Content

Rev. 4 (Document updated 02-09-2018)

1. Installation
2. Accessing the CraftBian web interface
3. Navigating and using the CraftBian web interface
4. Creating your own server
5. Accessing CraftBian via SSH (Advanced)
6. Things to note
7. F.A.Q
8. Contact

Installation

First of all you will need to get the CraftBian image it self. You can get that by going here. Once you have downloaded the zip file, extract the content and use Win32 Disk Imager to write the extracted image to your SD card. A 2 GB or larger is required and remember that everything on your card will be deleted!

Once you have written the image to the card, the card is ready to be plugged into your pi. The only thing you should need is a network cable, an internet connection* and power. Let your Pi and CraftBian work for around 5 – 10 minutes, and you should then be able to join the server from a computer on the same network running Minecraft. You shouldn’t need to add the server, as it is broadcast automatically to the clients on the same network by default.

* – An internet connection is not required, but without it, the automated setup process will not work. If you do not have any internet connection you will need to setup a server manually by accessing the web interface as shown below.

Accessing the CraftBian web interface

Should you need to go change something on the server or CraftBian, like add a spigot server, change the backup schedule or add an operator, you can do so via the CraftBian web interface. This is accessed by opening a browser (Google Chrome browser is recommended) on a client machine on the same network and type in the web address of http://craftbian which should greet you with a welcome login screen.

Please keep in mind, that by default, CraftBian will on its first run automatically download and setup a Vanilla Minecraft Server of the newest available version. This can take some time, and the progress of this is not shown on the web interface before it is starting up the server. You can disable this behavior by going to the CraftBian settings box in the Settings tab and setting the “Auto Start Server” to off. If you want to setup your own server manually, i recommend that you go disable the “Auto Start Server” feature mentioned above and restart the Raspberry Pi through the main page’s Power options. Once your server is setup and set as the Active one you can re-enable the feature, so that if the Raspberry Pi is restarted at a later time, it will automatically start up your custom server.

The default login credentials is listed below:

Username: admin
Password: pass

There is also a user with not so many privileges

Username: user
Password: pass

You might want to change these passwords and the users privileges, after you login, which can be done through the settings menu at top and then scroll to the bottom.

Notice that once you have logged in a message at top appears that tells you, that it is not recommended to access the web interface via its host name. Head over to the about page and instead access the web interface via the IP address, which is shown to the right.

Navigating and using the CraftBian web interface

Navigating the CraftBian web interface is pretty self explanatory. On top you have the menu which lets you navigate to the different areas of the interface. In short the different menu items holds the following

• Home
  Lets you control the Raspberry Pi and Minecraft Server. This page is per default updated automatically every 7 seconds. From here you can reboot or shutdown the Raspberry Pi and monitor its general usage (RAM,CPU, CPU Temperature and space left on SD card). This page also lets you see the status of the active Minecraft Server (Name, players, world etc.) and lets you start and stop it. Lastly you can in detail monitor the server output if the server is running and provide commands directly to the server. A list of ways to access the server is also shown here.
• Servers
  This page lets you create/modify/delete servers/worlds/operators and more. Its basicly the page to go to, if you want to make any changes regarding servers. You can modify the server.property file, and ops.json/ops.txt files and set which world is active or create new ones, by either a seed number or by uploading one in a zip file (the zip file should hold the worlds folders like world, world_nether, world_the_end or just world). You can also enable automatic port forwarding here for the server, which in short will attempt to make your router redirect incomming traffic from the wan, to your Minecraft Server, so that people from the internet can access it.
• Settings
  CraftBians own settings is stored here which ranges from ram allocation for the running server, hostname, and timezone to CraftBian user role priviledges and web interface login passwords.
• Backup
  Go here to create backups of your servers. This is also where the automated backup schedule is created and where you can tell CraftBian where to store said created backups. If you want to use a external drive, plug it into the Raspberry Pi and refresh this site. A new device should appear in the Available drives drop down, which you can then select and click Select as main storage. The device is now the primary storage for backups. It will not be formatted on attachment but a backup prior to attaching it to your Raspberry Pi is recommended. The NTFS filesystem is also recommended. If you want to remove the drive again from your Raspberry Pi, please remember to go this page and press the Unmount button before you unplug your USB device, otherwise corruption might uccour.
• About
  Tells a little about CraftBian it self, and holds a changelog and todo which is managed by me remotely. It also shows CraftBians IP address and storage usage, and then most importantly lets you update the web interface via the Update button, which directs you to the updater tool.

Creating your own server

If you decide to create a new server you can do it via the Servers menu link at top. You can then either do the following (difficulty being easiest on top of the list):

1. Give the server a name, accept the EULA and click Download newest Server jar
   This is the easiest way of creating  a server, which basically just downloads the newest server version directly from Mojang, and sets up a new server instance from that automatically. This ofcourse requires the Rasberry Pi to be on a network with internet access.
2. Give the server a name, accept the EULA, and provide a server jar file
   Almost the same as above, but gives you the option to upload the server version of your choice and doesnt require the Raspberry Pi to have internet access. I figured however that most people would probably like to have servers with mods and other things included which leads to the last option
3. Give the server a name, accept the EULA, specify the jar file (jar filename box) that should be started, when the server is told to start from CraftBian, and provide a zip file containing all the server files
   The system then extracts the zip file automatically and creates a server from its content. This gives you the flexibility of being able to customize the server all you want on your client computer before uploading it. Just remember that specifying the jar file to start is crucial, otherwise the system will not know which file it should start. Also remember that the zip file you upload, must hold all the server files in its root. By that i mean that the jar file you specify the system to start, should be in the root of the zip file.

On all of the above methods you have the option to  specify extra java parameters that is passed to the Minecraft server when it starts.

Furthermore i recommend creating a Spigot server as this type of server, gives quite the performance boost.

If you have done either of the above methods and you see the server you just created in the server list on the server page it has been created successfully.

The server list on the server page also lists which server is set as the active one, which means which server is able to be started. If there was no server created before you created your own, the new server will automatically be set as active, otherwise you can do it by selecting the server on the list, and click Set as active, when there is no other server running.

Accessing CraftBian via SSH (Advanced)

If you want to log on to the terminal you can do so via putty or similar. The older version of the Image running Minibian will have the below credentials as default:

Username: root
Password: craftbian

However if you are running the new version of the CraftBian image released 02/09/2018 running Raspbian you will have to use the following credentials instead:

Username: pi
Password: craftbian

Things to note

This is not some magic miracle thing that turns a Raspberry Pi into a full fledged server like the big hosting companies can offer. It does have limits:

• Starting a server for the first time, can take up to 10 minutes
• When first logging on to a server, expect there to be some lag. It should only last a few minutes, but after this, i experience it to run great.
• Remember that when you shut down CraftBian from the power options menu you will get a 404, which is kind of supposed to happen, as the Raspberry Pi will be, well, shutdown ;P

F.A.Q

Q: When i add a user to the whitelist the user still can’t logon!
A: Adding users to whitelists requires the Minecraft Server to be restarted.

Q: Servers that are running does not show up on my Minecraft Client automatically!
A: Check your firewall settings. If your firewall on your Client machine has not allowed JAVA to pass through the Broadcast system will not work properly!

Contact

If you have any questions, bug reports, need any help at all or other stuff, just let me know. You can contact me by

Email: djda9l@gmail.com