Arch Linux User Repository

Self-Hosting a Remotely-Accessible Minecraft Bedrock Server From Your Home Network

@laWiskaPY had a great question.

"It works for local play, but I can't get it to work so others from other networks can connect. This should be able to do it, right?"

Yes and no. This package can be part of a remotely-accessible self-hosted Minecraft Bedrock server solution, but there are some other pieces to the puzzle.

A big piece is a client-side configuration that must be made. Namely, you need a workaround to enable custom servers on remote Bedrock clients, which do not natively support them in the same way that Java Minecraft clients do. If the Bedrock client is natively hosted on or VPNed into the same network as the Bedrock server, and that server is presenting the server on the default port, the client should auto-detect the server automagically, otherwise, you need to perform this client-side configuration.

This Github project outlines a method for presenting your self-hosted Bedrock server to remote clients. The DNS server described in this project can be self-hosted, or you can just leverage the one already being hosted by the project's maintainer. The former is slightly more secure, but either approach requires at least some level of trust in the maintainer.

https://github.com/Pugmatt/BedrockConnect

Once you have made the client-side changes described in the README of that project, you will also need to do some port forwarding on your router (if hosting from a computer inside your home network). This step will be router-specific, so I cannot provide much more than generic help with this part, but the goal will be to forward a port on your router's IP to one on the computer hosting the Minecraft Bedrock server. The default Bedrock port is 19132. You can change this in the server's configuration, but I would not recommend it in most cases. If you are not sure what your router's public IP address is, you can hit this URL from a browser on a machine inside of your network and it will return your router's public IP address.

https://ipv4.icanhazip.com/

If you want, you can make a DNS entry, (if you have a domain name), and you can point a DNS A record at that public IP address. If your router's IP changes frequently, consider using a DNS provider that supports dynamic DNS, and host a daemon on a machine in your home network that will update the record with the DNS provider as your IP changes.

Alternately, you can just reference the server by IP and not worry about the DNS entry at all. You can also host it on a virtual machine in a public cloud if you do not want to worry about configuring port forwarding on your router, but that will cost you a hosting fee, of course.

Package Automation

Starting with version 1.21.50.10, this AUR package uses an automated process for doing the following:

• Identifying when a new version of the Bedrock Minecraft Server has been released
• Downloading that new source zip file and getting its new hash plus version number
• Updating this AUR package PKGBUILD with a new source zip file hash, version, and URL

Disclaimers & Limitations

This automated process does NOT test the functionality of the new source code itself. The upstream vendor (Mojang) may release non-functional software or change how it must be installed.

In either case, this AUR package may successfully install, but the Bedrock Minecraft server may not launch or run properly.

The automation might fail to increment this package to the latest version if there is a major change to the release mechanism used by the upstream vendor of the source zip file (i.e. they move it to a totally new URL, they significantly change the layout of the download page, et cetera).

The current download page is hosted here:

• https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/download/server/bedrock

The "Minecraft Dedicated Server software for Ubuntu (Linux)" source zip file is the one that should be referenced in the PKGBUILD file for this AUR package.

Report an Issue

Please report any issues with the AUR package build automation, the AUR package PKGBUILD file contents, or the systemd unit files used to run the server in a comment here.

Issues with the upstream vendor's source code should be reported to the upstream vendor.

Learn More

If you are curious to see how the AUR package build automation works to automatically increment the package version each time there is a new release by the upstream vendor, please visit this page:

• https://gitlab.com/codrcodz/aur-minecraft-bedrock-server

Good ole M$, you will now see the following message in the console log on startup:

================ TELEMETRY MESSAGE ===================
Server Telemetry is currently not enabled.
Enabling this telemetry helps us improve the game.

To enable this feature, add the line 'emit-server-telemetry=true'
to the server.properties file in the handheld/src-server directory
======================================================

If you do wish to enable "telemetry", add the line to /opt/minecraft-bedrock-server/server.properties.

New Maintainer

Hi everyone. I am taking over as maintainer for this package.

Leaving it flagged as out-of-date for now until I can do some scripting to work around the new M$ BS that prevents the automatic download of the main source file from the Minecraft server download page.

Once I get that working, I also plan to add in some automation to do updates and testing automagically on every new release.

I want to thank Abzie for all the hard work put in over the years maintaining this package.

