docker-minecraft

A nice and easy way to get a Minecraft server up and running using docker. For help on getting started with docker see the official getting started guide. For more information on Minecraft and check out it's website.

Building docker-minecraft

Running this will build you a docker image with the latest version of both docker-minecraft and Minecraft itself.

git clone https://github.com/idxbroker/docker-minecraft
cd docker-minecraft
sudo docker build -t idxbroker/minecraft .

Running docker-minecraft

Running the first time will set your port to a static port of your choice so that you can easily map a proxy to. If this is the only thing running on your system you can map the port to 25565 and no proxy is needed. i.e. -p=25565:25565 . If you want to enable the query protocol you need to add another -p=25565:25565/udp to forward the UDP protocol on the same port as well. Also be sure your mounted directory on your host machine is already created before running mkdir -p /mnt/minecraft.

sudo docker run -d=true -p=25565:25565 -v=/mnt/minecraft:/data idxbroker/minecraft /start

From now on when you start/stop docker-minecraft you should use the container id with the following commands. To get your container id, after you initial run type sudo docker ps and it will show up on the left side followed by the image name which is idxbroker/minecraft:latest.

sudo docker start <container_id>
sudo docker stop <container_id>

Notes on the run command

• -v is the volume you are mounting -v=host_dir:docker_dir
• idxbroker/minecraft is simply what I called my docker build of this image
• -d=true allows this to run cleanly as a daemon, remove for debugging
• -p is the port it connects to, -p=host_port:docker_port

Connecting to the minecraft server console

To do this in a convenient way you should install a application called nsenter and some conviniet helper scripts. If you want to install nsenter to your /usr/local/bin, just do this:

docker run --rm -v /usr/local/bin:/target jpetazzo/nsenter

This will actually create a docker machine for you where the command is being built. If that sounds to scary read the instructions on the webpage.

After installing you will have a script called docker-enter that uses nsenter which lets you connect to a live container and run commands. Since we are using supervisor to run the server we will connect to supervisorctl and from there do whats needed like restarting, connecting to the shell etc.

To use docker-enter you will need the name of the container.

sudo docker-enter my_awesome_container supervisorctl

Now you will be able to control the supervisor process that is previously defined and called minecraft.

To connect to the shell of the server just type.

fg minecraft

Now you are able to control the server just like normally. When you are done, just press Ctrl+c to send it to the background again.

To disconnect from supervisorctl just type exit and press enter. Now you are disconnected from the container as well.