service with option to autostart at boot
Automatic backups to minecraft/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 Pi using cron
Requirements
Raspberry Pi model with 1 GB of RAM or higher. Basically a Raspberry Pi 2B or higher. (No Zero unfortunately, 512MB is not enough RAM to do this, I’ve tried!)
Headless Linux distribution such as Raspbian Buster Lite, Ubuntu Server 18.04.2, or any Debian based distribution (GUI distros can be used at the expense of available RAM and server performance)
Solid state drive highly recommended but not required. You can get a SSD setup on a Pi for less than most Micro SD cards cost. See my article here for details
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 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.
The most important consideration when choosing which flavor of Linux to run the server on is simple: available RAM. Headless Linux distributions such as Raspbian Lite that don’t have a built in GUI have
Our biggest obstacle when running a Minecraft server on the Pi is available RAM since 1 GB is extremely low for this type of server. To have a playable experience you should not be running anything else on the Pi so all memory is available to be used.
After testing on many different distros I am finding Raspbian Lite and Ubuntu Server 18.04.4 32-bit to be the best choices. These distributions come with very few background processes and have rock solid support and performance.
64-bit vs 32-bit
There’s a lot of discussion in the Pi world about the up and coming aarch64 64-bit distributions vs. armhf 32-bit distributions. They have been and continue to improve dramatically. There are already use cases where 64-bit is far superior such as video encoding, advanced compression, etc.
So how about for running a Minecraft server? I have been testing extensively with Ubuntu Server 18.04 64-bit and the Debian Buster 64-bit. I have consistently had worse performance and stability than on 32-bit versions of the exact same distros.
But how can that be? It’s certainly true that Minecraft servers benefit in CPU performance from 64-bit versions of Java. The answer is actually incredibly simple: memory. The server running on a 64-bit Java Virtual Machine uses a minimum of about 100 MB more memory. This makes perfect sense because 64 bits > 32 bits by definition!
The Raspberry Pi’s 1 GB of memory has been the biggest obstacle for this project since the very beginning. Back when I first went into the Paper Minecraft developer IRC room and told them what I was trying to do I was practically laughed out of the chat room for even thinking of trying this. Most Minecraft server branches including vanilla can’t even start on the Pi because of the limited memory.
For a dedicated Minecraft server on the Pi I very highly recommend staying 32-bit. You will have more available memory which means it will be much faster and more stable. Since memory is our bottleneck the increased CPU throughput does not help us and losing *any* of our memory is disastrous!
If the Raspberry Pi 4 has more memory like we all expect it to this recommendation will change completely. Even 2 GB of memory would make the extra memory that 64-bit uses a non-issue and the CPU throughput performance gains very desirable. For now though stay 32-bit for a Minecraft server!
Tested Distributions
Raspberry Pi OS – It’s Raspbian. It has very low memory usage and is the official distribution of the Raspberry Pi. The server runs very well on this. It’s overall the best choice. The Buster release has made OpenJDK 11 available on it so it’s no longer behind the rest of the distros.
Ubuntu Server 18.04 / 20.04 – Ubuntu Server is my favorite Linux distro. I use it for nearly all of my projects. The performance of the 32-bit armhf version is on par with Raspbian. It’s a great choice! Click here for my Ubuntu setup guide for Raspberry Pi. The 64-bit version is not a fantastic choice and not recommended because of the higher memory usage. Stick with 32-bit and you’ll be a happy camper with Ubuntu Server.
Debian Buster 64-bit – Debian is the distribution Raspbian is based on. This version is a preview of Debian “Buster” which is the successor to Stretch and will be the next version of Raspbian when it is released. I like this distribution but it is currently still unofficial and unsupported. Performance and stability was less than Ubuntu and Raspbian.
Minecraft Server Installation
SSH into your Raspberry Pi and paste the following commands:
The script will setup the Minecraft sever and ask you some questions on how to configure it. I’ll explain here what they mean.
“Enter amount of memory in megabytes to dedicate to the Minecraft server” – The amount of memory that will be dedicated to the Minecraft server. The more the better, but you must leave some room for the operating system background processes.
If you exceed the total available memory either the server will crash or the Pi will get incredibly slow to the point where your SSH session will start timing out. The setup script will make a recommendation to you which is your available memory – 10% for headroom. If you aren’t sure what to put just go with the recommended amount.
Note for Raspberry Pi 4: Currently on 32-bit Raspbian 2700 MB is the maximum that Linux will let us allocate in a 32 bit environment. The script has been updated to check for this as the server will not start if it is set over 2700M on a 32 bit server. 64 bit operating systems will be able to allocate all available memory as Pi 4 support rolls out for them.
