Setup Minecraft Pocket Edition on Debian

This guide will show you how to setup a Minecraft PE server on Debian. The server setup is very easy, you can start having fun in just a few minutes.

Pre-requisites

Your server needs a minimum of 1GB of RAM for 8 players. More players means more memory. Before you begin, you need a non-root user account set up on your server. We will be using the demo user here.

Installing dependencies

Install GCC and other build tools. If you are using a 32-bit version Debian, you will not need to install gcc-multilib.

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

Installing the PocketMine-MP server

Download and compile PocketMine-MP and PHP. This process may take up to 20 minutes.

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

Upon success, you will see the following output.

...
[INFO] Cleaning up... done!
[PocketMine] You should start the server now using "./start.sh."
[PocketMine] If it doesn't work, please send the "install.log" file to the Bug Tracker.

Configuring your server

Start your server in screen.

screen
./start.sh

On the first run, you will be prompted for settings, such as language, server name, and RAM. Upon success, you will see the following output.

18:05:05 [INFO] Starting Minecraft: PE server version v0.10.5 alpha
18:05:05 [INFO] Loading pocketmine.yml...
18:05:05 [INFO] Loading server properties...
18:05:05 [INFO] Starting Minecraft PE server on 0.0.0.0:19132
18:05:05 [INFO] This server is running PocketMine-MP version 1.4.1-980 "絶好(Zekkou)ケーキ(Cake)" (API 1.11.0)
18:05:05 [INFO] PocketMine-MP is distributed under the LGPL License
18:05:06 [INFO] Preparing level "world"
18:05:06 [INFO] Starting GS4 status listener
18:05:06 [INFO] Setting query port to 19132
18:05:06 [INFO] Query running on 0.0.0.0:19132
18:05:06 [INFO] Default game type: CREATIVE
18:05:06 [INFO] Done (0.611s)! For help, type "help" or "?"

The settings can be changed again at any point by editing the server.properties file and restarting the server.

Congratulations, you now have Minecraft PE running on Debian.