A Longer Story

Hardware was the easy part. After building and configuring the server, I acquired a domain: HolyCowLookAtThisEpicDomain.com. Now I could give my buddies an objectively excellent URL, rather than my IP, to connect to the MC server.

I could have downloaded a server wrapper or a set of plugins to automate some basic tasks, but instead I invested some time into learning PowerShell. With the power of scripting The Box can now auto-magically stop the MC server, back up game data, and relaunch. You might say that backing up data to the same hard drive isn't really backing up data... I would agree.

The latest addition to the server is my buddy, Brendan. With him, he brought questionable design choices and an incapacity to regulate his own playtime. - An easy pinfall to walk into. Per his request, I wrote up a script that restricts his playtime to about 2 hours per day. It does this by reading the MC server's console feed and comparing it against established TCP connections. Sometimes, it even works!

The next feature I want to add is a web-app that my friends can use to send simple commands to the MC server. I could just give them operator permissions, but I'd like to scrub out commands that I don't want them using.