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Gentoo: Running a Minecraft 1.8 server

 |  2300 words — 11 minutes  |  gentoo linux minecraft

Running a dedicated Minecraft server can be a challenging job. You have to find a balance between performance and usability using “server software” that doesn’t seem to be designed to provide for long running, resilient services.

Being a first-time Minecraft server operator I had to tackle various challenges in order to come up with a way to provide a stable and reliable service to my players. The following article is a recollection of the things I implemented and scripts I wrote in order to run a Minecraft 1.8 server. The scripts mentioned are specific to Gentoo Linux, but could also be used on most other Linux flavours, albeit with some modifications to match that platform’s init.d scripts.

OnApp: Using PHP to launch a VNC connection

 |  600 words — 3 minutes  |  OnApp PHP VNC

If you’re an OnApp user you probably know you can make a VNC connection to your VM’s using the Control Panel. This uses a java applet in your browser as the VNC client.

Wouldn’t it be nice to use your own VNC client (like Remotix) instead?

In fact, you can, but OnApp spawns a VNC server on a (somewhat) random port and a new random VNC password for each sessions which you’ll have to figure out before setting up your connection.