PocketMine Server on Debian 7

PocketMine is a third party server for the MineCraft - Pocket Edition game for Android and iOS. It features plugin support, allowing you to customize your gameplay with others. This guide details installing PocketMine on a Linode running Debian 7.

Note

Minecraft - Pocket Edition is non-free software that you will need to purchase in order to take advantage of a PocketMine server.

Prerequisites

1. Your Linode should already be configured per our Getting Started guide, and secured per our Securing Your Server guide.

2. Ensure that your Linode is up to date:

   sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
   

3. Install dependencies:

   sudo apt-get install perl gcc g++ make automake libtool autoconf m4
   

4. Create a user for the PocketMine server:

   sudo adduser pocketmine
   

   Note

   If you’ve followed the steps in our Securing Your Server guide, you will need to add your public key to /home/pocketmine/.ssh/authorized_keys in order to log in as this user later in the guide. You will also need to add an iptables exception for port 19132

Installation

1. Log in as the pocketmine user and go to its home directory:

   cd ~/
   

2. Download and run the PocketMine installer script:

   wget -q -O - http://get.pocketmine.net/ | bash
   

   The installation will take several minutes.

Running PocketMine Server

1. Run the start.sh script within a GNU-screen instance:

   screen ./start.sh
   

   Note

   If you’ve used su to switch to the pocketmine user, you will get an error message stating Cannot open your terminal '/dev/pts/0' - please check. when attempting to start screen. You can resolve this by first running the command:

   script /dev/null

   Caution

   PocketMine may not run properly on systems not running PHP7. You can manually install it, or modify start.sh, replacing all instances of php7 with php5:

   sed -i -e ’s/php7/php5/g' start.sh

2. The set-up wizard will begin by asking you to select a language. Enter the two-character value for your language of choice, or just press return for English.

   [*] PocketMine-MP set-up wizard
   [*] Please select a language:
    English => en
    Español => es
    中文 => zh
    Pyccĸий => ru
    日本語 => ja
    Deutsch => de
    한국어 => ko
    Nederlands => nl
    Français => fr
    Italiano => it
    Melayu => ms
    Norsk => no
    Svenska => sv
    Suomi => fi
    Türkçe => tr
   [?] Language (en):
   

3. Type y to accept the license agreement:

   Welcome to PocketMine-MP!
   Before starting setting up your new server you have to accept the license.
   PocketMine-MP is licensed under the LGPL License,
   that you can read opening the LICENSE file on this folder.
   
     This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
     it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by
     the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
     (at your option) any later version.
   
   [?] Do you accept the License? (y/N):y
   

4. The set-up wizard will ask if you would like to skip ahead. If you would like to configure additional non-standard options, press return. Otherwise, you can enter y to skip the remainder of the wizard:

   [?] Do you want to skip the set-up wizard? (y/N): y
   

   You are now at the PocketMine console. You can type help to see all available commands, and begin using your new server!

   23:16:35 [INFO] Starting Minecraft: PE server version v0.10.5 alpha
   23:16:35 [INFO] Loading pocketmine.yml...
   23:16:35 [INFO] Loading server properties...
   23:16:35 [INFO] Starting Minecraft PE server on 0.0.0.0:19132
   sh: 1: ifconfig: not found
   23:16:36 [INFO] This server is running PocketMine-MP version 1.4.1-980 "絶好(Zekkou)ケーキ(Cake)" (API 1.11.0)
   23:16:36 [INFO] PocketMine-MP is distributed under the LGPL License
   23:16:36 [NOTICE] Level "world" not found
   23:16:36 [INFO] Preparing level "world"
   23:16:36 [NOTICE] Spawn terrain for level "world" is being generated in the background
   23:16:36 [INFO] Starting GS4 status listener
   23:16:36 [INFO] Setting query port to 19132
   23:16:36 [INFO] Query running on 0.0.0.0:19132
   23:16:36 [INFO] Default game type: SURVIVAL
   23:16:36 [INFO] Done (275.348s)! For help, type "help" or "?"
   

5. You can detach from the PocketMine screen session with the command ctrl+a then d. To reattach, run:

   screen -r
   

Connecting to The Server

1. Open Minecraft - Pocket Edition on your phone or tablet. Tap on Play:

   

2. From the next screen, tap Edit, then External.

3. Enter a name under Server Name, and your Linode’s domain or IP address under Address. When you’re done, tap Add Server:

   

4. You can now connect to your server, and begin playing!

   

Installing Plugins

You can downloaded plugins for PocketMine from their site. As an example, we’ll download and install the RandomItem plugin.

1. From the plugin page, copy the Download Plugin link address:

   

2. In your Linode terminal, while detached from your screen session, use curl to download the plugin into the plugins directory:

   cd /home/pocketmine/plugins
   curl -OJL http://forums.pocketmine.net/plugins/randomitem.203/download?version=1461
   

3. Reattach to the screen session, and reload to activate the plugin:

   screen -r
   reload
   

4. Confirm that your plugin is loaded with the command plugins:

   plugins
   18:36:45 [INFO] Plugins (1): RandomItem v4.2
   

More Information

You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.

• PocketMine.net
• PocketMine Documentation