I was convinced my MacBook Pro (2009 model) ran Minecraft like a dog - a handful of FPS at best. Turns out, SSD disks are terrible for running Minecraft - the game needs to write out blocks rapidly, and SSDs are terrible at writing.
My solution - only run your laptop as a multiplayer client. Do all the heavy lifting on your main computer (a PC in my case).
Run a server on your desktop PC or other machine with good disk performance. Run in offline mode to avoid any 'invalid server key' problems, you're just connecting on your local wifi network.
Connect your laptop in Multiplayer mode to this computer - behold, amazing FPS. Your laptop does not touch its own disk at all.
For best results on a 64bit Mac, force Minecraft to run in 64bit mode. The game itself will tell you this if you try and enable view distance = Far and you're not set up correctly.
Anyone know how to make a Windows scheduler based script to automatically start/stop EC2 instances using the AWS API?
Hi. Get the Amazon command line tools working in Windows (see my earlier post in this thread), then use the tool ec2-stop-instances to stop your server on demand.
For startup you'll need Minecraft server to be kicked off at server start; there will be many posts on this on the web.
2011-09-08 15:50:30 [SEVERE] Unexpected exception
java.lang.NullPointerException
at mu.a(SourceFile:100)
at mu.g_(SourceFile:145)
at dj.e(SourceFile:1119)
at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.h(SourceFile:374)
at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.run(SourceFile:307)
at bq.run(SourceFile:422)
I do, it's a fatal crash. Note, the numbers above must match exactly, or it's not the same problem.
I did some digging through the decompiled source. Long story short, this is a bug in 1.7.3 that's caused when pistons update.
Thanks for all the fascinating and useful responses!
An update. I did the sysbench testing (which takes some setting up with make and libtoolize) on my Micro instance and sure enough, the CPU capacity is great for short bursts (generating >1000 primes in 2 seconds) before getting absolutely throttled into the ground.
I upgraded to Small and retested. Now the CPU is stable at 400 primes every 2 seconds, no throttling.
My revised setup:
- running Small
- 1GB heap
- If like me you run this server 24/7, you are *much better off* using the 'Reserved instances' option. I bought my Small instance for 3 years, which costs me $350 (less than $10 per month!).
Changing your server size (Small -> Micro -> Small) does not affect your EBS storage. So after downgrading I just booted the new instance and all my /minecraft stuff was still there. So yes, it's retained, no rezipping needed.
Rather than change size maybe you could have two instances (Micro and Small) attached to the same EBS volume. And just have one running at a time (i.e. the other Stopped).
The web GUI gives you very basic functions only. If you want to do more clever stuff (like starting server on demand), you're probably going to have to get the command line tools I mentioned above and try running them. It means executing commands on your home PC/Mac to control your EC2 stuff. Step 3 above is something you type in on the Windows command line, for example.
The script will launch Minecraft in a detached 'screen' session which survives your logout.
If the Minecraft console is in the foreground (for example if you used DISPLAY=1 in the script) then remember to hit Ctrl-A followed by 'd' to detach and put it back in the background.
Update: after looking at my GC logs, it seems I am not using anywhere near the memory I have allocated. If like me you only have 2-4 players max, your server is probably only using 100-300MB heap.
(You can check memory usage by adding -XX:+PrintGCDetails to your java command at startup.)
Hence I downgraded my server from SMALL (1.7GB memory) to MICRO (613MB), which was amazingly easy. MICRO is half the price of SMALL, maybe less.
I will update as costs become more clear - I've been running for a few days and my bill is around $7, so it seems quite likely to end up in the $50-100 range per month.
Update: Micro worked out about $16 per month, on demand running 24/7.
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I wrote an article explaining how I use the Realms API to automatically download my world and generate an Overviewer map. Hope you find it useful, http://www.aaronbell.com/how-to-create-overviewer-maps-from-minecraft-realms/
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I wrote an article explaining how I use the Realms API to automatically download my world and generate an Overviewer map. Hope you find it useful, http://www.aaronbell.com/how-to-create-overviewer-maps-from-minecraft-realms/
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I also wrote an article for getting the MSM tool up and running: http://www.aaronbell.com/how-to-run-minecraft-server-manager-on-amazon-linux/
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Let me know your feedback!
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My solution - only run your laptop as a multiplayer client. Do all the heavy lifting on your main computer (a PC in my case).
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Hi. Get the Amazon command line tools working in Windows (see my earlier post in this thread), then use the tool ec2-stop-instances to stop your server on demand.
For startup you'll need Minecraft server to be kicked off at server start; there will be many posts on this on the web.
Good luck!
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So always remember to launch your Minecraft with the -server switch:
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2011-09-08 15:50:30 [SEVERE] Unexpected exception java.lang.NullPointerException at mu.a(SourceFile:100) at mu.g_(SourceFile:145) at dj.e(SourceFile:1119) at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.h(SourceFile:374) at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.run(SourceFile:307) at bq.run(SourceFile:422)I do, it's a fatal crash. Note, the numbers above must match exactly, or it's not the same problem.
I did some digging through the decompiled source. Long story short, this is a bug in 1.7.3 that's caused when pistons update.
You can see more detail at http://leaky.bukkit.org/issues/1011
I believe installing Bukkit (latest version) will fix the bug. Or, just wait for 1.8 beta : )
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An update. I did the sysbench testing (which takes some setting up with make and libtoolize) on my Micro instance and sure enough, the CPU capacity is great for short bursts (generating >1000 primes in 2 seconds) before getting absolutely throttled into the ground.
I upgraded to Small and retested. Now the CPU is stable at 400 primes every 2 seconds, no throttling.
My revised setup:
- running Small
- 1GB heap
- If like me you run this server 24/7, you are *much better off* using the 'Reserved instances' option. I bought my Small instance for 3 years, which costs me $350 (less than $10 per month!).
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http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/21/aws-free-amazon/
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Rather than change size maybe you could have two instances (Micro and Small) attached to the same EBS volume. And just have one running at a time (i.e. the other Stopped).
The web GUI gives you very basic functions only. If you want to do more clever stuff (like starting server on demand), you're probably going to have to get the command line tools I mentioned above and try running them. It means executing commands on your home PC/Mac to control your EC2 stuff. Step 3 above is something you type in on the Windows command line, for example.
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viewtopic.php?f=10&t=40202
The script will launch Minecraft in a detached 'screen' session which survives your logout.
If the Minecraft console is in the foreground (for example if you used DISPLAY=1 in the script) then remember to hit Ctrl-A followed by 'd' to detach and put it back in the background.
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(You can check memory usage by adding -XX:+PrintGCDetails to your java command at startup.)
Hence I downgraded my server from SMALL (1.7GB memory) to MICRO (613MB), which was amazingly easy. MICRO is half the price of SMALL, maybe less.
How to downgrade an EC2 server
1. Get the Amazon command line tools installed and working - http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/ ... rnalID=351
2. Stop your instance. Stop, do NOT Terminate. Terminate will delete your storage!
3. Modify the instance type:
ec2-modify-instance-attribute -C cert-ABCD1234blahblah.pem -K pk-ABCD1234blahblah.pem <instance-id> -t t1.micro
4. Start the instance. Note the new public hostname! This means an IP change as well.
5. Change your Minecraft to use say 512MB max heap.
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I will update as costs become more clear - I've been running for a few days and my bill is around $7, so it seems quite likely to end up in the $50-100 range per month.
Update: Micro worked out about $16 per month, on demand running 24/7.