“Start Minecraft server at startup automatically (y/n)?” – This will set the Minecraft service to start automatically when your Pi boots. This is great because whenever you want to play you can just plug it in and go without having to SSH in.
“Automatically reboot Pi and update server at 4am daily (y/n)?” – This will add a cron job to the server that reboots the Pi 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!
Check Java Version
Sometimes if you have multiple versions of Java installed the wrong version of Java will be selected as the default. If the server didn’t start check that the right version of Java is selected with this command:
sudo update-alternatives --config java
If you get the message “update-alternatives: error: no alternatives for java” then you only have one version of Java installed and can skip to the next section.
If you are presented with a list of choices then your machine has multiple versions of Java installed. It will look like this:
update-alternatives: warning: /etc/alternatives/java has been changed (manually or by a script); switching to manual updates only
There are 2 choices for the alternative java (providing /usr/bin/java).
Selection Path Priority Status
------------------------------------------------------------
0 /usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk-amd64/bin/java 1101 auto mode
1 /usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk-amd64/bin/java 1101 manual mode
2 /usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64/jre/bin/java 1081 manual mode
You will usually want to just select the newest version of OpenJDK that is listed so you would type 0 and press enter. In some cases on some platforms you may want to switch to the official Oracle JDK although I strongly recommend sticking with OpenJDK!
First Run
The first time you run the server it will take a little longer to start since it is generating all the server data. If you try to log in before it fully starts you will get a connection timeout error. Watch for the line: “Timings Reset”. This is the last line that prints when the server is ready to rock and roll. At this point you will be able to connect successfully.
The very first time you log into the server it will be slow for about 1-2 minutes. This is because since nobody has logged in before the server has to scramble to generate all the chunks within your view distance (10 by default) and send them to you/store them. During this time you may not be able to see very far and if you try to destroy blocks there will be noticeable lag from when they break to when they actually disappear.
Don’t panic! This will go away within a couple of minutes as the Pi catches up with all the first time login stuff it needs to do. Performance stabilizes and it will feel very much like the offline experience after that.
If you are hosting for a few friends I’d recommend logging in for the first time right after you set up the server instead of having several people nail a blank server at first startup. This gets it out of the way and when everyone is ready to log in the starting area chunks will be fully fleshed out and the Pi just has to read them. It’s an order of magnitude faster for the Pi to read chunks than to generate and store chunks.
In my experience after the initial login exploring new parts of the server doesn’t cause any lag even though new chunks are being generated. The reason for this is that when you’re walking it’s really only having to generate a new chunk as you get close to the border instead of a huge square area of chunks in all directions and all at the same time like during the first login.
Benchmarking / Testing Storage
If you’re getting poor performance or just want to verify everything is working correctly you may want to run my storage benchmark with:
Now press Ctrl+X to exit nano and answer “y” to save. Now let’s run the script:
chmod +x SetupMinecraft.sh ./SetupMinecraft.sh
And the setup will run and install the version of Minecraft you set at the top of the file!
Changing Minecraft Client Version
If you are wisely running the “stable” branch instead of the “development” branch there will be times where you need to select the version of Minecraft to run otherwise you will get an error message that your client is outdated when you try to log in.
Fortunately this is very easy. Open up the Minecraft launcher and instead of hitting “Play” choose “Launch Options” in the menu at the top of the window. It will look like this:
Minecraft Launcher “Launch Options” Tab
Click the “Add new” button and pick which version you want to add. You can optionally gave it a name or just click save.
Now when you go back to the “News” tab you will see a dropdown arrow where you can select which version of Minecraft you want to play!
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 ~/minecraft/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 ~/minecraft
./stop.sh
rm -rf world world_nether world_the_end
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 Pi periodically just in case the Pi’s storage fails.
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 Pi. The Minecraft one will look like the following:
0 4 * * * /home/ubuntu/minecraft/restart.sh
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.
Installing Mods / Plugins
The server supports plugins that are compatible with Bukkit / Spigot / Paper. A popular place that you can get plugins is at dev.bukkit.org where there are thousands of them!
To install a plugin you simply download the .jar to the minecraft/plugins folder and restart the server. For example, WorldGuard is a very popular plugin that lets you add protection to different areas of your server.
To install this plugin on our Minecraft server we would use the following commands:
cd ~/minecraft/plugins
curl -H "Accept-Encoding: identity" -H "Accept-Language: en" -L -A "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/90.0.12.212 Safari/537.36" -o worldguard.jarhttps://dev.bukkit.org/projects/worldguard/files/latest
sudo systemctl restart minecraft
The reason the middle line is so long is that “robots” (roughly anything that isn’t a web browser being used by a user in this context) including scripts and utilities are blocked by the Bukkit server. The extra parameters we’re including in this line will add the location (-L) flag as well as a user agent and an identity / language header which will allow us to fetch the files without getting a 403 forbidden error.
