Intro

Running Minecraft servers on linux the manual way isn’t too bad: just execute the jar file with java and leave it running. What if you want to automate it, or need to send in commands? One needs to be able to easily access the run session easily, and the tools I used was screen.

Screen creates a vtty that can be attached and detached as the running tty locally or over and SSH tunnel, making it ideal for automation and remote management. Simply start the screen session, leave it running and forget. Using Debian, a systemd distro, I used screen, a systemctl service, and a bash script to get things running. This was an excellent chance to experiment with these tools for a useful application.