Anyone hitting a port error? Could just be me. https://bugs.mojang.com/browse/BDS-18482

Shameless Microsoft...

https://imgur.com/a/Flb5ksB

recent versions of the package does overwrite /opt/minecraft-bedrock-server/allowlist.json file every upgrade... please exclude the file from being overwritten, when upgrading package...

Good ole M$, you will now see the following message in the console log on startup:

================ TELEMETRY MESSAGE ===================
Server Telemetry is currently not enabled.
Enabling this telemetry helps us improve the game.

To enable this feature, add the line 'emit-server-telemetry=true'
to the server.properties file in the handheld/src-server directory
======================================================

If you do wish to enable "telemetry", add the line to /opt/minecraft-bedrock-server/server.properties.

I've not seen this before, but I would manually edit the allowlist.json. Does whitelist.json and allowlist.json exist and read/writable to minecraft_bedrock user?

The actual error complains of libcurl, so you should raise this here: https://bugs.mojang.com/projects/MCPE

I'm getting an error when I try to add players to the allowlist.json via the MC console:

000:root@******:/opt/minecraft-bedrock-server
# sudo -u minecraft-bedrock LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. ./bedrock_server
NO LOG FILE! - setting up server logging...
[2022-03-19 20:36:09:388 INFO] Starting Server
[2022-03-19 20:36:09:388 INFO] Version 1.18.12.01
[2022-03-19 20:36:09:388 INFO] Session ID 34bc180d-303e-43b6-9689-80f46152b85e
[2022-03-19 20:36:09:388 INFO] Level Name: ******.world
[2022-03-19 20:36:09:389 INFO] Game mode: 0 Survival
[2022-03-19 20:36:09:389 INFO] Difficulty: 3 HARD
[2022-03-19 20:36:09:410 INFO] opening worlds/******.world/db
[2022-03-19 20:36:09:640 INFO] IPv4 supported, port: 19132
[2022-03-19 20:36:09:640 INFO] IPv6 supported, port: 19133
[2022-03-19 20:36:09:761 INFO] Server started.
[2022-03-19 20:36:09:787 INFO] IPv4 supported, port: 42506
[2022-03-19 20:36:09:787 INFO] IPv6 supported, port: 37004
whitelist add foo
[2022-03-19 20:36:21:755 INFO] Package: com.mojang.minecraft.dedicatedserver
Version: 1.18.12.01
OS: Linux
Server start: 2022-03-19 20:36:09 ******
Dmp timestamp: 2022-03-19 20:36:21 ******
Upload Date: 2022-03-19 20:36:21 ******
Session ID: 34bc180d-303e-43b6-9689-80f46152b85e
Commit hash: ababe07645d9aae365226bc6b1959aab3584ed2c
Build id: 8537581
CrashReporter Key: 8c4937c1-64cb-3532-a8dc-1deb28f67293

Crash
[2022-03-19 20:36:21:755 INFO]  at clone (UnknownFile:?)
Failed to open curl lib from binary, use libcurl.so instead
bf8a1091-6d91-4ecc-a21d-6d7fc4902f0b
001:root@******:/opt/minecraft-bedrock-server
#

Has anyone seen this before?

Minecraft Bedrock Server has been updated to v1.18 If you see permission errors when updating, please run: sudo chmod -R 775 /opt/minecraft-bedrock-server

This comment has also been added to post_upgrade()

Yes, strange one. Not sure what happened, but the PKGBUILD has the new checksum now. Thanks for letting me know!

I am getting a different sha256sum than what is defined in PKGBUILD. I have tried it on multiple machines (on a Mac and Arch Linux), and I keep getting the same sum. I wonder if Microsoft updated the minecraft package, but not the filename, therefore, a new sha256sum.

Here is what I am getting.

[matt@minecraft ~]$ curl -O https://minecraft.azureedge.net/bin-linux/bedrock-server-1.17.11.01.zip % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 100 57.2M 100 57.2M 0 0 3264k 0 0:00:17 0:00:17 --:--:-- 3365k [matt@minecraft ~]$ sha256sum bedrock-server-1.17.11.01.zip 7d8f2ab4aa2294c4002144882c26db5b3d831e5f846f58cd2165685043c34123 bedrock-server-1.17.11.01.zip