Make sure to change “-o worldguard.jar” (second to last parameter) and the URL (very last parameter) to match the project you want to download.
The server will restart and the plugin will be installed. It’s that simple! To use the plugin refer to the documentation on the plugin download page to find out which commands you use to configure/interact with it.
Warning: be advised that plugins are the #1 issue for performance degradation on Minecraft servers. This isn’t because all plugins are bad. Some plugins are coded very inefficiently or perform features that require a lot of hooks in the code.
You should be careful about what plugins you install on the server and if you start having bad performance disable your plugins one by one until you find the culprit!
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 25565. The type of connection is TCP if your router asks. 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!
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.
Upgrading
PLEASE BACK UP YOUR SERVER FIRST! The server makes automated backups by default for you in the backups folder but I recommend you back up the entire server folder yourself (basically the entire minecraft folder) any time you attempt to upgrade or downgrade. If you need to roll back to older versions it won’t work without a backup from that version or older!
The easiest way to upgrade an installation is to download the latest SetupMinecraft.sh and run it. This will automatically upgrade you to the latest version.
Upgrading and downgrading to versions that aren’t the default the script chooses is pretty simple. Simply change the Version line at the top in the SetupMinecraft.sh script:
#!/bin/bash # Minecraft Server Installation Script - James A. Chambers - https://jamesachambers.com # More information at https://jamesachambers.com/raspberry-pi-minecraft-server-script-with-startup-service/ # GitHub Repository: https://github.com/TheRemote/RaspberryPiMinecraft
# Minecraft server version Version="1.16.1"
Edit this file in your favorite text editor (you can use nano or vi on the Pi like nano SetupMinecraft.sh) and change the Minecraft version to what you want.
Downgrading
PLEASE RESTORE USING A BACK UP FROM THE VERSION YOU ARE DOWNGRADING TO
If you are having problems on a newer version of Minecraft and want to downgrade you can do so using a complete backup of your server before you ran it on a newer version.
The reason you can’t take server data that has been touched by a version such as 1.17 and go back to 1.16 is that the new version adds all sorts of new data types/structures for the new content into your server data files. If you try to roll back the old versions of the Minecraft server will not understand these data types since they didn’t exist in that version and will crash.
As long as you use a backup for your server files from that version (or older) it’s as simple as changing the version in SetupMinecraft.sh just like I show in the “Upgrading” section.
You can upgrade any old version of Minecraft to any version, but again make sure you have a backup first as it is a one way street and you will need that backup if you want to roll back!
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.
Version History
To view the version history check out the GitHub README here:
There is also a possibility this is language related. I had to make a couple of fixes to my Minecraft Bedrock script for it to run internationally and I may need to make some of the same fixes for this one. This one connects to the Paper API server so I didn’t think it needed language headers but depending on your output it’s possible.
Can you check your ~/minecraft/logs/ folder as well and see if there’s any output in there that may be of use?
Hi, so my Pi keeps getting disconnect after a few hours, so I have to unplug and re plug the lan cable everytime, which seems like a short time fix. Is there anything I can do so my Pi keeps a stable connection? Thank you!
That’s pretty strange. I would actually try resetting your router/modem first as a lot of the time this is your Pi trying to renew it’s DHCP lease with your router and it’s failing. It’s not likely to be the Pi but it may be good to make sure it’s up to date with a sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade as well!
Another thing you can try to narrow things down is to put the Pi on WiFi temporarily. This is obviously not the ideal setup but it’s just a test temporarily to narrow things down. It honestly could even be a failing/bad ethernet cable that is flaking out. Will the same behavior occur over WiFi as over Ethernet? This isn’t something you should normally have to ever worry about though so we should do a few tests to narrow things down for sure.
This is all low-level automatic stuff though and I would say a network device / link is malfunctioning which is usually fixed by turning it off and back on again. If it’s something wrong with the Pi itself it’s going to end up being something bad like a corrupt image but I doubt it. This is all fundamental infrastructure though and not configuration on the Pi basically as having a stable network link is basically a prerequisite but since we’ve had that up until this point I’m guessing it’s just your router needing a reset. Let us know what you find!
Wow, appreciate the detailed answer! Thanks so much. I will try out these tips and come back here if I find a solution to let people know in case they have a similar issue 🙂
I’ve been running your scripts for a while now but never used the startup service.
