What plugins can - and should - I use?

[xBlizzDevious]

Hey guys,

I run a tiny server with my old computer sitting in the corner of my room (it's pretty good, can provide specs if you want them) and I am running the base FTB Monster V1.1.1 server on it - and have run all of the previous versions of Monster, Unleashed and Ultimate on it too - and I've never really used any extra plugins or anything to improve the performance or capabilities of my FTB server. The last time I used any plugins was maybe back in Tekkit for MC 1.2.5 or even before that with Canary on the beta versions of MC.

The server generally is just me and one or two friends that are at my house as my internet is too terrible to host even one person online; yay for UK internet!

What I'm wanting are some plugins that can improve the performance of the server (I so wish I could use TickThreading) and improve the admin functionality such as 4-hourly restarts and automatic backups of the world. I don't need anti-griefing, factions, or "your build area" plugins.

What plugins would you guys suggest (please provide links as I never know what websites to trust these days) and how do I go about using them?

Thanks!



TL;DR: What plugins should I get for my small FTB Monster server and how do I use them?

 

[MajPayne21]

Server Tools is a Forge mod that will do automated backups. It takes very little configuration and doesn't require MCPC.

You should be able to configure the restarts externally, either with a Cron job (linux) or a Windows service. Not sure of a minecraft mod that does auto restarts.

Your friends might appreciate a plugin that gives them /sethome capabilities.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk

 

[xBlizzDevious]

Server Tools is a Forge mod that will do automated backups. It takes very little configuration and doesn't require MCPC.

You should be able to configure the restarts externally, either with a Cron job (linux) or a Windows service. Not sure of a minecraft mod that does auto restarts.

Your friends might appreciate a plugin that gives them /sethome capabilities.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk

Thanks for the quick reply. I've read a couple of threads and seen talks of BukkitForge and MCPC and have no idea what they are. I thought that since Ultimate, FTB has been running on a vanilla server wrapper that's just been modded to whatevery. Prior to that, I think Tekkit ran on Bukkit and I certainly used to use that. To be honest, when I first started using mods, I understood very well how everything worked but since I switched over to using modpacks, I have no idea what's going on or how anything works on the back end anymore. Makes my life a lot easier, but does mean that I don't know what I'm doing when I start screwing with things. Last time I really knew what I was doing with mods was probably back in the days of beta Minecraft. Haha. Anyways! What's MCPC and what does it do?

I'm running Windows on my "server" and it's not really in a situation where it could run anything else as I still use it for things that other OSes can't do. I've looked into Linux but it's just not suitable for me. A Windows service can run the server once, as far as I'm aware, but I'm not aware of it being able to restart the server itself - properly, at least.

Sethome is something very handy, but it's not really an issue for us as generally we share the same buildings and we get Mystcraft books going early on (I spawn in a Link Modifier for easiness). Having said that, I was looking at getting Essentials or the current equivalent of it.

 

[MrBrunty]

Thanks for the quick reply. I've read a couple of threads and seen talks of BukkitForge and MCPC and have no idea what they are. I thought that since Ultimate, FTB has been running on a vanilla server wrapper that's just been modded to whatevery. Prior to that, I think Tekkit ran on Bukkit and I certainly used to use that. To be honest, when I first started using mods, I understood very well how everything worked but since I switched over to using modpacks, I have no idea what's going on or how anything works on the back end anymore. Makes my life a lot easier, but does mean that I don't know what I'm doing when I start screwing with things. Last time I really knew what I was doing with mods was probably back in the days of beta Minecraft. Haha. Anyways! What's MCPC and what does it do?

I'm running Windows on my "server" and it's not really in a situation where it could run anything else as I still use it for things that other OSes can't do. I've looked into Linux but it's just not suitable for me. A Windows service can run the server once, as far as I'm aware, but I'm not aware of it being able to restart the server itself - properly, at least.

Sethome is something very handy, but it's not really an issue for us as generally we share the same buildings and we get Mystcraft books going early on (I spawn in a Link Modifier for easiness). Having said that, I was looking at getting Essentials or the current equivalent of it.

Mcpc+ is essentially a way of running both bukkit plugins and forge mods simultaneously, its extremely simple to install and can be done by downloading the latest 1.6.4 mcpc+ jar, renaming it 'server.jar' or whatever jar you use in your server and then putting it in your server files as opposed to the jar that comes with the 1.1.1 download. Run the server once and a new folder will appear named plugins

IMO, mcpc+ is the best way to go if you want plugins, its easy as hell, and although some will disagree, it rarely causes issues with small scale servers provided you keep the jar updated. In terms of plugins, get essentials, it has most of the helpful commands you will ever need, then get a permission plugin so you can give your friends access to those commands (Even if you've opped them as some plugins have commands that not even ops can use by default) Personally I would recommend PermissionsEX, i've used it for a long time with no issues, and find it really easy to use, having said that, I have heard group manager is a good easily configurable alternative. (so go where you want with that)

Next I would get something like world edit, or voxel sniper, or both! Basically world manipulation tools, world edit is the more mainstream and easy one whereas voxel sniper allows you to do a lot more. Personally I prefer world edit, but thats just because I've got more experience with it

I would also get world border - hear me out - I know if theres only a couple of you it won't really matter but you can set a small border around your house and then fill it in, will make chunk generation a lot faster when you're exploring and will prevent lag for others - personally I would do this, but it may seem too much unnecessary effort.

