Setting up a server

This page is a guide, separated into sections, for setting up a Luanti server. It assumes you want to run a server that is publicly facing the Internet, as compared to a LAN server if you want to play with players on the same network.

Choosing a Platform

It’s widely recommended that you use a VPS or dedicated server to host a game server which you want to make publicly available. Residential Internet connections tend to be unreliable and also have less upload speed. You may also not be able to keep a server online 24/7 when hosting from home.

That being said, hosting from home will work fine if you have some hardware you can keep online, and you have a good enough Internet connection. Keep in mind that if you are behind CGNAT, you are unable to host a public server from home at all as it won’t be accessible to the wider internet.

Luanti does have a Host Server option in the main menu, which is fine for temporary servers for a couple of friends, but if you want to run a public server you would want to run it dedicated as it can be kept online independent of the client being active.

A chart is shown below with links to various platforms. These should be used as examples of what you might want and are not an endorsement of any particular platform or solution. It is assumed that you will be using some form of PC/server hardware; mobile is excluded as it is a highly exotic and not recommended solution.

Solution	Pros	Cons	Examples
Self-hosting	Cheap*	Exposes your IP, less reliable	Whatever hardware you have lying around / former office hardware
VPS	Full control, reliable hardware and connection	Cost	https://www.netcup.com/en/server https://contabo.com/en-us/vps/ https://www.hetzner.com/
SaaS	Minimal setup and maintenance, GUI provided	Less control and configuration, potential lock-in	https://luanti.ch/pages/hosting/ https://pinehosting.com/minetest

* Assumes you already own the hardware (or can acquire it cheaply), already pay for internet that you can reuse, and don’t mind the minimal addition to your power bill.

Choosing Hardware

You can of course run Luanti on rather modest hardware. However, the following specs aim to support around 10 players at once on a reasonable, non-demanding game + mods combination.

CPU: At least 2 cores (preferably 4)¹. Luanti is heavily single-threaded (while this has improved somewhat in more recent versions, it is still the case for most things), so higher CPU core clock speed is better.

RAM: 4 GB should be enough, although this number needs to scale if you are using a heavier game + mods (see Mineclonia / VoxeLibre). Also note that if using LuaJIT it should be compiled with GC64 so you can use all available memory; this should be enabled on most modern Linux distros.

Storage: 30 GB. Use an SSD, preferably an NVMe drive. This will grow over time as your players explore and expand more of the map. To reduce this issue you may want to limit your map size.

Network: 20 Mbps. Note that you may need to increase this if you adjust settings that send more map chunks (etc.) per player.

Your IP Address

If you already know what your IP address is, proceed onwards, otherwise this guide should assist you in determining what your IP Address is.

Installation, Configuration, and Setup

Please see the respective guide for your platform:

Port forwarding

If you are self-hosting a server you will usually need to port forward the server in your router for it to be accessible to the outside internet. This isn’t necessary for LAN play, as you’ll simply provide the internal IP of the server accessible within the local network.

Choose a port to run the server on. The default of 30000 is recommended, and if you host several it is recommended to increment upwards. (e.g. 30001, 30002…)
Login to your router, and port forward UDP on the chosen port for your server computer. Depending on your router the port forwarding page may show you a list of devices connected with their hostname visible, otherwise you will need to input the internal IP of the computer you are hosting the server on.
Alter any computer firewalls you may have to allow traffic to the port you choose.

Server list

Make your server listed in the server list and by setting the following settings in minetest.conf:

server_announce = true - makes Luanti announce the server to the server list.
server_name - set the value of this to your server’s name.
server_description - set the value of this to a longer description describing your server.
server_address - if you have a domain name for your server, then set this to the domain name.
- Should only be the domain name (e.g. coolserver.luanti.org, not https://coolserver.luanti.org/woah/). If you do not have a domain name pointed to your server then do not add this setting or write anything for it, or the server list will reject your server.
server_url - if you have a website for your server, then set this to the website URL, it must begin with http:// or https://.
motd - a message that is sent to the player when they join. Use this to welcome them.
serverlist_url - do not set this unless you are announcing to a custom list.
bind_address - do not set this unless you have a setup with multiple IP addresses on the same server.
ipv6_server - set this if you have domain name and an IPv6 address.
Note: You need to restart to make changes in minetest.conf take effect.

Remote Media

While not required to set up a server, this is highly recommend for servers with lots of media and/or large media assets. See this guide for more details.

Protecting your server

Protecting the Luanti world/server

When setting up a new server, you should consider which protections are needed. This is extremely important for public servers, because you cannot predict who will connect or what they will do on your server.

Common problems include:

Accidental or intentional damage to other players’ work (griefing).
Chat spam (may include swearing or advertisements).
Aggression, harassment or other unwanted behaviors between players.
Trouble makers who evade bans.
Impersonation of well known people within the Luanti community.
Bugs, for example caused by mods, which allow a malicious player to execute arbitrary system commands.

Many of these problems can be removed or minimised by advanced planning and awareness:

Install a protection mod, such as areas or protectors. These allow players to protect areas, which cannot be changed by other players.
Enable rollback by adding enable_rollback_recording = true to minetest.conf. Rollback can tell you which player placed a node, and allows a player’s actions to be reverted.

Warning

The engine rollback functionality is very limited and can’t roll back griefing caused by mod-made node changes (e.g. spawning a bunch of trees or covering things in water). In addition to rollback, you should also always make regular backups of the map database.

Install a mod to help you manage bans, such as xban2.
On the other hand, if you are setting up a private server, install a whitelist mod such as whitelist.
Create rules for your server and make sure you have enough time (or a team of moderators) to supervise your server and watch for players who breaks your rules.
Never grant privileges to a player just because they use a name you recognise. Player names are not reserved between servers, so you should always confirm who the player is.
Install and configure a chat filter mod like filter, to prevent swearing and/or sexual chat. This is useful to inform players of the rules rather than actual enforcement, as working around filters is fairly easy.

For more mods useful to server administration, see the Server Moderation and Tools tag on ContentDB. See also the SzUtilPack package which is a modpack by Warr1024 that contains a lot of useful mods for server management such as automatic restarts, pruning players or additional useful chat commands.

Protecting the host machine

Standard advice on Linux/Windows server security applies.
On Linux you can add a dedicated user for running the Luanti server.
Never, ever, disable mod security.
Make sure you trust mods you add to secure.trusted_mods

Managing your server

Server Configuration

For a detailed explanation of the server configuration file, see minetest.conf.

You may also want to consider to use a different database backend for your world.

Server Commands

Running /help in-game will show you a list of the built-in engine commands as well as any server commands installed by mods.

Privilege System

See the privileges page for detailed information on the privilege system.