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Credit for all images and base server code: Mojang

Minecraft Bedrock Edition Server

Made with ❤️ by Deb

What Is It?

This is a smart and easy to use wrapper around the Minecraft Bedrock Edition server that automatically backs up to local storage and (optionally) Amazon S3 at regular intervals. Note that the server software that this wraps is, as of the time of writing, currently in alpha.

Bedrock Edition vs. Java Edition

This is a Minecraft Bedrock Edition server, so it is designed to be connected to using the cross platform compatible Windows 10, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Pocket editions of Minecraft, with a little luck. Though connecting to arbitrary servers (such as those set up using this software) from editions that are not the Windows 10 edition is not officially supported, there is a workaround that I tested that worked pretty well on Nintendo Switch, and which should(?) also work for other versions. (see the Connecting from not Windows 10 section for info on how to do this)

Official list of different Minecraft editions

Who it's for

This is great for people who want to play online with their friends across different platforms using the Bedrock Edition of Minecraft, especially if they do not want to pay for a Minecraft Realms server and have a computer that they can turn on whenever they want to play to run the server.

If you're tech savvy enough, you could probably deploy this Node app to the cloud without much trouble, as long as the machine you're running it on has enough power to run a Minecraft server.

If you have the hardware and internet bandwidth, you can even go beyond the max number of players supported by a realms server, by tweaking the values in the config file. You can likely also go beyond the world size limit for a realms server (5GB as of the time of writing) - just be careful to keep an eye on your internet usage and backup configuration.

I've been playing with my friends, and this works great with our (relatively) small world sizes, giving us peace of mind since it periodically backs up our world in case we run into bugs in Mojang's alpha server software.

Who it's not for

This server software is not designed to support dozens upon dozens of users, or for worlds whose sizes may expand to the order of gigabytes, since depending on your network connection, periodic backups may not work as well with large world sizes, even if your system's hardware can keep up. Furthermore, it has been written to be as easy as possible to get up and running and so does not have support for more advanced server features. Finally, Mojang's publicly released server software is (as of the time of writing) still in alpha, and therefore is inherently more prone to bugs. You can try, and there's a good chance it would work, given that it is running on a machine with sufficient hardware and network bandwidth, but do not be surprised if it does not.

Setting It Up

System requirements

• A computer with internet access running Ubuntu 18.04 or later, or Windows 10
  • An operating system which is based on Ubuntu 18.04 (such as Linux Mint 19.3) also works
  • Mojang also has a Windows 10 version of the alpha server software, but as of the time of writing, running this software on Windows 10 is not supported due to broken backup functionality in the Windows 10 version of Mojang's software
  • There are, as of yet, no hard guidelines on the specs you'll need, but many entry level modern desktop computers should be able to support a handful of concurrent players. Don't quote me on this, though; Googling around is probably the way to go if you're worried about system requirements.
• You'll need to install Node.js on this computer
  • You'll also need npm, which should be installed alongside Node.js if you install it using default settings
  • The earliest version of Node.js that I tested with was version 12.16.2
• You'll need to be able to access and enable port forwarding on your router if you want friends to join
  • I'll link a tutorial for this further down
• Finally, everyone who wants to join the server (even you) will need Minecraft Bedrock Edition and a Microsoft account to login and play online. Since no official Linux client exists for Minecraft Bedrock Edition, you won't be able to connect to the server from the same computer you're running it on, barring any virtual machine shenanigans

Optional requirements

These aren't really necessary, but make things much nicer

• A domain that your friends can connect to (I created a subdomain on a domain I already owned) so you don't have to have your IP address floating around in people's inboxes
• An Amazon Web Services account so the server can automatically store backups to Amazon S3

Reading Minecraft's EULA

By using this software, you are agreeing to the official Minecraft End User License Agreement and Privacy Policy, since this software automatically download's Mojang's software when you first run it.

Downloading the code

Download and unzip the code from GitHub, or clone the repository. Make sure the code is in the directory where you want your world and local backups to live.

