This simple bash script helps you manage minecraft servers on Linux. It is designed to handle multiple servers at once, but works just as fine if you only want to host one. The servers can be automatically started and shut down with the systemd unit template that is also provided.
"Prebuilt" packages are currently only provided for Arch Linux. You can just use your aur helper to install it and skip this section.
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| Arch User Repository |
The following packages must be installed for the script to work properly:
- bash
- grep
- java-runtime>=16
- openbsd-netcat
- jq
- sed
- screen
- sudo
Non-Arch-Linux users can easily install it if you follow these steps as root:
curl -L https://github.com/Hetsh/mcsctl/archive/master.tar.gz | bsdtar -xpf -
install -Dm 644 mcsctl-master/[email protected] <PATH_TO_UNIT> # usually "/usr/lib/systemd/system/[email protected]"
install -Dm 755 mcsctl-master/mcsctl.sh <PATH_TO_BIN> # usually /usr/bin/mcsctl
sed -n '/\# Mutable config/,/\# \/Mutable config/p' mcsctl-master/mcsctl.sh | head -n -1 | tail -n +2 > mcsctl-master/mcsctl.conf.bak # strips config from script
install -Dm 644 mcsctl-master/mcsctl.conf.bak /etc/mcsctl.conf.bak
rm -r mcsctl-masterPer default, the minecraft servers are run as a different, low privileged user that you need to create:
useradd --user-group --comment 'Minecraft user' --shell /usr/bin/nologin --create-home mcs
passwd -l mcsServers are assigned unique id's.
These can be specified by the user and must be a positive number.
mcsctl will then address each server with its unique id or all servers with the all keyword.
$ mcsctl help
Usage: mcsctl {help|status|start|stop|restart|console|command|create|update|destroy}
help Prints this help.
status <id/all> Lists status of server(s) and online players.
start <id/all> Starts server(s) inside screen session(s).
stop <id/all> Stops server(s) and screen session(s).
restart <id/all> Restart server(s).
console <id> Connect to the screen session of a server.
command <id/all> <cmd> Forward <cmd> to specified server(s).
create <id> Creates a server in the configured SERVER_ROOT (default: /home/mcs).
update <id/all> Downloads a new minecraft server executable for server(s).
destroy <id/all> Removes all files of server(s).
$ mcsctl create 1 && mcsctl start 1 # will create a new server with id=1 and start it
$ mcsctl stop all && mcsctl destroy all # will stop and destroy all minecraft servers
Similar to this systemctl enable [email protected] will start and stop the server with id 1 at boot and shutdown respectively. You can also use the all keyword here.
mcsctl can be configured with a config file /etc/mcsctl.conf that is "sourced" on every run.
If no config file is found, the default values are used.
The sample config file that was generated during the installation contains the default values.
cp /etc/mcsctl.conf.bak /etc/mcsctl.confThis config file contains two sections.
The first section configures runtime parameters for mcsctl itself, while the second section configures initial server parameters.
Note that the server configuration is only applied when a server is first created; later changes need to be made directly in the server files.
On server creation, the script launch.sh is created.
This can be edited to change the server arguments or executable.
The exec command should not be used in launch scripts, because it prevents server status from being detected correctly.