Server management¶

Managing the server over RCON with mcrcon (AUR: mcrcon). All commands on this site are written without the leading / because that's how the server console and RCON expect them.

RCON setup (server.properties)¶

enable-rcon=true
rcon.port=25575
rcon.password=choose-a-long-random-password

Restart the server after changing these.

ssh -L 25575:localhost:25575 mc-server-host
# then point mcrcon at localhost as usual

mcrcon usage¶

Interactive terminal session (the usual way in):

mcrcon -H localhost -P 25575 -p "$MCRCON_PASS" -t

mcrcon also reads its connection from the environment, so with MCRCON_HOST / MCRCON_PORT / MCRCON_PASS set it's just:

# fish — put the password somewhere private, not in config.fish committed to dotfiles
set -gx MCRCON_HOST localhost
set -gx MCRCON_PORT 25575
set -gx MCRCON_PASS (cat ~/.config/mcrcon/pass)

mcrcon -t        # interactive: type commands, Ctrl-D or "Q" to quit

One-shot commands (scriptable — each argument is a command):

mcrcon "say Backup starting" save-off "save-all flush"

mc-tui — the cheatsheet as a TUI¶

bin/mc-tui (fish + fzf, run it with mise run tui) wraps every command on this site in an interactive picker:

• Browse by category — the same commands as the Commands pages, plus the full god-gear set.
• Placeholders are filled interactively — <player> offers your saved player names and selectors, <item> searches ~200 useful items (gear, food, potions, enchanted books, redstone, …), <enchantment>, <effect>, <entity>, <structure> and <biome> get their own pickers, anything else is a quick prompt. Optional slots (like <count?>) can be skipped with enter.
• Searchable in English and português (pt-BR) — the item, enchantment, effect, entity and biome pickers carry the official Brazilian Portuguese names from the game's language file, so typing picareta, fogueira or remendo finds the right id.
• Copy or run — the finished command goes to the clipboard (wl-copy/xclip) and/or straight to the server over RCON via mcrcon.
• [settings] stores host / port / password in ~/.config/mc-tui/rcon.conf (chmod 600 — remember, RCON is plaintext).
• [players] keeps a name list for <player> slots — ctrl-f fetches whoever is online right now (via list over RCON), ctrl-a adds names manually.
• [console] drops into an interactive session — nmcrcon when installed (better line editing + history), else mcrcon -t.
• [servers] lists the worlds on a Crafty Controller and starts / stops / restarts / backs them up — see below.
• [map] opens the world on chunkbase — it reads the seed over RCON and opens the seed map centered on spawn, on coordinates you type, or on a live player's position (fetched with data get entity <player> Pos). The version tag (e.g. java_26_1) is the platform field in [settings]. Headless/over SSH it copies the URL instead of launching a browser.
• [map] → FOLLOW (or mc-tui follow <player>) is a live map: it opens chunkbase in a dedicated Chromium window and re-centers it on the player every few seconds, so you can watch them move in real time. Chunkbase only reads the view from the URL, so each update reloads the tab over the DevTools protocol — driven by scripts/follow-map.py (needs chromium + uv; the script's Python deps are fetched on first run). Run it with no player (mise run follow) and it lists who's online, lets you pick, then asks the refresh interval (default from [settings]). The interval and starting zoom live in [settings] (10 s and 2) — lower the interval for snappier tracking at the cost of more reload flicker, or pass it per-run with mc-tui follow <player> <seconds>. Zoom with the scroll wheel and it sticks (the loop reads your current zoom back each tick). Close the window or press Ctrl+C to stop.

Subcommands reuse the saved settings outside the picker:

The command and item tables are plain pipe-delimited text in data/*.psv — one row per line, shared by both apps and the web builder. Inspect them with mc-tui __dump catalog (or items, enchantments, effects, …) and add your own rows in ~/.config/mc-tui/catalog.local and items.local using the same category|template|description format.

Crafty — start and stop the worlds¶

If the worlds run on Crafty Controller (Java and Bedrock, one panel), mc-tui can drive it through Crafty's REST API: [servers] in the main menu, or the servers / start / stop / restart / backup subcommands. It runs one world at a time — starting one offers to stop whichever other world is up, then waits until the new one is really up (Java: answers the server-list ping, i.e. the world is loaded; Bedrock: running).

Give mc-tui its own Crafty user and API key, never the admin password:

1. Crafty → Roles → new role mc-tui with, on each Minecraft server, Commands, Terminal, Logs and Backup — nothing else.
2. Crafty → Users → new user (e.g. mc_tui — lowercase, digits and _ only) in that role.
3. That user → API Keys → create a key with the same four server permissions and no Crafty permissions, then copy its token.
4. mc-tui → [settings] → crafty url (e.g. https://crafty.example.lan) and crafty api key. Saved to ~/.config/mc-tui/crafty.conf (chmod 600); test crafty lists the servers.

The menu headers then show the running world next to the RCON status (e.g. crafty: akane ● 1/8), and when RCON is down because the Java world is stopped, mc-tui says so instead of a generic offline.

Java world — commands still go over RCON (real replies). In a server's menu, use for RCON points [settings] at Crafty's host; the RCON port and password stay as you set them (they live in that server's server.properties).

Bedrock world — Bedrock has no RCON. While a Bedrock world is the one running, mc-tui sends commands through Crafty's server console and shows the console lines that follow as the reply. The main menu switches to a small Bedrock catalog (teleport, give/clear, god gear, effects, enchant, xp, gamemode, difficulty, time/weather, gamerules, chat, allowlist) in Bedrock syntax, and [console] becomes a simple line-by-line console. [map] and the live follow map work too: positions come from Bedrock's querytarget, and chunkbase opens with the Bedrock seed and platform set in [settings] (bedrock seed, bedrock platform). Building (rail builder) stays Java-only. Add your own Bedrock rows in ~/.config/mc-tui/catalog-bedrock.local.

Backup flow¶

Autosave must be paused while copying the world, or region files can be caught mid-write:

mcrcon save-off "save-all flush"
tar -C /path/to/server -czf "backup-$(date -I).tar.gz" world
mcrcon save-on "say Backup done"

• save-all flush blocks until the world is fully written to disk.
• If the backup script dies between save-off and save-on, autosave stays off — make the script trap-safe or check with save-on after any failed run.
• Test restores occasionally; a backup that's never been restored is a hope, not a backup.

Day-to-day favorites¶

See Commands → Server maintenance for the full table, and the rest of the Commands section for everything else.