Config file

Rename the EXAMPLE_config.json file to config.json and delete the comment lines at the top of the file. Then, change the values you want to change:

Amazon S3 cloud backups (optional)

If you want your backups to also be stored remotely, you'll need to set up the AWS connection:

1. Sign up for an Amazon Web Services account, and make sure you can access the Amazon S3 console.
2. Set up your AWS credentials in ~/.aws/credentials using the first step of this guide. It is highly recommended that you create an IAM user with access to only S3.
3. Set use-aws-s3-backup under the backup field of the config.json file to true.
4. Read the The Backup System section further down this page for more details on how the backup logic works. This is highly recommended if you're using Amazon S3 backups since tweaking the settings described there will affect the way your S3 storage is used.

Warning: Keep an eye on the sizes of the backups that are uploaded to the S3 bucket - Minecraft worlds start out pretty small, but can become quite large, so uploading and downloading backups frequently could get expensive if things get too crazy. So far, I haven't had problems with my smallish world, but you can never be too careful. The software can be set up to automatically purge old backups, as is described further down this guide.

Starting the server

Since this is a Node.js application, after you download the code, you need to run the following command from the terminal within the directory you installed it to: npm install

After that, you can start the server with the following command: npm start

You don't need to rerun npm install every time you run the server, just npm start

Stopping the server

DO NOT use Ctrl+C/termination/kill commands to stop the server

The server has built in protections to restore the state of your world if it is killed in a non graceful manner or something else bad happens (that's what the backups are for), but you may lose all progress since your last save.

In order to properly stop the server, type in the following command: stop

Connecting to the server

Connecting to the UI

If you've enabled backups in the UI section of the config file, you can access the web UI on the port you've defined in the UI section, so if your UI port is 3000, you'll be able to access the UI on the machine you're running the server on at localhost:3000 in your browser. If you want other people to be able to access this admin UI, you can forward this port using the information in the next section, but be careful when doing this - while the UI has some protection against stuff like replay attacks, and every change request needs to be authenticated, the server does not (yet) have a UI killswitch or other mechanism to protect against repeated password guesses. Also avoid sharing the UI if you don't want other people to see stuff like the terminal ouput for the server, or a list of backups, since these requests do not require an admin code.

The UI allows you to monitor stuff such as recent server output and performance. You can also view connected players, manually create backups, restore backups, stop the server, etc.

Port forwarding/IP stuff

Take a note of the server-port field that you set under server-properties in config.json. This is the port that the server will listen on once you set up port forwarding, and you'll need to give this to anyone who wants to connect to it. The default value for this is 19132.

First, you need to figure out what your machine's IP address within your local network is. I found mine using the ifconfig command in the terminal, but if that doesn't work, a little bit of Googling should help you find it. It's usually something like 192.168.(something).(something)

Once you have your port, and the internal IP address of your machine, you need to set up port forwarding on your router. This can vary from router to router, but shouldn't be too tricky - I recommend Googling how to do this. You want to associate the port that your server will listen on to your machine's local ip address.

Also take a note of your external IP address - Googling 'what is my ip' will give this to you. (Google gives it to you within the search results page). If you don't link a domain, you'll have to give this to your friends so they can connect to your server, so be extremely careful who you share this with (also be very careful about who you share the domain with).

Linking a domain (optional)

Once again, Google will likely give you a much more comprehensive tutorial on how to do this than I can here. My domain is connected to Cloudflare, so I used this tutorial to link my domain, though it should help even if you don't use Cloudflare. Note that when the tutorial says you should enter your ip address and port, you should use the external ip address you found by Googling, and the port you set in the config file. Once again, be extremely careful who you share this domain with.

Connecting from the Windows 10 Edition

Connecting from the Windows 10 edition is thankfully pretty easy

Open Minecraft, make sure you're logged in to your Microsoft account, and navigate to the 'servers' tab. Once there, you'll need to add your server.

