Minecraft

Self-host one or multiple servers.

Setup

Whitelist

Option 1: Via Docker

Add the following env vars in docker-compose.yml:

ENABLE_WHITELIST: "TRUE"
WHITELIST: "player1,player2,player3"

The whitelist will be created in whitelist.json in the server directory. Adding something there will update the whitelist on the next run

Option 2: Manually

After first time startup set enforce-whitelist=true in server.properties.
Then, create whitelist.properties in the server directory with the following contents:

[
  {
    "uuid": "player_uuid",
    "name": "player_username"
  }
]

Option 3: Via In-Game Commands

After first time start go into server.properties and set enforce-whitelist=true.
Add users via server commands (whitelist add NAME).

Plugins/Mods

Plugins (Updated 3/29/2026)

OnePlayerSleep+ NoEndermanGrief Dynmap

Plugins (Old)

SinglePlayerSleep: https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/singleplayersleep.68139/
Dynmap: https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/dynmap%C2%AE.274/
NoEndermanGrief: https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/no-enderman-grief2.71236/
ajLeaderboards: https://www.spigotmc.org/threads/ajleaderboards.471179/

Updating Plugins

Obtain the new jar file for the updated plugin, stop server and swap old jar in plugins/. Most plugins should not need to regenerate their data, so you can leave it as is.

Plugin Configuration

Dynmap

After starting the server, go to the Dynmap plugin folder (plugins/dynmap/configuration.txt) and set the following:

webserver-bindaddress: 0.0.0.0
webserver-port: 8123

Maintenance

Backups

Take backups periodically, we got griefed once and only survived because of a backup.

Create Tar archive:

cd location_of_mc_files
tar -czvf ~/1970.01.01-world-backup.tar.gz world world_nether world_the_end server.properties whitelist.json spigot.yml

And move to a safe place.

Periodic Restarts

You might want this because the JVM might start hitting memory limits if too much is going on.

You can configure scheduled restarts by configuring crontab to periodically restart the container.
Edit crontab: sudo crontab -e Add: 0 2 * * * docker restart minecraft-2023 minecraft-creative

Runbook

Start all:

docker compose down && docker system prune -af && docker compose up -d && docker logs -f minecraft-2023

Start single:

docker compose down && docker system prune -af && docker compose up -d minecraft_solo && docker logs -f minecraft_solo

References

https://github.com/itzg/docker-minecraft-server
https://github.com/Joshi425/minecraft-exporter