Updated Beginner-Friendly version of MineOS-Node (distro)

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The current web ui at this time (written in NodeJS), is now being redistributed in it’s updated form (by me), in a more beginner/user-friendly environment!

You no longer need to perform a series of several extra steps just to get modern versions of Minecraft up and running, as everything at this point should pretty much just work right out of the box in this distro, just as the “official” MineOS distro had once originally initially did.

Addressed issues and benefits:

  1. You no longer need to manually update the MineOS web ui to get Minecraft 1.12.x or 1.13.x profiles working, as this distro includes the necessary/required updates/patches already.
  2. You no longer need to manually install or update Java/OpenJDK to get Minecraft 1.12.x or 1.13.x working, as OpenJDK8 (the minimum required for those versions) comes preinstalled, as well as the ability to optionally replace OpenJDK8 with Oracle Java 8 via the included repo.
  3. You have a minimal lightweight desktop environment included (aka you can use your mouse) for your ease of access to your system’s configuration as well as for the administration of your system.
  4. You may (optionally) more easily connect to wireless/WiFi networks rather than to Ethernet if you wish to do so for some reason (generally only recommended if you have no other choice)
  5. A preconfigured easy to use firewall with presets included (one preset for local administration meaning the only port accessible remotely from/using another computer is port 25565 aka the default Minecraft port, another preset for basic remote administration meaning both port 25565 (Minecraft’s default) as well as port 8443 (MineOS web ui) are accessible remotely from/using another computer, and yet another preset for advanced remote administration, meaning ports 25565 (Minecraft), 8443 (MineOS web ui), 22 (SSH/SFTP), and 10000 (Webmin) are accessible remotely from/using another computer; these presets may change in future versions/revisions).
  6. Preconfigured BungeeCord and Spigot template under “Import a server” for quickly getting yourself up and running and into the game with a fully functional BungeeCord server instance alongside a preconfigured Spigot server (these templates will work out of the box by default with one BungeeCord instance and one Spigot server, or multiple with only 1 running at a time, for configurations where you have 2 or more Spigot servers running at once the templates may still be used, they just will require a simple port change for the additional Spigot servers as well as simple additions/entries in the BungeeCord config for each additional Spigot server you create and want to add).

Based upon the proven Ubuntu foundation, JM36-MineOS-GUI-64bit-16.04 (for lack of a better name) is a great delivery system/package: trimmed, extensible, and with MineOS preconfigured and included, with ease of access to configuration/administration for beginners/novices; JM36-MineOS-GUI-64bit-16.04 is one of the quickest and easiest ways to get a managed hosting platform for Minecraft, capable of starting/stopping, backing up, restoring, and archiving your worlds, essentially following along in pretty much the same exact footsteps of the official MineOS TurnKey distro, just simply more up to date (~August 2015 vs January 2019) with the ease of access of the included desktop environment and applications/programs.

Getting Started:

  1. Download the current JM36-MineOS-GUI-64bit-16.04 ISO
  • Checksums for file download verification (optional)
    • SHA256 - 0b04d9bca18125bc78518475dc3222dd8548f21eea3a04fddb7a9ac1fdfc79c2
    • MD5 - 0d63839d6ed04ff0847ae9fc0dbf3993

  1. Burn the ISO image to a CD/DVD or write it to a USB storage device, then boot it in legacy/BIOS aka “compatibility” mode on your machine (not in EFI/UEFI mode as that does not currently work).

    • If your machine is older or is old enough and does not feature an EFI/UEFI then you need not worry as it will simply just boot automatically in BIOS/legacy mode by default.

    You may also boot the ISO in your favorite virtualization software, such as VirtualBox.

  2. Optionally test out the system on your machine live without making any changes that will affect it (just to see if and how things work, incase you want to back out for some reason) and install once ready, following the instructions for partitioning, configuring, user account and password, and installing.

    • If you are asked for (or to provide) a username and password to login to the live mode boot (for testing and/or installing), the username to login will be “jm36mineoslive” with a blank password.

  3. You are now pretty much ready to create one or more Minecraft servers!

Your server’s web ui page will only be accessible locally in firefox via https://localhost:8443 (unless you change your firewall configuration/profile to allow for remote access/administration, which will make your server’s web ui page accessible remotely via https://<Hostname-or-IP>:8443 on other machines).

All other concepts are pretty much the same if not much easier and more user/beginner-friendly.

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Is there a URL you have for the ISO download that may be affected here? The patch for this came out in July, but the ISO I currently should be giving should be from November 19, 2018, containing every last commit-to-date.