I decided to give it a shot but every single time I run into the same problem where it says this after reconnecting to the screen
There is a screen on:
***.minecraft (date and time) (Dead???)
Remove dead screens with etc.etc.
Every single time after the pi reboots it runs the ./start.sh command fine because it creates the backups.
I tried monitoring it and gzip runs when looking at ‘top’ after a restart perfectly fine but, It doesn’t continue the script after the backup and then the screen just dies.
I tried modifying the minecraft.service file in the systemd but I also couldn’t get it to work :/
If you have been running the script for a while leave the installation folder as default (~). I made a change to the server that should potentially get it.
If you’ve been modifying the service you may need to run:
or the service will not run for sure. I just made some changes to the startup service last night though so can you try running SetupMinecraft and see if that gets it going for you?
Brand new Pi 4 (4GB) with brand new sd card (128GB)…Follwing your instructions and ran into this problem:
pi@MC-SERVER:~ $ curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheRemote/RaspberryPiMinecraft/master/SetupMinecraft.sh | bash
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 15722 100 15722 0 0 41049 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 41157
Minecraft Server installation script by James A. Chambers - https://jamesachambers.com/
Version 1.17.1 will be installed. To change this, open SetupMinecraft.sh and change the "Version" variable to the version you want to install.
Latest version is always available at https://github.com/TheRemote/RaspberryPiMinecraft
Don't forget to set up port forwarding on your router! The default port is 25565
Installing screen, sudo, net-tools, wget...
Hit:1 http://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian buster InRelease
Hit:2 http://raspbian.raspberrypi.org/raspbian buster InRelease
Reading package lists... Done
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
wget is already the newest version (1.20.1-1.1).
wget set to manually installed.
The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required:
python-colorzero
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove it.
Suggested packages:
byobu | screenie | iselect
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libutempter0 screen
0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 555 kB of archives.
After this operation, 961 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://raspbian.mirrors.lucidnetworks.net/raspbian buster/main armhf libutempter0 armhf 1.1.6-3 [7,736 B]
Get:2 http://mirror.sjc02.svwh.net/raspbian/raspbian buster/main armhf screen armhf 4.6.2-3+deb10u1 [547 kB]
Fetched 555 kB in 2s (298 kB/s)
Selecting previously unselected package libutempter0:armhf.
(Reading database ... 98813 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../libutempter0_1.1.6-3_armhf.deb ...
Unpacking libutempter0:armhf (1.1.6-3) ...
Selecting previously unselected package screen.
Preparing to unpack .../screen_4.6.2-3+deb10u1_armhf.deb ...
Unpacking screen (4.6.2-3+deb10u1) ...
Setting up libutempter0:armhf (1.1.6-3) ...
Setting up screen (4.6.2-3+deb10u1) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.8.5-2) ...
Processing triggers for install-info (6.5.0.dfsg.1-4+b1) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.28-10+rpi1) ...
Processing triggers for systemd (241-7~deb10u7+rpi1) ...
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
net-tools is already the newest version (1.60+git20180626.aebd88e-1).
The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required:
python-colorzero
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove it.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Installing latest Java OpenJDK...
main: line 213: [[: main: line 212: java: command not found: syntax error in expression (error token is ": line 212: java: command not found")
main: line 213: [[: main: line 212: java: command not found: syntax error in expression (error token is ": line 212: java: command not found")
OpenJDK installation completed.
Java did not install successfully -- please install manually or check the above output to see what went wrong and run the installation script again.
All I did was copy and paste the command into the CLI…Any suggestions?
Thanks for reporting this. It looks like it chokes if there’s no Java present on a brand new install due to recent changes around switching to OpenJDK 16 for 1.17. I just uploaded a fix. Can you give it a try again the same way?
Thank you for the reply! I had gone ahead and installed Open JDK16 separately, then went back and ran that curl command from the beginning. Everything worked great after that!
Yeah absolutely, I know some others have done this as well here in the comments but I couldn’t figure out what was going wrong until you posted your output which made it super obvious. Thanks again for reporting this and enjoy and have fun!
There are no full instructions. It does everything for you. Your Pi cannot connect and download this file and execute it without weird 2018/2019 invalid characters forced into the file, and at this point I’m positive this command won’t do it for you either and that something outside of my control (maybe even outside your control) is going on here. This is not something I can help you with. I don’t know who is filtering your internet connection like this or why, but you should have some idea.
You have more basic problems to solve and are not ready to run the script. Why can’t your Pi connect to the internet normally and download files? What is wrong with it / interfering with it? This is *NOT* normal. I’ve *NEVER* seen this in years and thousands of comments. You are going to have to troubleshoot this.
