How to use Docker to run the Bedrock Minecraft server on Ubuntu 16.04

The Problem

You have an Ubuntu 16.04 server or some other distro on your server and you really don’t want to change it, but want to run the Minecraft bedrock server . When you try and start it you get the following error:

./bedrock_server: error while loading shared libraries: libssl.so.1.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

./bedrock_server: error while loading shared libraries: libcurl.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

The Cause

Apparently, Mojang is not compiling the server with support for Ubuntu 16.04, and since it depends on a higher glibc version, it’s never going to run. It also won’t run on other distros, like Alpine Linux or CentOS.

The Solution

Run the server with the following Dockerfile:

And start it with this script:

Quick Primer on Docker

If you aren’t familiar with Docker and just want to get this working, here is a quick overview of what you’ll have to do.

Install docker-ce

Even if you aren’t running Ubuntu, you should be able to get this to work with any distro that supports Docker with the magic of containerization.
Make sure you can run docker run hello-world from a bash prompt
Download the server zipfile and unzip it
Create a file called Dockerfile with the contents shown above in the same folder.

Create a file called start-bedrock-docker.sh with the contents shown above

At this point, the folder you are doing this in should look like this:

+--my-folder-name
   +--Dockerfile
   +--start-bedrock-docker.sh
   +--bedrock-server-1.11.2.1
      +--bedrock_server
      +--permissions.json
      +--etc...

Customize your server.properties file

It will be copied into the docker image. You can edit it later, it’s just easier to do it right now.
From my-folder-name, run docker build -t mojang/bedrock. You should see something like this at the end of a bunch of apt output:
```
Successfully built 2b0e01bb18ac
Successfully tagged mojang/bedrock:latest
```

Run docker run mojang/bedrock . and ensure the server starts

$ docker run mojang/bedrock
NO LOG FILE! - setting up server logging...
[2019-05-16 23:19:38 INFO] Starting Server
[2019-05-16 23:19:38 INFO] Version 1.11.2.1
[2019-05-16 23:19:38 INFO] Level Name: Bedrock level
[2019-05-16 23:19:38 INFO] Game mode: 0 Survival
[2019-05-16 23:19:38 INFO] Difficulty: 1 EASY
[2019-05-16 23:19:42 INFO] IPv4 supported, port: 19132
[2019-05-16 23:19:42 INFO] IPv6 not supported
[2019-05-16 23:19:45 INFO] Server started.

Kill it by running docker ps and noting the value under NAMES (should be a name like thirsty_kapista, see step 11 for example output), then running docker stop {name}. It will take a few seconds to stop.

Run docker volume create bedrock-world

A docker volume is where your world will be persisted between docker run’s
Run the start-bedrock-docker.sh script, you should just see a SHA printed out

   $ ./start-bedrock-docker.sh
   68c52b82f015e2bd06e35a37a9792029407adbec4a8162bbf58d5582515d5f23
   $

Run docker ps to verify that the continer is running

$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND                  CREATED             STATUS              PORTS                      NAMES
69e438cb1164        ef5e27d6f011        "/bin/sh -c 'cd /opt…"   19 hours ago        Up 19 hours         0.0.0.0:19132->19132/udp   thirsty_kapitsa

Connect to your server with a Bedrock client! Forward UDP port 19132

Useful Docker commands

docker ps lists running containers. Careful, you can run more than one at a time
docker stop {container_name} where {container_name} is thirsty_kapitsa from the above docker ps output
docker run -it {container_name} /bin/bash to attach a shell to a running container

This is useful for when you want to modify your server’s configuration after running docker build. Just run that command and cd to /opt/bedrock and modify your server.properties from the command line with nano.