Minecraft Personal Server

Jason Franklin

Aug 22, 2024 — 2 min read

Someone mentioned the other day that it's real easy to set up a Minecraft private server, so I decided to look into it. Sure enough, it's just 1 docker-compose file away. I know there are a few different ones out there, but I just picked one and went with it. Once it was up and running, it was time to get connected to it.

My youngest likes to play Minecraft on her Switch, so that was my first task. It turns out that by default Minecraft for Switch is locked to just a few servers that Nintendo approved of. Digging a little deeper, it seems that just changing the DNS servers on the Switch will open up the ability to connect to private servers. I changed the DNS server on my Switch and tested it. I was able to successfully connect to the server. Next, I had to update my PC version from Java to Bedrock Edition. With that done, I was able to connect, and we can now play together.

With all of that said, there were some bugs that I had to work out. The worlds weren't taking the environment changes. It wouldn't allow Cheats to be enabled, and it was stuck in Survival Mode and not Creative. Looking more into it, it seems that if the docker-compose doesn't have those settings in place when the container is built, it won't apply it afterwards. I deleted the container and added the Environment variables to the docker-compose file and it's now a Creative server with Cheats enabled.

I need to research a little to see why the Java container always says it's Unhealthy, and I'm not able to connect. Since Java edition isn't the priority, I'm not going to devote too much time to it, but it'll be worth looking into.

The whole point of trying this was to see what it's like to make a Minecraft server and run one. There are many different avenues for me to go from here. Learning administration commands is one. Another is transitioning from docker-compose to Terraform and deploying the server onto a cloud platform. That may be the route I take, simply because I don't have much experience with using the cloud tools and it's the area I'm weakest in. At least I know I can get it working locally, and that's always a start.

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