minecraft-server

Minecraft server on Google Container Engine

Tools needed

• Understanding of Linux command-line
• Google account
• Gcloud SDK
• Kubectl
• Container engine
• Local docker installation Install Docker
• Addition to docker, you'll need jq and gettext installed for your Linux distribution
• Minecraft server container. I've used itzg/minecraft-server
• Study and learn from the links provided

Setting up

Create container cluster and service

You either want to set up your Google Container Engine to either mirror the official Docker hub, or you can pull the image first to your local system, and then push it to the GCE registry.

Pulling the image, and then pushing into the GCE registry

# Pull the image
docker pull itzg/minecraft-server

Set tags according to your Project ID and Registry location

Example:

docker images
REPOSITORY                                                TAG                 IMAGE ID            CREATED             SIZE
itzg/minecraft-server                                     latest              0d7b50698515        11 days ago         295MB
# Set tag for your registry
docker tag itzg/minecraft-server eu.gcr.io/minecraft-server-35678/minecraft-server
# Push to registry
gcloud docker -- push eu.gcr.io/minecraft-server-35678/minecraft-server

Please make sure your IMAGE variable has the value of the TAG you set and pushed above

Edit the Variables for cluster and container to your own

Possible variables:
PERSISTENT_STORAGE="mc-disk"
MSC_CLUSTER_NAME="mc-cluster"
ZONE="europe-west1-b"
MACHINE_TYPE="n1-standard-1"

Possible variables for the container:
IMAGE="address-to-your-container-images"
MOTD="Message of the day"
WHITELIST="user1,user2,user3"
OPS="user1"

Now you can run the provided script

./create-mc-server-environment.sh

Remove deployment and the cluster

Sometimes things go south and errors happen.
These commands allow you to smoothly start over.

Delete the deployment

kubectl delete -f mcs-deployment.yaml

Delete the entire cluster

gcloud container clusters delete ${MSC_CLUSTER_NAME} --zone ${ZONE} --quiet

If you are not planning of running the MC server for a while, delete IP address as well

gcloud compute addresses delete minecraft-ip --region ${REGION} --quiet

Connecting to the running container

If and when you need to connect to your running container for whatever reason. This is how you can do it.

# Get container name
kubectl get pods -o json | jq -r .items[].metadata.name
# Connect to it via normal docker-like method
kubectl exec -it CONTAINER_NAME bash
# or providing both commands in one-liner
kubectl exec -it $(kubectl get pods -o json | jq -r .items[].metadata.name) bash
# The latter command will not work if you have more than one container

Misc

If there is a need for (non-beta) persistent disk

https://cloud.google.com/container-engine/docs/tutorials/persistent-disk

gcloud compute disks create --size 200GB ${PERSISTENT_STORAGE}

Created [https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/minecraft-server-185418/zones/${ZONE}/disks/${PERSISTENT_STORAGE}].
NAME           ZONE            SIZE_GB  TYPE         STATUS
${PERSISTENT_STORAGE}  ${ZONE}  200      pd-standard  READY

New disks are unformatted. You must format and mount a disk before it
can be used. You can find instructions on how to do this at:

https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/disks/add-persistent-disk#formatting

Commands

Cheat sheet

kubectl cluster-info
kubectl get nodes -o wide
kubectl get pods -o wide
# Container name
kubectl get pods -o json | jq -r .items[].metadata.name

# List disk allocation in your container
kubectl exec -it $(kubectl get pods -o json | jq -r .items[].metadata.name) -- bash -c "df -h"
# File listing in your container
kubectl exec -it $(kubectl get pods -o json | jq -r .items[].metadata.name) -- bash -c "ls -la"

Running locally

We use docker-compose to run the server locally. Install by running pip install docker-compose.

First you want to rename the env_template to .env, and edit the variables within accordingly.

# To start the service
docker-compose up -d

# To review the logs
docker-compose logs -f

# To shut down
docker-compose down

Clean up the volumes if you don't want to save the existing server data.

docker volume prune

Disclaimer

• Scripts and instructions are provided AS IS.
• ÚSe these instructions with your own risk.
• There is no guarantee any of it works for your environment.
• There is no Support provided