You aren’t even getting to the script basically. It’s not getting that far. That line with the weird 2018/2019 characters being inserted tells us it isn’t downloading the file, and isn’t even determining the right name for the file (SetupMinecraft.sh not 2018\uSetupMinecraft2019\u). You aren’t even getting past downloading the file in one piece. Literally. It’s not even downloading the script successfully on your Pi using the built in tools. You haven’t even got to my piece yet. This will have to be fixed before I can help at all with this.
Trying to run the script at this point is putting the cart before the horse. It’s literally a waste of time until these internet / Pi issues are fixed. Your Pi setup is broken and you’re not ready to run any scripts/applications until it is behaving normally! If this is actually a fully reimaged Pi then that would mean it’s definitely your internet connection / firewall or something like that or your SD card is bad and you just put a fresh image on a bad SD card and it’s still misbehaving. It could be a lot of things but your Pi does not meet the minimum functional requirements to run this script at the moment which is a working image / internet connection.
this a problem i re-imaged the pi pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo update-alternatives --config java
There is only one alternative in link group java (providing /usr/bin/java): /usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk-armhf/bin/java
Nothing to configure.
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheRemote/RaspberryPiMinecraft/master/SetupMinecraft.sh nano SetupMinecraft.sh
--2021-07-16 12:53:40-- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheRemote/RaspberryPiMinecraft/master/SetupMinecraft.sh
Resolving raw.githubusercontent.com (raw.githubusercontent.com)... 185.199.110.133, 185.199.111.133, 185.199.108.133, ...
Connecting to raw.githubusercontent.com (raw.githubusercontent.com)|185.199.110.133|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 15788 (15K) [text/plain]
Saving to: \u2018SetupMinecraft.sh\u2019
SetupMinecraft.sh 100%[===================>] 15.42K --.-KB/s in 0.005s
--2021-07-16 12:53:41-- http://nano/
Resolving nano (nano)... failed: Name or service not known.
wget: unable to resolve host address \u2018nano\u2019
--2021-07-16 12:53:41-- http://setupminecraft.sh/
Resolving setupminecraft.sh (setupminecraft.sh)... failed: Name or service not known.
wget: unable to resolve host address \u2018setupminecraft.sh\u2019
FINISHED --2021-07-16 12:53:42--
Total wall clock time: 1.1s
Downloaded: 1 files, 15K in 0.005s (3.00 MB/s)
pi@raspberrypi:~ $
Never seen anything like it. I’m guessing your internet connection is filtered somehow in a very unusual way. I would say it could possibly be your language settings but I don’t think so. People from all over the world have used this for years and like I said, I’ve *never* seen anything like it.
I couldn’t tell you what is wrong with this one at this point. It’s just not doing what other people’s Pis do when they run the same script. It has to be some kind of compromised connection or broken hardware.
You’re also running OpenJDK 11 which is too old to run the server anyway, but it’s not going to matter because you can’t successfully download the script.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 200 OK
Length: 15788 (15K) [text/plain]
Saving to: \u2018SetupMinecraft.sh\u2019
??? where is the 2018 and 2019 weirdness coming from? Is this some sort of WiFi network getting redirected to a capture portal that you need to click “Accept” on in a web browser?
I don’t think I can help you further with this one. Your Pi / internet connection do not work properly, and they don’t make sense when they’re not working properly either, nor has anyone else’s Pi ever behaved like this in nearly 5 years of this script existing. You said you’ve reimaged it but you’re still getting behavior that doesn’t make any sense and shouldn’t happen so I assume this SD card is actually bad or your network connection isn’t working correctly/is filtered/something unusual.
It looks like the wget is interpreting the spaces as files to download, i.e. download “nano” then download “SetupMinecraft.sh”, and not to pass the initial downloaded file to nano. Using straight wget might also be introducing those “\u2018” and “\u2019” which is unicode for left and right single quotation mark.
The follow up of using curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheRemote/RaspberryPiMinecraft/master/SetupMinecraft.sh | bash should fix those issues.
Great find! I’m not surprised, I’ve encountered wget issues on the Bedrock version of the script as well which has already been completely converted over to curl (in that version wget was actually causing lockups). I’ll switch the Java version script over to curl as well.
I’m not sure why this is only the case for some people. It could be default language setting related / version related / a bunch of things but for sure wget has been nothing but trouble for me (especially lately). I almost wonder if the browser (or wget itself) is pasting/interpreting “browser safe” spaces in some cases (like a   or something) and wget actually sends the characters as-is whereas curl is probably smart enough to turn them into regular spaces. It looks like my preformatted blocks were not marked as “code” (I’ve updated this in the article) so the extra spaces being inserted into the copy paste is totally possible and I’ve seen this once or twice in other articles before and after changing it to the “code” element people stopped getting weird browser-safe spaces.
