How to Install and Run a Minecraft Server on Linux

Running/Installing/Setting Up a Minecraft Server on Linux.

Be sure that Your server has at a minimum 1GB of RAM, preferably at least 2GB.

Connect to your server through SSH. You can use PuTTY.

Installing Requirements

First what we should do is to run update on apt-get.

sudo apt-get update

Be sure that Java is installed on your server.

java -version

If you don’t have Java installed, you can download java through apt-get.

sudo apt-get install default-jdk

You also need GNU Screen. This will keep your server running.
You can find more information about that in wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Screen

sudo apt-get install screen

Install the Minecraft Server

Create a new directory where you will store Minecraft Server files.

mkdir minecraft

Switch into minecraft directory.

cd minecraft

Download the latest Minecraft Server software files.

wget https://s3.amazonaws.com/MinecraftDownload/launcher/minecraft_server.jar

Open Screen (-S for sessions title).

screen -S "Minecraft server"

Start your Mineecraft Server with Java.

java -Xms32M -Xmx1024M -jar minecraft_server.jar nogui

The text should look something like this:

2013-04-15 11:21:38 [INFO] Loading properties
......
......
2013-04-15 11:22:44 [INFO] Preparing spawn area: 93%
2013-04-15 11:22:45 [INFO] Done (14.625s)! For help, type "help" or "?"


Congratulation ! Your server is now running.


To change your Minecraft Server setings, open the server properties file.

 nano /minecraft/server.properties

You will need to restart your Minecraft Server if you do any changes in server.properties.

Exit out of screen by pressing.

ctrl +  a + d

To get your screen back, type

screen -r


Good Luck and Have Fun !