This is the the Minecraft Game Server Launcher (MGSL). The MGSL is a series of scripts that can be used to launch a Minecraft server in Amazons EC2 cloud on an Ubuntu server.
(As a matter of fact it is actually a xGSL because it can launch any game, that can be installed from the command line. If I think twice it is even a xySL because it is not limited to games. But we focus on minecraft here.)
The MGSL (once configured) is dead simply to use: you run 'python mgsl.py' once and the server starts and loads the your Minecraft world.
You run it again, and your world gets stored in a safe place and the server is terminated.
That's it.
The MGSL is essentially a python script orchestrating a series of bash scripts that get executed one after another on a different machine. One challenge was the timing of the distinct steps and the detection of possible failures of these steps. The latter is not handled good enough yet to be honest, and is one of the main reasons why I hesitated to open source this. Then again: the whole service is working on a daily basis so it is fair to say that it works well enough to be useful.
Some details:
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On first run, the script creates a 'session.json' file as soon as it starts the server. If you run the script again, it looks for this very file and assumes that a server is running that it needs to stop.
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If you accidentally delete this (please don't!) then the script doesn't know it already started a server, and starts a new one, leaving a rogue instance running. You should run 'python status.py' and 'python kill.py' occasionally as a best practice. of course you can also check on the AWS EC2 console.
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some of the steps involve external sources (the server.jar file for example). If for some reason the server is down, the script will break.
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If you don't provide FTP server account details, the script assumes you do not want to save your world. Should you for some reason change your mind while playing, you can still edit the 'credentials.json' file and enter the FTP account details. On the next run, the world will be saved.
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the FTP support has a very simple versionioning system - it uploads the file twice: one with a timestamp and the other one overrides the 'latest' version. The latest version is the one that gets downloaded next time.
To run it, do a git clone of the project or download the zip file and unpack it. You need to install boto:
apt-get install -y python-pip
pip install boto
pip install paramiko
pip install ecdsa # needed only on a mac
easy_install PyCrypto # needed only on a mac
(with sudo) worked for me.
- install Python from here. Chose the 'Windows x86 MSI Installer (2.7.3).
- install pip from here. Choose 'setuptools-0.6c11.win32-py2.7.exe'.
- install pycrypto from here. Choose 'PyCrypto 2.6 for Python 2.7 32bit'.
- cd 'C:\Python27', cd 'Scripts'. Do 'pip install boto' and 'pip install paramiko' on the command line.
- download MGSL
- unzip it and rename the folder MGSL-master to mgsl (optional)
[EDIT] As @martin_english pointed out, on a 64bit Windows you should replace the 4th bullet with
cd ‘C:\Python27′, cd ‘Scripts’
easy_install boto
easy_install paramiko
Then (important!) fill in these parameters in the file 'credentials.json' by copying the file 'credentials_template.json':
cp credentials_template.json credentials.json
Then edit it with a text editor.
{
"AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID": "AKIAXXXXXXXXXXXXQ5DA",
"AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY": "vDskXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX2cob",
"key_name": "your-keypair",
"key_path": "~/.ssh/",
"ftp_server": "ftp://my.ftp.com/minecraft/",
"ftp_username": "dirk",
"ftp_password": "nowayjose"
}
It is mandatory to fill in the first 4 lines. The first two parameters you find these in your AWS Security Credentials settings. The FTP lines are important if you want to make your world persistent.
cd path/to/mgsl
python mgsl.py
On a fresh windows installation you might have to do
cd path\to\mgsl
C:\Python27\python mgsl.py
Glad you are asking. Of course it would've been much more straightforward to save everything to Amazon S3, right? But then again, everybody and his brother has some FTP access lying around that is never really used. Since we don't deal with enterprise data this is good enough and usually doesn't cost any extra money. I guess I should add S3 anyways.
I should mention that there are valid different system design decision possible, most notably a DevOps solution based on Chef or Puppet. Also I should mention that there are various scripts out there that do similar things like handle, McSuperServer and Multicraft.
I assume that people using this script know what they are doing and that Amazon charges real money for their servers. Use this script at your own risk! If you are new to Amazon EC2 you should get familiar with the services.
Having said that: you get a so-called 'free tier' if you register for AWS as a new customer. This means that you get 750h per month of the smallest EC2 instance (called 't1.micro') in the first year for free! Isn't that cool? This means that you can run one t1.micro instance 24/7.
But: this doesn't mean you can run several instances for free (which I mistakenly thought in the first place). Example: if you run two instances 24/7 you run 2 instances * 30 days * 24 hours = 1488 hours. But since the t1.micros are very cheap (around 0.02 Euro cent per hour) the remaining 1488-750=738 hours sum up to 14,76 Euros which probably won't max out your credit card either.
You usually want an 'm1.small' instance for more that three players, though.
Again: if you have access to the free tier, you can run your tests for free.
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bad login: This is not the scripts fault - for some reason there can be server timeouts on the minecraft.net site. You need to completely quit Minecraft and try again.
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time out: This happens when you try to connect too early. Just wait a minute and try again.
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no connection: This when you try to connect WAY too early. Or something went wrong.