Either way, it’s time to convert this script to curl regardless. Thanks for reporting this!
I havent ran the server since 1.17 came out, So today i decided to boot it up. I started the server opened the “screen” then i typed “version” and it said server running 1.16.4 paper” and then “no updates available”. I want to run 1.17 on it but i cant! What am i supposed to do?
hi sorry for my english i’m french. I have a little problem when I turn on my raspberry the server does not start, can someone help me ??
Hey edouard,
If you use:
sudo systemctl start minecraftor go to:
cd ~/minecraft./start.sh
Will the server start using either of those?
There is also a possibility this is language related. I had to make a couple of fixes to my Minecraft Bedrock script for it to run internationally and I may need to make some of the same fixes for this one. This one connects to the Paper API server so I didn’t think it needed language headers but depending on your output it’s possible.
Can you check your ~/minecraft/logs/ folder as well and see if there’s any output in there that may be of use?
Hi, so my Pi keeps getting disconnect after a few hours, so I have to unplug and re plug the lan cable everytime, which seems like a short time fix. Is there anything I can do so my Pi keeps a stable connection? Thank you!
Hey Mertrogg,
That’s pretty strange. I would actually try resetting your router/modem first as a lot of the time this is your Pi trying to renew it’s DHCP lease with your router and it’s failing. It’s not likely to be the Pi but it may be good to make sure it’s up to date with a sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade as well!
Another thing you can try to narrow things down is to put the Pi on WiFi temporarily. This is obviously not the ideal setup but it’s just a test temporarily to narrow things down. It honestly could even be a failing/bad ethernet cable that is flaking out. Will the same behavior occur over WiFi as over Ethernet? This isn’t something you should normally have to ever worry about though so we should do a few tests to narrow things down for sure.
This is all low-level automatic stuff though and I would say a network device / link is malfunctioning which is usually fixed by turning it off and back on again. If it’s something wrong with the Pi itself it’s going to end up being something bad like a corrupt image but I doubt it. This is all fundamental infrastructure though and not configuration on the Pi basically as having a stable network link is basically a prerequisite but since we’ve had that up until this point I’m guessing it’s just your router needing a reset. Let us know what you find!
Wow, appreciate the detailed answer! Thanks so much. I will try out these tips and come back here if I find a solution to let people know in case they have a similar issue 🙂
Hey James.
I’ve been running your scripts for a while now but never used the startup service.
I decided to give it a shot but every single time I run into the same problem where it says this after reconnecting to the screen
There is a screen on:
***.minecraft (date and time) (Dead???)
Remove dead screens with etc.etc.
Every single time after the pi reboots it runs the ./start.sh command fine because it creates the backups.
I tried monitoring it and gzip runs when looking at ‘top’ after a restart perfectly fine but, It doesn’t continue the script after the backup and then the screen just dies.
I tried modifying the minecraft.service file in the systemd but I also couldn’t get it to work :/
Anything you can think of that might help me?
Hey Ricardo,
Can you try running SetupMinecraft.sh with:
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheRemote/RaspberryPiMinecraft/master/SetupMinecraft.sh | bashIf you have been running the script for a while leave the installation folder as default (~). I made a change to the server that should potentially get it.
If you’ve been modifying the service you may need to run:
sudo systemctl daemon-reloadsudo systemctl enable minecraft
or the service will not run for sure. I just made some changes to the startup service last night though so can you try running SetupMinecraft and see if that gets it going for you?
Brand new Pi 4 (4GB) with brand new sd card (128GB)…Follwing your instructions and ran into this problem:
pi@MC-SERVER:~ $ curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheRemote/RaspberryPiMinecraft/master/SetupMinecraft.sh | bash% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 15722 100 15722 0 0 41049 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 41157
Minecraft Server installation script by James A. Chambers - https://jamesachambers.com/
Version 1.17.1 will be installed. To change this, open SetupMinecraft.sh and change the "Version" variable to the version you want to install.
Latest version is always available at https://github.com/TheRemote/RaspberryPiMinecraft
Don't forget to set up port forwarding on your router! The default port is 25565
Installing screen, sudo, net-tools, wget...
Hit:1 http://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian buster InRelease
Hit:2 http://raspbian.raspberrypi.org/raspbian buster InRelease
Reading package lists... Done
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
wget is already the newest version (1.20.1-1.1).
wget set to manually installed.