• Server Name: I don't think the server name you enter matters, so enter whatever you like here
• Server Address: This depends on where you're connecting from, and whether or not you've linked your server to a domain
  • If you're on the same network as your server, enter your server's local ip address (the one you found with ifconfig) when setting up port forwarding
  • If you're on a different network (this is likely the case for your friends) and you don't have a linked domain, then you'll need to enter your external ip address you found through Google (having a linked domain is recommended, but if you do not have one, please be very careful about who you give out your ip to)
  • If you're on a different network and you do have a linked domain, just enter the domain
• Port: The port entered in server-port under the server-properties field of config.json (the default value for this is 19132)

Connecting from the not Windows 10 Editon

If you're not using the Windows 10 Edition, you may still be able to connect. Try the same steps as the Connecting from the Windows 10 Edition section, and if that doesn't work, try this tutorial to change your DNS to the BedrockConnect DNS followed by the Windows 10 connection steps again. The tutorial is designed for Switch, but following more or less the same steps should work for Xbox One if you're lucky. If not, once again, Google is your friend.

The Backup System

The backup field in the config.json file defines how the server behaves with regard to creating backups.

All backups are stored in the backups folder as zip files with the timestamp of the backup followed by the type of the backup. If use-aws-s3-backup is set to true, backups will also be synced to an Amazon S3 bucket.

Types of backups

There are 4 types of backups that can be created by the server:

Remote Backups

Whenever a backup is created, if use-aws-s3-backup is set to true, the software uploads (or in the case of ON_FORCED_STOP backups, attempts to upload) the backup to an Amazon S3 bucket for the account you set up.

Restoring backups

Whenever the server starts, if use-aws-s3-backup is set to true, the latest backups according to creation time will be retrieved from Amazon S3 and added to the directory of local backups. After that, the latest backup that is not of the type ON_FORCED_STOP will be used to replace the state of the world on the server before starting the server. (so non backed up data will be lost) If the server is always shut down correctly, then this backup will always of the type ON_STOP.

Warning: It's a good idea to make sure your computer's time is synced and consistent so the correct backups are always retrieved and restored

If you want to restore a specific backup to the server when it is running, you can use the force-restore <BACKUP_FILE_NAME> command, which will create a separate backup of the current server state, gracefully stop the server, restore the backup you specified, and restart the server. You can also do this from the UI pretty easily.

This is also useful if you want to import your existing world into the server. Just make sure your level name matches the one in your config and create a zip file with your level (a folder matching the level name) at the root. Then name your zip file something you'll recognize, drop it into the backups folder and restore it either from the UI or the terminal. If you're unsure about the format, you can look at some of the backups the server creates on its own.

Automatic purging of old backups

For both local, and remote backups, the software only keeps a limited number of backups, deleting the oldest ones once new ones are created. How many backups to keep is determined on a per type basis based on the values in num-backups-to-keep-for-type. Setting one of these values to -1 means old backups of that type will never be deleted.

Known issues

Still in alpha

Mojang's server software, which this software uses, is still in alpha, so it could be buggy. One of my motivations for writing this software was so that the automatic backups could protect me from losing information due to bugs in the alpha server software. It's worked great for me and my friends so far, but as always, please be somewhat careful.

Windows incompatibilities (Seemingly fixed)

The software currently only supports Ubuntu 18.04+ as of now, though a Windows 10 version of Mojang's server software does exist. This is because there is an issue with the last version I checked that prevents backups from being effectively created. This is kind of annoying since it means you can't run the server and connect to it from the same computer, barring virtual machines (Minecraft Bedrock Edition is available on Windows 10 but not Ubuntu). If the backup issue is fixed, and I get the time, lmk and I will add Windows 10 support so you don't need the extra machine and OS. This issue seems to have been fixed somewhere around Mojang's server version 1.16.201.02, and my testing seems fine so I've enabled Windows support in this repo. Lmk if you run into any issues.

Scaling issues?

I wouldn't recommend using this server to host dozens upon dozens of clients. It might work well given the correct configuration values, hardware, and network bandwidth, but I haven't done any large scale tests, so attempt this at your own peril.

Disclaimer

Please read the license for this repository. I am not responsible for any hardware/software/financial?/legal? problems, lost worlds, or any other issues that may arise when using this software. If you do lose information, however, I could help you if you open a GitHub issue, though once again I am not responsible for anything that may go wrong when attempting recovery.

If you do find a bug, opening an issue on GitHub would be great - as I've mentioned earlier, I play with my friends on a server running this software very often, so making the experience better for me, them, and anyone else who uses it is always a win.