Run a Minecraft Server with Docker Compose

This post will show how to setup your own minecraft game server on docker using docker-compose.

Requirements

As we will run minecraft as a docker container, we require docker and docker-compose. You can follow the links to their website for instructions to install it.

In summary it will be the following to install docker:

curl https://get.docker.com | bash
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

And the following to install docker-compose:

sudo curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.28.5/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/docker-compose /usr/bin/docker-compose

Note that I installed version 1.28.5, in future this may be outdated, so I recommend getting the latest version from their website.

You can verify if docker and docker-compose was installed by running:

docker --version
docker-compose --version

Configuration

Create the project directory:

mkdir -p ~/minecraft

Change to the directory:

cd ~/minecraft

Create the docker-compose.yml file and open it with your editor of choice, then provide this content:

version: "3.8"

services:
  minecraft-server:
    image: itzg/minecraft-server:latest
    container_name: minecraft-server
    ports:
      - 25565:25565
    environment:
      SERVER_NAME: "Minecraft-Server"
      MOTD: "Forge Minecraft Server"
      EULA: "TRUE"
      TYPE: "FORGE"
      VERSION: "1.17.1"
      MODE: "survival"
      MEMORY: "1G"
      LEVEL_TYPE: "DEFAULT"
      ENABLE_RCON: "true"
      RCON_PASSWORD: password
      RCON_PORT: 28016
      SERVER_PORT: 25565
      ENABLE_WHITELIST: "true"
      WHITELIST: "${WHITELISTED_PLAYERS}"
      OPS: "${OPS_PLAYERS}"
      MAX_PLAYERS: 20
      ANNOUNCE_PLAYER_ACHIEVEMENTS: "true"
      SPAWN_ANIMALS: "true"
      SPAWN_MONSTERS: "true"
      PVP: "true"
      LEVEL: "cold"
      TZ: "Asia/Kolkata"
      GUI: "FALSE"
      MODS_FILE: /extras/mods.txt
      REMOVE_OLD_MODS: "true"
    restart: unless-stopped
    user: "${UID}:${GID}"
    volumes:
      - ./data:/data
      - ./mods.txt:/extras/mods.txt:ro
    logging:
      driver: "json-file"
      options:
        max-size: "1m"

We want the user creating the data directory to be the same user that we are using to avoid permission issues, so we need to create a .env file and set the UID and GID values to the userid and groupid of our user:

bashCopyecho UID=$(id -u) > .env
echo GID=$(id -g) >> .env

Yours will most probably differ, but mine look like this:

cat .env
UID=501
GID=20

Next we need to set the whitelisted and ops players in WHITELISTED_PLAYERS and OPS_PLAYERS so the end result will look something like this:

UID=501
GID=20
WHITELISTED_PLAYERS=player2,player3
OPS_PLAYERS=tag1

If you don't want mods, you can remove MODS_FILE and REMOVE_OLD_MODS entry, but in this case I will be installing the Fast Leaf Decay mod from curseforge.com.

Create the file ~/minecraft/mods.txt and add the jar that you want to add to the file, as example:

https://media.forgecdn.net/files/3399/353/FastLeafDecay-26.jar

Start the Minecraft Server

Once that is in place, start the minecraft server:

docker-compose up -d

While the server is booting, you can follow the logs:

docker-compose logs -f minecraft-server

Once the server is booted, we can verify by using the healthcheck command:

docker exec -it minecraft-server mc-monitor status

You should see output similar to:

localhost:25565 : version=1.17.1 online=0 max=20 motd='Forge Minecraft Server'

Minecraft Command Line

We can access the minecraft command line with the following:

docker-compose exec minecraft-server rcon-cli

To list our whitelisted players:

/whitelist list

To restart the server:

/stop

Install Minecraft

Install minecraft java edition on your PC from: https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/download

Once installed, install the forge client: https://files.minecraftforge.net/net/minecraftforge/forge/

Open minecraft and you should see the forge under our installations. When we run our forge installation, you'll be able to add your server in the multiplayer section.

Note on Forge Mods

For forge mods to work properly you need the mods on the server and client side, for more info, see this issue: https://github.com/itzg/docker-minecraft-server/issues/1086

Backups

Create the directories for the script and backup locations:

sudo mkdir -p /opt/backups /opt/scripts

Change the permissions of those directories:

sudo chown -R "$(id -u):$(id -g)" /opt

Create the backup script in /opt/scripts/backup_minecraft.sh with the following content:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
tar -zcvf /opt/backups/minecraft/backup-$(date +%F).tar.gz ~/minecraft
find /opt/backups/minecraft/ -type f -name "backup-*.tar.gz" -mtime +7 -exec rm {} \;

This script will compress the minecraft project directory in a archive and delete any backups older than 7 days, which we will run under a cronjob.

Change the permissions of our backup script to make it executable:

chmod +x /opt/scripts/backup_minecraft.sh

Open crontab with crontab -e and add the cron expression to backup daily at 00:00:

00 00 * * * /opt/scripts/backup_minecraft.sh