Setup PaperSpigot on Debian 10

Introduction

PaperSpigot is a high-performance fork of Spigot. This guide explains how to setup PaperSpigot on a Debian 10 (Buster) Vultr instance.

Step 1: Prepare the System

• Launch a fresh Debian 10 VPS.
• Update the server with our best practices guide.
• Create a sudo user named paperuser. Follow our best practices guide. Switch to paperuser for the remainder of this guide.

Step 2: Install Java

Install the headless OpenJDK version.

$ sudo apt install openjdk-11-jre-headless -y

Step 3: Install Screen

Screen is a GNU utility that allows the PaperSpigot server to run in the background.

$ sudo apt install screen -y

Step 4: Create the Swap File

PaperSpigot requires a swap file to accommodate the RAM requirements. Replace 1G in the command below with your desired swap file size.

$ sudo fallocate -l 1G /swapfile

Set the permissions.

$ sudo chmod 600 /swapfile

Allocate the swap space.

$ sudo mkswap /swapfile

Turn on swap.

$ sudo swapon /swapfile

Modify /etc/fstab to mount the swap file at boot.

$ sudo nano /etc/fstab

Append this line to the file.

/swapfile   none    swap    sw    0   0

Step 5: Install PaperSpigot

Change to the paperuser home directory.

$ cd ~

Create and change to the paper folder.

$ mkdir paper
$ cd paper

Download the latest build of PaperSpigot to paperclip.jar. If you prefer a different Minecraft version, replace lastSuccessfulBuild with the desired build number found here.

$ wget -O paperclip.jar https://papermc.io/ci/job/Paper/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/paperclip.jar

Create a startup script for your server.

$ nano start.sh

Paste this script into start.sh. Replace 1024M with the amount of RAM installed on your server.

#!/bin/sh

java -Xms512M -Xmx1024M -jar paperclip.jar

Make start.sh executable.

$ chmod +x start.sh

Agree to the Minecraft EULA.

$ echo "eula=true" > eula.txt

Step 6: Start the Server

Start a screen instance to run the server in the background.

$ screen -S "My PaperSpigot Server"

Run the startup script.

$ cd ~/paper
$ ./start.sh

To exit out of the screen window, press CTRL + A, then press D. If you want to open the window again, use the command screen -r.

Conclusion

You have installed a PaperSpigot Minecraft server on Debian 10. The server will download files necessary to setup PaperSpigot on the first launch. After the first run, your server will launch faster.