Minecraft Server using RHEL 8

[Kirito954]

I want to start off by saying I apologize if I have posted this in the wrong section I thought the server section was the best to put this.

Moving on I had a few questions, to start I am obtaining an old system that is no longer used and wanted to turn it into a few different Minecraft servers for a few friend groups I'm in and a family server. 
I'm trying to set up like 3-4 Java Minecraft servers using RHEL 8 but I was having trouble being able to even connect to the server myself after following a guide. so I was wondering if anyone on here would know best how to help or if not where I could look for help. along with setting up individual servers I was wondering if I would be able to mask the IP for the servers or have them each be different so that no one would connect to the wrong server? I'm not the smartest with this stuff but I would hope I would be able to figure out how to set these few servers up. Thank you. 

[Eigenvektor]

Might help if you mentioned what exactly you did so far, and which guide you used. I'd assume you're being blocked by RHEL's firewall which is on by default if I remember correctly. You'll have to open port(s) from/to the outside world to be able to connect to any services running on the machine.

 

A machine normally has only one IP and since you probably have a non-commercial contract with your ISP, you'll also only have one external IP address. This is what people will need to use to connect to you. You'll need to use different ports if you want to run multiple servers on the same machine. You'll also need to set up port forwarding on your router.

[RONOTHAN##]

If you're just starting out, RHEL probably isn't the best place to start learning how to do server maintenance. For this application, you'd probably just be better off with Ubuntu Server for the ease of setup and management. RHEL is awesome and everything, but it's a bit harder to configure and the documentation isn't as easy to setup as it is on something like Ubuntu. 

 

Now, if you want to keep RHEL on there, what have you done already? Are you able to connect to the server through something like SSH? Have you installed Java or anything yet?

 

If you haven't gotten any of that setup, it might be easier to switch over to Ubuntu Server. SSH and everything is configured out of the box so all you need to do is install Java, create the servers, and create scripts to start them on boot. 

 

That being said, for either of these that you are running, you should probably look into this:

 

https://minecraft.codeemo.com/mineoswiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

 

They have a standalone ISO, but in my experience it's usually easier to install something like Ubuntu Server instead and install this on-top. It provides a web GUI for creating and managing different servers, that's pretty easy to do. 

 

In order to make it so that you can host multiple servers and pick which one to join at start, the way I've always done it is to have each server run on its own specific port, then just open those ports up to the network. This is not the preferred way, and overall is probably the worst way to do it, but it's easy and I'm lazy. There is definitely a better way to do it, I just don't personally know what it is. 

[10leej]

7 hours ago, Kirito954 said:

I want to start off by saying I apologize if I have posted this in the wrong section I thought the server section was the best to put this.

Moving on I had a few questions, to start I am obtaining an old system that is no longer used and wanted to turn it into a few different Minecraft servers for a few friend groups I'm in and a family server. 
I'm trying to set up like 3-4 Java Minecraft servers using RHEL 8 but I was having trouble being able to even connect to the server myself after following a guide. so I was wondering if anyone on here would know best how to help or if not where I could look for help. along with setting up individual servers I was wondering if I would be able to mask the IP for the servers or have them each be different so that no one would connect to the wrong server? I'm not the smartest with this stuff but I would hope I would be able to figure out how to set these few servers up. Thank you. 

This will be easiest done using podman containers (preinstalled with rhel 8 and you can manage the containers via the cockpit interface)

https://podman.io/getting-started/

 

here a link to a container you can use (podman and docker containers are the same thing)

 

https://hub.docker.com/r/itzg/minecraft-server

 

make however many containers you want and put each container on a different port on the host end

 

you do need to setup volumes if you want persistent storage (you probably want persistent storage)

[Kirito954]

On 9/22/2021 at 11:23 PM, Eigenvektor said:

Might help if you mentioned what exactly you did so far, and which guide you used. I'd assume you're being blocked by RHEL's firewall which is on by default if I remember correctly. You'll have to open port(s) from/to the outside world to be able to connect to any services running on the machine.

 

A machine normally has only one IP and since you probably have a non-commercial contract with your ISP, you'll also only have one external IP address. This is what people will need to use to connect to you. You'll need to use different ports if you want to run multiple servers on the same machine. You'll also need to set up port forwarding on your router.

 

On 9/22/2021 at 11:23 PM, RONOTHAN## said:

If you're just starting out, RHEL probably isn't the best place to start learning how to do server maintenance. For this application, you'd probably just be better off with Ubuntu Server for the ease of setup and management. RHEL is awesome and everything, but it's a bit harder to configure and the documentation isn't as easy to setup as it is on something like Ubuntu. 