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Well, I suppose that means I’m wrong about that portion then; what had happened was the numerous posts about Minecraft 1.12.x and 1.13.x failing to download and launch in the past few months had me thinking that the official distro hadn’t really been updated to incorporate the latest changes (so my assumption (due to the volume of those posts) was that if or when you downloaded the official distro that by default you’d be really far behind back on OpenJDK7 with 2015’s MineOS-Node (with NodeJS v4) rather than up to date with OpenJDK8 and late 2018/early 2019’s MineOS-Node (with NodeJS v8) and would have to manually update everything yourself before being able to get into what you downloaded and installed it to do; I’ve actually not downloaded, used, nor really touched an iso for the official MineOS distro in a few years now though I believe I do have at least one ISO for Node from back then and maybe even Python).

I also see that on the main wiki page it currently says/shows this down at/by the very bottom:

This page was last modified on 29 May 2018, at 12:36.

So the link there currently points to https://my.syncplicity.com/share/kmo9bvy0azb9vgq/mineos-node_jessie-x64 as does the one on the homepage, so I’m not sure whether it’s actually the November 19, 2018 revision that people are downloading as the page itself where you download from also doesn’t provide any data about the file like date uploaded or anything…also, I just noticed the link in the body of the homepage to the wiki is broken, currently missing “/index.php?title=Main_Page” on the end of the URL (instead throwing you a 404 not found error code when you click on it); the one at the very top of the page is fine though.

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UPDATE: I will be recreating this sometime this week or this month if not next month or whenever I can (yesterday was my birthday btw on the 6th), probably with Lubuntu 18.04 LTS as/being the base OS that I build upon/from. If anyone has any suggestions on or for any other lightweight distributions that I could or should use instead, let me know either via email or via DMs/PMs and I’ll take it into consideration. This next version should also (hopefully) fix the whole legacy/BIOS/compatibility mode only requirement/bug that had actually stemmed/originated from the original underlying OS that I had used as the base foundation/system/platform for the current “JM36-MineOS-GUI-64bit-16.04” release, which means that the/this next version pretty much should “just work” on all systems in most if not any configuration without any extra or specific configuration nor requirements (aka you can install and use it in EFI/UEFI mode rather than only just in legacy/BIOS/compatibility mode). If anyone has any requests or suggestions for any extras or additions or changes in the new/next version of this, again please let me know either via PMs/DMs or email.

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Hi I am wondering if a VPS provider offers the option of ISO installation says like most KVM based ones will I be able to easily boot up and operate a 1.12.2 forge server? Provided that I “install” the server on my desktop first to get the libraries and such?

I am thinking about ditching game service providers altogether as it appears to me that they may not be due diligence with capacity management (ie selling more than what they have and not makign sure there always some left and/or etc). Due to come across complaints from their other customers. As VPSes are tend to be used for more serious purposes I feel like a good one will automatically make sure their nodes and IPs are always under loaded. Without much if any human interactions required on their and thus my end.

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If the offer up a Ubuntu or Debian OS it is easier just to follow the wiki for how to install on top of those systems.

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Alright so I am assuming you means https://minecraft.codeemo.com/mineoswiki/index.php?title=MineOS-node_(apt-get) in case of Ubuntu correct? If so how can I make sure that it will install Java 8 instead of the latest one or is that generally the latest one in the Ubuntu branch? Because it’s going to crash the server otherwise.

Also once installed, are there anything else I need to concern myself beside updating it as mentioned on the wiki to man it and the VPS itself? Because this is my first time going this route.

Thanks in advance!

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Yeah i am having the issue regarding the jar file not being selectable when running 1.12 modded. Trying to run continuum and stoneblock but it always erases the jar file from the server.config file when i try to launch even if i manuallh put it in. Not sure what to dl looked around and idiotically couldnt find an answer.

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That’s odd indeed, thanks for shinning in. Maybe the dev of the ported version can have this ironed out for the 18.04 based release.

Other than that I am still wondering how I would go about hosting on a VPS with this as above.

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Well, this/my version or release of MineOS-Node on distro is meant mainly if not solely for “new/beginner” and “at home” users, and would actually more than likely not function at all out of the box on a VPS like it would a home user’s computer or a virtual machine. The reason for that isn’t just because of the GUI (which honestly would make a lot less sense in my opinion to have on a VPS) but the default secured firewall configuration does not and will not allow for any remote access whatsoever as by default the only port accessible from the outside is the default Minecraft 25565 port, every other remote/administration port (MineOS Web UI, SSH/SFTP, etc) can only be used or accessed locally via localhost on the machine itself, and in order to change or “fix” that one would need to have physical access to the VPS both during and after installation; if that VPS provider has some kind of remote screen feed thing where you are able to both see and interact remotely with whatever is being shown or displayed on the screen then that would be your ticket or method into changing or “fixing” that to allow for remote access/administration.

