Help: Setting up, running, and maintaining a server

[Minix]

If it works inside a LAN then your server is ok. Now if you want it to work over the internet you have to forward the port that your minetest server listens to (by default is 30000), to your server (your computer). Look up the name of your router + port forwarding on the internet.

Then you have to give your friends your internet IP address, which you can see on your router or on an IP address detection website.

[r1bnc]

This may be not related but i still don't know where to ask. In the server list it shows player names, is there an official way to scrape those details? im trying to make a histograph of players that play at specific time of day on a particuler server.

[Festus1965]

This may be not related but i still don't know where to ask. In the server list it shows player names, is there an official way to scrape those details? im trying to make a histograph of players that play at specific time of day on a particuler server.

You mean a gamer named "Thomas" follow over different servers, playing during a day ?
If that, so imagine as me cant play with Thomas every-way ... special Thomas has 5 people at MT and so I use 3 different names already.
But anyway, interesting - good luck.

[Minix]

There is a way to access the information on servers.minetest.net in a json format so you can parse what you need, however I don't know how that goes, maybe someone else here knows how to do that. Also remember that the server list doesn't get updated information about a server quickly if said server has a slow connection, so you might lose some data, if you have access to the server you want to get data from it's better to use the logs.

[FrostRanger]

I'm already running into an issue. For starters, if anyone's trying to install the most up-to-date, stable minetest-server onto an Ubuntu 20.04 machine, you must do these steps first (make sure you're fully updated before you begin).

1. In a terminal add the buster-backports repository to the sources list. You can create a new file under /etc/apt/sources.list.d or add it to /etc/apt/sources.list. The new entry in the file should look like this.

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   deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-backports main

2. Add the public keys for buster-backports to the apt catalogue.

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   user@host:~$sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 04EE7237B7D453EC
   user@host:~$sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 648ACFD622F3D138

3. Run sudo apt update, and perform an upgrade, if required (it will tell you if upgrades are available).
4. Add the buster-backports version of minetest to your apt preferences. Go to /etc/apt/preferences.d, and create a new file. I used the filename 99debian-backports. Enter these as the entries in the file.

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   Package: minetest
   Pin: release a=buster-backports
   Pin-Priority: 900
   
   Package: minetest-data
   Pin: release a=buster-backports
   Pin-Priority: 900
   
   Package: minetest-server
   Pin: release a=buster-backports
   Pin-Priority: 900

This is the point where I'm running into problems. I tried to install minetest-server, and I got this error.

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The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 minetest-server : Depends: libspatialindex5 (>= 1.8.5) but it is not installable

That dependency is not in the buster-backports repository, or any Ubuntu repository that is installed with 20.04, and it's not one of the dependencies that were required when I installed the Minetest client on my laptop several months ago. How do I get this dependency? Do I need to add the buster repository, too, or is there an Ubuntu repository I should use, instead? I found a package called libspatialindex-dev, but I don't think apt will accept that as a substitute for libspatialindex5.

Do I need to install the minetest and minetest-data packages with minetest-server? I won't be actually playing the game on the server; users will log in from their own remote clients. How do I create and set up a world on the server if it has no GUI and no minetest client; is that done through minetest.conf, too (e.g., mg type, seed, etc.)?

Ik this post is old, but I just wanted to clear this up for anyone who is trying to install the latest version of Minetest on Ubuntu, Do not use the buster backports, use the minetest ppa's instead
https://launchpad.net/~minetestdevs/+ar ... ntu/stable
https://launchpad.net/~minetestdevs/+ar ... ily-builds

Those are the links to the stable and unstable ppa's respectively. There are instructions on how to add them to your system on the site. I have no idea if using the buster backports will break anything, but it's probably easier to just use the official ppa in any case
I would also like to point out that installing the minetest server package is mostly redundant anyways as you can start the regular client in server mode my doing
systemctl start minetest.service
The advantage of just using the regular client in server mode is that you can run a server using the latest version of minetest where if you use the minetest server package you will be stuck at 5.0. This site does a pretty good job of explaining how to properly set up a server on ubuntu for anyone interested https://www.vultr.com/docs/how-to-setup ... untu-17-04 Again, this post is more directed at random forum goers rather than T6C as I am aware that this post is several months old.