 

Now, if you want to keep RHEL on there, what have you done already? Are you able to connect to the server through something like SSH? Have you installed Java or anything yet?

 

If you haven't gotten any of that setup, it might be easier to switch over to Ubuntu Server. SSH and everything is configured out of the box so all you need to do is install Java, create the servers, and create scripts to start them on boot. 

 

That being said, for either of these that you are running, you should probably look into this:

 

https://minecraft.codeemo.com/mineoswiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

 

They have a standalone ISO, but in my experience it's usually easier to install something like Ubuntu Server instead and install this on-top. It provides a web GUI for creating and managing different servers, that's pretty easy to do. 

 

In order to make it so that you can host multiple servers and pick which one to join at start, the way I've always done it is to have each server run on its own specific port, then just open those ports up to the network. This is not the preferred way, and overall is probably the worst way to do it, but it's easy and I'm lazy. There is definitely a better way to do it, I just don't personally know what it is. 

Ah Yes apologies. this is the guide I followed https://linuxconfig.org/install-minecraft-server-on-redhat-8 I did everything in it to the end I am aware of port forwarding but when I went to test it even locally it wouldn't let me connect although that may be due to the fact I have it running in a VM. I thought that I would still be able to connect due to it still being local network but I was unable to connect after multiple attempts.

[Kirito954]

 

20 hours ago, 10leej said:

This will be easiest done using podman containers (preinstalled with rhel 8 and you can manage the containers via the cockpit interface)

https://podman.io/getting-started/

 

here a link to a container you can use (podman and docker containers are the same thing)

 

https://hub.docker.com/r/itzg/minecraft-server

 

make however many containers you want and put each container on a different port on the host end

 

you do need to setup volumes if you want persistent storage (you probably want persistent storage)

What do the containers do or how do they work ig would be a better question?  and about how much storage do you think would be necessary per server/container?

[10leej]

9 hours ago, Kirito954 said:

 

What do the containers do or how do they work ig would be a better question?  and about how much storage do you think would be necessary per server/container?

Containers are best thought of as a single bianry download that has all the configuration done for you, in this case the minecraft contianer I luinked already has a debian like environment setup with java and iptables configred. All you have essentially have to do is just run

 

podman run -p 25565:25565 itzg/minecraft-server

that's a pretty dumbed down example, but it's the bare minimum required to get that container up and running and you dont make any configration changes to the host system.

 

It's technically more secure since if your minecraft server ever gets hacked, your host rhel 8 system is not. It's more or less just like running a dedicated virtual machine, without actually running a virtual machine.

[Kirito954]

6 hours ago, 10leej said:

Containers are best thought of as a single bianry download that has all the configuration done for you, in this case the minecraft contianer I luinked already has a debian like environment setup with java and iptables configred. All you have essentially have to do is just run

 

podman run -p 25565:25565 itzg/minecraft-server

that's a pretty dumbed down example, but it's the bare minimum required to get that container up and running and you dont make any configration changes to the host system.

 

It's technically more secure since if your minecraft server ever gets hacked, your host rhel 8 system is not. It's more or less just like running a dedicated virtual machine, without actually running a virtual machine.

oh dang okay, ill give it a try and come back with what I discover hopefully ill have better luck this time.

[10leej]

20 hours ago, Kirito954 said:

oh dang okay, ill give it a try and come back with what I discover hopefully ill have better luck this time.

just assign your different servers to different host ports and you'll be fine.

[besterino]

From my (limited) experience, use Redhat/Centos for critical stuff, Ubuntu for „eh, not too bad if hacked/lost/not accessible-from-the-internet stuff“. 
 

Anyways, I‘d check if SELinux is cause of your problems - that interfered with various stuff I did on Centos. 

[Kirito954]

3 hours ago, besterino said:

From my (limited) experience, use Redhat/Centos for critical stuff, Ubuntu for „eh, not too bad if hacked/lost/not accessible-from-the-internet stuff“. 
 

Anyways, I‘d check if SELinux is cause of your problems - that interfered with various stuff I did on Centos. 

What is SELinux and where would i find that? 

[besterino]

SELinux is an additional security feature to further harden the system against attacks. To check whether it’s running type „sudo sestatus“ and if it’s up („enabled“) temporarily disable it with „sudo setenforce 0“. Then try to connect to your Minecraft server and if it works, you caught the bastard who prevents it…