Game service providers typically mostly are for people who uhh, either don’t really know how to do it themselves for one reason or another (or somehow don’t know it’s possible for them to just host one themselves as I’ve come across plenty of people who didn’t know) or who won’t notice the difference in performance or lag, etc or for people with tons of money to throw out for a decent performing provider.

Well, it’s similar at times to some game service providers depending upon the VPS provider you choose, so just like with choosing game service providers, sometimes you’ll have sub-par performance thus lag or time out, or you’ll be paying more for something that performs decently typically.

I second that for a VPS due to the reasons above (firewall) in the first portion of this response.

Don’t quote me on this but I believe the latest OpenJDK available to be installed in the default Ubuntu repos currently is OpenJDK8, as for Oracle Java 8 (mods typically tend to crash much less with Oracle Java 8 vs OpenJDK8 based upon some posts here on the forum where the resolution was replacing OpenJDK with Oracle Java), you require a few more additional steps and would also require those same steps with my distribution, except in my distribution it is made much easier to do, as in simply executing “sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer oracle-java8-set-default” (or just “sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer” by itself) in/via terminal, or a package manager.

Well, typically no not really unless you have more requirements or wants or needs; once you get the web ui installed along with all the other components that it (and Minecraft) makes use of or relies on, that’s pretty much it, anything else is just extra.

I’ve seen that issue around here and there, not specific to my distribution however as the web ui is stock/untouched by me, though I think in the next release I’ll be re-implementing something I had always made use of which is to hide the characters in the password field by default automatically.
Anyways, try renaming your jar file to something shorter maybe, refreshing the web ui, selecting it, starting/stopping the server one time each, refresh the web ui and see if you can start it again without having to select the jar file again.

I would probably have or need to make/create a “less secured” version, which would either have all ports open by default (like on a typical default VPS installation) or would have all administration ports open alongside the default Minecraft server port. I suppose I can keep that in mind for when I build and am ready to release the next upcoming version, to build 2 separate versions one with the local administration only firewall policy and another with the remote administration firewall policy. I still recommend for a VPS just manually installing MineOS’ web ui on top and running/hosting that way. Or actually, I could probably make/create a more VPS/remote optimized version based on Ubuntu-Server that would make a lot more sense to me in my opinion (would be commandline only though, no GUI apart from remote web administration UIs such as the MineOS Web UI), alongside the version/release meant for home use/users, though obviously that kind of ruins the whole point of “beginner-friendly” a bit/lot, and actually would might as well be in my opinion the “official” MineOS distro. I still may look into this however due to the problems/issues with the official distro (mainly namely the USB installation issues and hardware sometimes not working out of the box with the official MineOS distro vs just installing MineOS on Ubuntu Server).

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Interesting thanks for addressing my concerns and regarding…

I understand what you means a $2/GB game server or VPS are both likely to be trash. But because of the limited industry objectives (price and performance usually over stability, security, quick support etc etc etc) of Game Service Providers, I feel like with a respectfully paid VPS I can still surpass most game service providers in an overall sense. At the cost of being responsible for it’s inter workings and/or reaching out place(s) like here for additional support.

But as you mentioned I glad to see generally speaking once I properly set it up in accordance to the wiki and keep it updated as per it’s recommendations there won’t be generally issues to worry about it and/or keeping the VPS “on”.

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I’ve set up everything I need using the included desktop environment. Now that that’s done, how can I disable the desktop environment and window manager (and anything related that’s also needlessly using ram)?

Thanks for this, by the way; saves me a lot of time!

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:warning: Make sure that you enable/allow some form or level of remote administration in your firewall configuration before running in/switching to the commandline only mode :warning:

To make the system boot up into commandline only mode without the desktop environment or window manager, you should be able to just use/run “systemctl set-default multi-user.target” as root.

To revert (making the system boot up back with the desktop environment and window manager again), you should be able to just use/run “systemctl set-default graphical.target” as root.

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Perfect, thank you!

For remote access, I’ve opened the ports for Webmin, MineOS, SSH/SFTP and additional Minecraft servers through the graphical firewall management application. I’ve been managing the server remotely and everything’s been running smoothly.

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If I’m struggling to install from this iso should I post here or in a new thread? #noob #humble

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Could be either, I don’t mind here but it could also be a separate thread.

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HELP i cant install the os it says no root file is defined. Please corect this form the partitioning menu.

What am i doing wrong pls help me
@JayMontana36