The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required:
python-colorzero
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove it.
Suggested packages:
byobu | screenie | iselect
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libutempter0 screen
0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 555 kB of archives.
After this operation, 961 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://raspbian.mirrors.lucidnetworks.net/raspbian buster/main armhf libutempter0 armhf 1.1.6-3 [7,736 B]
Get:2 http://mirror.sjc02.svwh.net/raspbian/raspbian buster/main armhf screen armhf 4.6.2-3+deb10u1 [547 kB]
Fetched 555 kB in 2s (298 kB/s)
Selecting previously unselected package libutempter0:armhf.
(Reading database ... 98813 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../libutempter0_1.1.6-3_armhf.deb ...
Unpacking libutempter0:armhf (1.1.6-3) ...
Selecting previously unselected package screen.
Preparing to unpack .../screen_4.6.2-3+deb10u1_armhf.deb ...
Unpacking screen (4.6.2-3+deb10u1) ...
Setting up libutempter0:armhf (1.1.6-3) ...
Setting up screen (4.6.2-3+deb10u1) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.8.5-2) ...
Processing triggers for install-info (6.5.0.dfsg.1-4+b1) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.28-10+rpi1) ...
Processing triggers for systemd (241-7~deb10u7+rpi1) ...
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
net-tools is already the newest version (1.60+git20180626.aebd88e-1).
The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required:
python-colorzero
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove it.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Installing latest Java OpenJDK...
main: line 213: [[: main: line 212: java: command not found: syntax error in expression (error token is ": line 212: java: command not found")
main: line 213: [[: main: line 212: java: command not found: syntax error in expression (error token is ": line 212: java: command not found")
OpenJDK installation completed.
Java did not install successfully -- please install manually or check the above output to see what went wrong and run the installation script again.
All I did was copy and paste the command into the CLI…Any suggestions?
Hey Brandon,
Thanks for reporting this. It looks like it chokes if there’s no Java present on a brand new install due to recent changes around switching to OpenJDK 16 for 1.17. I just uploaded a fix. Can you give it a try again the same way?
Thank you for the reply! I had gone ahead and installed Open JDK16 separately, then went back and ran that curl command from the beginning. Everything worked great after that!
Hey Brandon,
Yeah absolutely, I know some others have done this as well here in the comments but I couldn’t figure out what was going wrong until you posted your output which made it super obvious. Thanks again for reporting this and enjoy and have fun!
could you paste the FULL with java installations and stuff everything to start the server from scratch again?
No problem, it’s always:
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheRemote/MinecraftBedrockServer/master/SetupMinecraft.sh | bashThere are no full instructions. It does everything for you. Your Pi cannot connect and download this file and execute it without weird 2018/2019 invalid characters forced into the file, and at this point I’m positive this command won’t do it for you either and that something outside of my control (maybe even outside your control) is going on here. This is not something I can help you with. I don’t know who is filtering your internet connection like this or why, but you should have some idea.
You have more basic problems to solve and are not ready to run the script. Why can’t your Pi connect to the internet normally and download files? What is wrong with it / interfering with it? This is *NOT* normal. I’ve *NEVER* seen this in years and thousands of comments. You are going to have to troubleshoot this.
You aren’t even getting to the script basically. It’s not getting that far. That line with the weird 2018/2019 characters being inserted tells us it isn’t downloading the file, and isn’t even determining the right name for the file (SetupMinecraft.sh not 2018\uSetupMinecraft2019\u). You aren’t even getting past downloading the file in one piece. Literally. It’s not even downloading the script successfully on your Pi using the built in tools. You haven’t even got to my piece yet. This will have to be fixed before I can help at all with this.
Trying to run the script at this point is putting the cart before the horse. It’s literally a waste of time until these internet / Pi issues are fixed. Your Pi setup is broken and you’re not ready to run any scripts/applications until it is behaving normally! If this is actually a fully reimaged Pi then that would mean it’s definitely your internet connection / firewall or something like that or your SD card is bad and you just put a fresh image on a bad SD card and it’s still misbehaving. It could be a lot of things but your Pi does not meet the minimum functional requirements to run this script at the moment which is a working image / internet connection.
this a problem i re-imaged the pi
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo update-alternatives --config javaThere is only one alternative in link group java (providing /usr/bin/java): /usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk-armhf/bin/java
Nothing to configure.
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheRemote/RaspberryPiMinecraft/master/SetupMinecraft.sh nano SetupMinecraft.sh
--2021-07-16 12:53:40-- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheRemote/RaspberryPiMinecraft/master/SetupMinecraft.sh
Resolving raw.githubusercontent.com (raw.githubusercontent.com)... 185.199.110.133, 185.199.111.133, 185.199.108.133, ...
