Installing MineCraft Server on CentOS 7 with Oracle Java 8

scottalanmiller

Minecraft Server is a Java-based server for the MineCraft full client (as used on PCs.) In this "how to" we are going to get MineCraft set up to run as a service on CentOS 7.

I started this project with a minimal CentOS 7 template on a Scale HC3 cluster. In addition to the basic install, only firewalld and sysstat were added to the basic image. The image was fully updated as of the time of this writing.

Because Minecraft requires Java, and Java is not installed by default, we need to download that to our server. Minecraft wants Oracle Java rather than the OpenJDK that ships with CentOS so we need to acquire this software separately, which is unfortunate. In this guide we have used the very latest Java 8 release which seems to be working well.

You will need to go to the Oracle Java SE Download Page and follow the link for the Server JRE. You will want the latest patch level, which at this time is 8u66. Look for the Linux x64 download link. You will need to accept the license agreement in order to download.

Chances are you will not be downloading Java directly to your server since it requires interaction to accept the agreement. So we assume that you will download it elsewhere them copy it to the /top directory. Then, we can do as root...

firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=25565/tcp --permanent
firewall-cmd --reload
mkdir /usr/java
cp /tmp/server-jre-8u66-linux.x64.tar.gz /usr/java/
cd /usr/java
tar -xzvf *

You can test your Java installation with this command:

$ /usr/java/jdk1.8.0_66/bin/java -version
java version "1.8.0_66"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_66-b17)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.66-b17, mixed mode)

The Minecraft server also needs to be downloaded. This we can do directly, however.

mkdir /opt/minecraft
cd /opt/minecraft
yum -y install wget
wget https://s3.amazonaws.com/Minecraft.Download/versions/1.8.9/minecraft_server.1.8.9.jar

That's all that it takes for installation. Very simple. And now we can fire up the server:

nohup /usr/java/jdk1.8.0_66/bin/java -Xmx1024M -Xms1024M -jar /opt/minecraft/minecraft_server.1.9.jar nogui &

Of course you can pop this into your crontab with @reboot if you want to set it to start at boot time.

At this point you should have a minimal running Minecraft server!

If you want to add the ability to have the server start when the system reboots, then just add this line via crontab -e

@reboot	cd /opt/minecraft; /usr/java/jdk1.8.0_66/bin/java -Xmx1024M -Xms1024M -jar ./minecraft_server.1.9.jar nogui

0_1453388034637_awesome-minecraft-wallpapers-in-HD-1dut.com-6-1366x768.jpg

coliver

You can actually run Minecraft server with the OpenJDK project. I think it can be installed via the EPEL repo.

scottalanmiller

@coliver said:

You can actually run Minecraft server with the OpenJDK project. I think it can be installed via the EPEL repo.

OpenJDK can be installed automatically, yes. Mojang recommends the Oracle Java platform for speed and stability, though.

JaredBusch

@scottalanmiller said:

@coliver said:

You can actually run Minecraft server with the OpenJDK project. I think it can be installed via the EPEL repo.

OpenJDK can be installed automatically, yes. Mojang recommends the Oracle Java platform for speed and stability, though.

I have had a server running with a standard yum install java with no issues.

Alex Sage

@JaredBusch said:

I have had a server running with a standard yum install java with no issues.

Me too. @scottalanmiller did you remember to install and enable the firewall?

scottalanmiller

@anonymous said:

@JaredBusch said:

I have had a server running with a standard yum install java with no issues.

Me too. @scottalanmiller did you remember to install and enable the firewall?

Did you look at the install info?

scottalanmiller

Added the ability to have it automatically start when the system reboots.

scottalanmiller

Time to update to the latest version...

cd /opt/minecraft
wget https://s3.amazonaws.com/Minecraft.Download/versions/1.9/minecraft_server.1.9.jar

And then we have to change how it starts up to make sure that it is grabbing the current JAR file.

I just use crontab for MineCraft to keep things simple. This is the only line that I need in the cron entries:

@reboot cd /opt/minecraft; /usr/java/jdk1.8.0_66/bin/java -Xmx1024M -Xms1024M -jar ./minecraft_server.1.9.jar nogui

scottalanmiller

Original post has been updated to reflect the latest 0.9 release of the Minecraft Server.