Hosting a Minecraft Server with Docker

16 Feb 2023 / 3 minutes

Although I have hosted a Minecraft server before, it was quite some time ago when I wasn’t into selfhosting, I remember watching some random youtube tutorial and opening a port without thinking twice about the security implications. Now, I got interested in Minecraft again and wanted to host a server for me and my friends, but this time hosting it the right way.

Minecraft Server

To keep things simple and organized, I like to host things with Docker, so I started looking for a Docker image for Minecraft. After some research, I found itzg/minecraft-server which seemed to be simple to use, but easily extensible and customizable. To start a basic server, just run the following command:

docker run -d -it -p 25565:25565 -e EULA=TRUE itzg/minecraft-server

But if you want more, you can check the README to see all the available options. I am using the following configuration:

version: "3"

services:
    mc:
        image: itzg/minecraft-server
        container_name: minecraft-server
        ports:
            - 25565:25565
        environment:
            EULA: "TRUE"
            TYPE: "FORGE"
            DIFFICULTY: "normal"
            VERSION: "1.19.2"
            FORGE_VERSION: "43.2.0"
            MEMORY: "8G"
        tty: true
        stdin_open: true
        restart: unless-stopped
        volumes:
            - ./data:/data
            - ./mods:/mods
            - /etc/timezone:/etc/timezone

I am using Forge to add some mods to the server, but you can use any other type of mod loader. I needed to map the timezone volume because without it, I was getting Invalid signature for profile public key when trying to join the server.

Exposing it to the internet

As I said before, I didn’t want to open any ports to the internet, and Cloudflare Tunnel didn’t seem to work with Minecraft, so I decided to use a VPN between my server and a VPS and then expose the server to the internet through the VPS. I am using Wireguard Easy to configure and manage my VPN, as I explained in one of my previous post.

After connecting to the VPN and checking that it was working, the next step was to use a reverse proxy to forward Internet traffic to the VPN. I normally use Traefik but after trying and failing for a whole day to get it to work with Minecraft, I decided to look for other options. Luckily, it seems that the creator of the Minecraft Server image also has an image for a lightweight proxy for minecraft, itzg/mc-router, who is this person and why is he so awesome? Anyway, I decided to give it a try and it worked like a charm. This is the docker-compose.yml file I am using:

version: "3.4"

services:
    router:
        image: ${MC_ROUTER_IMAGE:-itzg/mc-router}
        environment:
            # enable API
            API_BINDING: ":25564"
        ports:
            - 25565:25565
            # bind the API port to only loopback to avoid external exposure
            - 127.0.0.1:25564:25564
        command: --mapping=minecraft.example.com=192.168.x.x:25565

The only thing you have to change is the command line, where you have to replace minecraft.example.com with your domain and 192.168.x.x with your server IP. You can also change the port if you are using a different one.

The last step would be to configure the DNS, as always, add an A record pointing to the IP of your VPS and after that, you will have to create a SRV record with the following values:

Name: minecraft
Service: _minecraft
Protocol: TCP
TTL: Automatic
Priority: 0
Weight: 0
Port: 25565
Target: minecraft.example.com

Once you have these two records, you should be able to connect to your server with the domain you set.

Last words

Now that the server is accessible from the internet, you probably want a whitelist to prevent random people from joining your server. You can exec on the container to access the Minecraft server console, for example, to activate the whitelist and add a player you can execute the following commands:

docker exec mc rcon-cli whitelist on
docker exec mc rcon-cli whitelist add <player_name>

Finally, I recommend checking out some of the related projects from the creator of the Minecraft Server container, he has an image for minecraft backups and an image for hosting the bedrock edition as well.

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