Connecting to raw.githubusercontent.com (raw.githubusercontent.com)|185.199.110.133|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 15788 (15K) [text/plain]
Saving to: \u2018SetupMinecraft.sh\u2019
SetupMinecraft.sh 100%[===================>] 15.42K --.-KB/s in 0.005s
2021-07-16 12:53:41 (3.00 MB/s) - \u2018SetupMinecraft.sh\u2019 saved [15788/15788]
--2021-07-16 12:53:41-- http://nano/
Resolving nano (nano)... failed: Name or service not known.
wget: unable to resolve host address \u2018nano\u2019
--2021-07-16 12:53:41-- http://setupminecraft.sh/
Resolving setupminecraft.sh (setupminecraft.sh)... failed: Name or service not known.
wget: unable to resolve host address \u2018setupminecraft.sh\u2019
FINISHED --2021-07-16 12:53:42--
Total wall clock time: 1.1s
Downloaded: 1 files, 15K in 0.005s (3.00 MB/s)
pi@raspberrypi:~ $
Never seen anything like it. I’m guessing your internet connection is filtered somehow in a very unusual way. I would say it could possibly be your language settings but I don’t think so. People from all over the world have used this for years and like I said, I’ve *never* seen anything like it.
I couldn’t tell you what is wrong with this one at this point. It’s just not doing what other people’s Pis do when they run the same script. It has to be some kind of compromised connection or broken hardware.
You’re also running OpenJDK 11 which is too old to run the server anyway, but it’s not going to matter because you can’t successfully download the script.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 200 OKLength: 15788 (15K) [text/plain]
Saving to: \u2018SetupMinecraft.sh\u2019
??? where is the 2018 and 2019 weirdness coming from? Is this some sort of WiFi network getting redirected to a capture portal that you need to click “Accept” on in a web browser?
I don’t think I can help you further with this one. Your Pi / internet connection do not work properly, and they don’t make sense when they’re not working properly either, nor has anyone else’s Pi ever behaved like this in nearly 5 years of this script existing. You said you’ve reimaged it but you’re still getting behavior that doesn’t make any sense and shouldn’t happen so I assume this SD card is actually bad or your network connection isn’t working correctly/is filtered/something unusual.
It looks like the wget is interpreting the spaces as files to download, i.e. download “nano” then download “SetupMinecraft.sh”, and not to pass the initial downloaded file to nano. Using straight wget might also be introducing those “\u2018” and “\u2019” which is unicode for left and right single quotation mark.
The follow up of using
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheRemote/RaspberryPiMinecraft/master/SetupMinecraft.sh | bashshould fix those issues.Hey The D,
Great find! I’m not surprised, I’ve encountered wget issues on the Bedrock version of the script as well which has already been completely converted over to curl (in that version wget was actually causing lockups). I’ll switch the Java version script over to curl as well.
I’m not sure why this is only the case for some people. It could be default language setting related / version related / a bunch of things but for sure wget has been nothing but trouble for me (especially lately). I almost wonder if the browser (or wget itself) is pasting/interpreting “browser safe” spaces in some cases (like a   or something) and wget actually sends the characters as-is whereas curl is probably smart enough to turn them into regular spaces. It looks like my preformatted blocks were not marked as “code” (I’ve updated this in the article) so the extra spaces being inserted into the copy paste is totally possible and I’ve seen this once or twice in other articles before and after changing it to the “code” element people stopped getting weird browser-safe spaces.
Either way, it’s time to convert this script to curl regardless. Thanks for reporting this!
As an update to this — I just uploaded the switch from wget to curl to GitHub if you want to give it a try!
Hey James.
Its me Oscar again back with another problem.
I havent ran the server since 1.17 came out, So today i decided to boot it up. I started the server opened the “screen” then i typed “version” and it said server running 1.16.4 paper” and then “no updates available”. I want to run 1.17 on it but i cant! What am i supposed to do?
With best regards to James
Oscar.
Hey Oscar,
Go ahead and run the latest SetupMinecraft.sh from the site to update to the latest version. That should take you to 1.17.1!
Hey James.
It didnt work maybe beacuse i typed the wrong line?
Anyway i dont really understand what you mean, I dont know what to type, So can you tell me (exactliy) What to type if so that would help!
Best regards
Oscar,
Hey Oscar,
It’s just:
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheRemote/RaspberryPiMinecraft/master/SetupMinecraft.sh | bashand step by step is also in the guide too but that one line should get you back to SetupMinecraft!
Also if you have discord is it fine if we take this over dm´s?