I host Crafty Controller (docker) on my desktop, because it is faster than my server. However, I’d like it for a MC server to be always running, so I don’t need to power on my desktop for anyone to join.

Minecraft runs fine on the server, as long as there aren’t many people on, and aren’t exploring new chunks. Generating new chunks is very cpu intensive, but one person exploring can be fine and is acceptable. However, I want a way to switch the same server to run on my desktop, nice and fast.

So basically, it of the time I want MC running on my server, and then when multiple people are playing (including me) I want to be able to turn off the server, and then turn it back on at my desktop.

I use NPM for my domain and SSL, however it’d be fine if people access at serverIP:port and desktopIP:port. That is acceptable (doesn’t need to be mc.example.com, but would be nice)

Would Syncthing be the tool to use? I could use it to sync the folder of Crafty to each computer…

  • johntash@eviltoast.orgEnglish
    1·
    1 day ago

    Syncthing should work, just make sure you don’t run the server on both systems at the same time. Also make sure it finishes syncing.

    If your server is always on, you could also expose a network share and mount that on your desktop.

    For dns, you could make a simple script that changes what ip mc.domain points to. Just set the ttl to a low value to avoid waiting on dns cache to expire.

  • LiveLM@lemmy.zipEnglish
    10·
    12 days ago

    I’d love to see this seamless switching between hosts work reliably, but it seems a bit hard…
    Have you considered pre-generating the world chunks on your beefy desktop with a mod like Chunky then transferring the world over to the server?

    I’ve done this before and it works wonders on low-end devices, though it is a trade: you’re exchanging disk space for smoother performance.
    Finding the sweet spot can be a bit hard.

    • Dust0741@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      11 days ago

      Chunky is amazing. I do have a good bit of free space on my server, so this might just be the best option

  • cerothem@lemmy.caEnglish
    5·
    12 days ago

    So, one thing that’s not clear here. Is the server and your desktop both at the same location? If they are I see no reason why you couldn’t just leave all the files on the server, have an NFS or Samba share then just stop it on the server and start it (over the network share) on your desktop. It would be functionally seamless, would require no effort to keep the files in sync, and would ensure your running things in the box you want.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
    4·
    12 days ago

    Syncthing is entirely the wrong thing to use.

    Anyway what you are describing is possible but it will take some work. I think it is likely not worth the effort. However, I’ll leave that up to you.

    To do what you are describing you need to first have a way to send data back and forth between devices and then a way to shutdown and start containers.

    To do this I would use Ansible. To start you are going to need to setup an Ansible service user on the server. Makes sure that it is configured so that it can run sudo without a password and is in the docker group. Once you have the service user you need to add it to the hosts file on your desktop.

    Next, create two different playbooks. The first playbook will be the one that pulls the container over. First have it connect to the server and stop the container. Then have it run rsync to pull the data down to your local machine. Once the data is pulled have it start the container on your machine.

    For the second playbook have it first stop the container on your desktop and then rsync the data over. Once the data is synced have it bring up the container on the server.

    For safety you probably should add some check to make sure that you don’t mistakenly run the wrong playbook. You should add a check to make sure that the container is really running where it is expected. It is pretty easy to have Ansible run a check.

    You technically could do this will pure scripting but I wouldn’t recommend it.

    Ansible plugins:

    https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/community/docker/docker_compose_module.html

    https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/ansible/posix/synchronize_module.html

  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    12 days ago

    Yeah, I think Syncthing + maybe a port forward should work. So you’d always access it at serverIP:port, but the traffic could be tunneled to your desktop instead if that’s where it’s running. Basically, the process would be:

    1. stop MC on server, start TCP tunnel from server -> desktop
    2. ensure files are copied (maybe Syncthing?)
    3. start MC on desktop

    Then later, reverse the process.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        12 days ago

        Use a reverse proxy, like nginx, HAProxy, etc. It’ll listen on your MC server’s port and forward all data to your desktop. Then run either your MC server or the reverse proxy on your server.

        There’s probably something you can do in Tailscale to change what a logical name points to, but this can work as a backup if you can’t figure that out.

  • sun_is_ra@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    12 days ago

    yes Syncthing should work just fine just make sure to only sync the save directory to minimize bandwidth. rsync is another common tool (at least for Linux) that does same job through command line. making it easier to automate the syncing tasks through bash scripts