Hi! I want to selfhost a minecraft server for my kid and hjs friends. I havent played minecraft in quite a few years …
Where do I start to self host one?
I am already seflhosting lost of stuff from 'Arrs to Jellyfin and Immich and more, so I am not asking on how to do it technically, but where to look for and what to host for a proper Minecraft server!
Edit: choosed to setup this https://github.com/itzg/docker-minecraft-bedrock-server and so far, super smooth and easy peasy!
In addition to other advice here just be aware that Minecraft servers are prime targets for griefing and abuse.
I recommend setting it to whitelist mode and then each kid your friend wants to join just has to send their username to him so you can add the username to the whitelist. Its an added overhead but it’s much less painful than reverting to a backup for a griefed server - and your kid won’t have to worry about other kids on-sharing the server address.
Easy way to avoid this: choose a different port. I think it’s a safe bet the crawlers are just checking 25565. I’ve had a server up for months with zero issues.
It isn’t on the default port either, it’s on a random high number port which is why I thought it was extra odd they found it.
Huh, that is funky. Fingers crossed mine survives. I think I’ll go and set up some backups, now that I think about it.
I’ve had a server up for almost 9 years never had any randoms even join. Don’t think I’ve ever used the default port tho
It isn’t on the default port either, it’s on a random high number port which is why I thought it was extra odd they found it.
Its been a long time since I played, wouldn’t the best protection from that just be not broadcasting the server to the open internet? Never had an issue with servers that were technically fully open but only telling friends about it. I suppose whitelist is better than security through obscurity though.
I had My minecraft server scanned by at least 3 different bots, and I even had some friendly guy join my server that apparently found it using a bot he wrote. I’m now using a whitelist lol. One of the account names that scanned my server was "Fifth Column, which is a griefing group.
I’ve had a server running without whitelist because a friend hadn’t bought the game yet, within 2 weeks it was griefed. It was just the two of us playing.
There are crawler bots just searching for unprotected Minecraft servers and it’s just a matter of time before they find yours.
It’s a shame the server lacks a pretty basic feature such as password protection.
Like the other commenter said, I dunno how the heck the griefers find the servers - but if it’s on the open Internet, they do.
I set up a server for me an a handful of mates - advertised the address nowhere. They told nobody. A month in a friend and I were playing as usual, and a player with a Russian username joined. I’m like “uh hi who are you?”. They stayed another minute or two while saying nothing, then left.
I think they left when they realized i had an anti-griefer permissions mod that protects the blocks in an area around the spawn point from being modified (its called ‘Flan’). So they joined, saw the server had some protections, and decided it wouldn’t be much fun for them.
Whitelist immediately enabled - no more random Russians.