If you use them, then get coloured signs and sign rewrite (I think thats its name) can be helpful if you're like me and like to spam signs all over the place.

If you want auto restarts then get autosaveworld, it is predominantly an auto saver but it does include the ability to reboot from crashes automatically and to auto restart whenever you want it to (mcpc+ actually includes the feature to autosave and reboot from crashes but I'm not sure if they are enabled by default, it will be in either; spigot.yml, bukkit.yml or mcpc.yml, they all get generated when you start it with the jar) but the auto restarts are extremely easy to configure, if you haven't changed the start name then it will be as simple as enabling the restarts, entering the times you want then putting ./serverstart.bat (again unsure on what you start command will be written as) in the start script part.

And with that I have realised that I apparently spent a lot longer than expected writing a reply If you have any issues then feel free to ask me via my server or through here, sorry for any english errors as I kind of babbled on a bit and probably forgot millions of full stops hope it all works out for you ^_^

 

[xBlizzDevious]

Mcpc+ is essentially a way of running both bukkit plugins and forge mods simultaneously, its extremely simple to install and can be done by downloading the latest 1.6.4 mcpc+ jar, renaming it 'server.jar' or whatever jar you use in your server and then putting it in your server files as opposed to the jar that comes with the 1.1.1 download. Run the server once and a new folder will appear named plugins

IMO, mcpc+ is the best way to go if you want plugins, its easy as hell, and although some will disagree, it rarely causes issues with small scale servers provided you keep the jar updated. In terms of plugins, get essentials, it has most of the helpful commands you will ever need, then get a permission plugin so you can give your friends access to those commands (Even if you've opped them as some plugins have commands that not even ops can use by default) Personally I would recommend PermissionsEX, i've used it for a long time with no issues, and find it really easy to use, having said that, I have heard group manager is a good easily configurable alternative. (so go where you want with that)

Next I would get something like world edit, or voxel sniper, or both! Basically world manipulation tools, world edit is the more mainstream and easy one whereas voxel sniper allows you to do a lot more. Personally I prefer world edit, but thats just because I've got more experience with it

I would also get world border - hear me out - I know if theres only a couple of you it won't really matter but you can set a small border around your house and then fill it in, will make chunk generation a lot faster when you're exploring and will prevent lag for others - personally I would do this, but it may seem too much unnecessary effort.

If you use them, then get coloured signs and sign rewrite (I think thats its name) can be helpful if you're like me and like to spam signs all over the place.

If you want auto restarts then get autosaveworld, it is predominantly an auto saver but it does include the ability to reboot from crashes automatically and to auto restart whenever you want it to (mcpc+ actually includes the feature to autosave and reboot from crashes but I'm not sure if they are enabled by default, it will be in either; spigot.yml, bukkit.yml or mcpc.yml, they all get generated when you start it with the jar) but the auto restarts are extremely easy to configure, if you haven't changed the start name then it will be as simple as enabling the restarts, entering the times you want then putting ./serverstart.bat (again unsure on what you start command will be written as) in the start script part.

And with that I have realised that I apparently spent a lot longer than expected writing a reply If you have any issues then feel free to ask me via my server or through here, sorry for any english errors as I kind of babbled on a bit and probably forgot millions of full stops hope it all works out for you ^_^

First: I don't mind long and blabbery messages. As long as they make sense - which yours did - it's good as far as I care.

Second: you have no idea how much I've missed WorldEdit from back in the Canary days (Canary - for those unaware - is a server wrapper like Bukkit, but not so... "Buggit" style). Oh how much TNT I blew up back then. Oh, 170k; I forgot. Haha!

Third: all good suggestions - thanks - and it seems that everything I'm after exists!

Fourth: Really? No way to keep away from Buggit stuff? I don't like Bukkit...

Finally: I shall now screw around with things and most likely break things. To the backups folder!



PS: Thanks


EDIT: Forgot to ask (no surprise) what does the World Border plugin do. You explained how to set it up, but I have no idea what it does. Haha. (Also, our main house is in a void world, mainly for lag reasons. And I'm planning on making another to build an entire RotaryCraft area. Haha. That RotaryCraft mod is amazing, but it's rather good at causing lag).

EDIT 2: Uhhhmm.... I tried PermissionsEx and couldn't figure it out, so I had a look at GroupManager and thought I'd figured it out, but when I tried to spawn a chunk loader, it told me that I didn't have permissions. Any idea how to make it work (either plugin)?

 

[MrBrunty]

Sorry about that, it essentially puts a border to your world, and stops you from going too far out. Well, thats its primary use, but having set a border you can use a fill command so that it pregenerates all the chunks within that border, which basically reduces a lot of loading lag when exploring new areas. I can't speculate much with group manager, it may just require a couple of basic permissions to get started. But if you put this into your permissionsex config (permissions.yml) and delete the default group it will show when you open it the first time then it should get you started.

http://pastebin.com/aAZCm5uH

You will need to use your console and type /pex user <ign> group set <groupname> to put them into the group, everyone should get put in the member one automatically, but for you, you will need to put yourself in the 'owner' group to get access to all permissions for every mod/plugin. I would also do:
/pex group owner prefix &9 just to get rid of the owner tags as you are not running a public server (&9 is my favourite mc chat blue )

Oh, and also, you can avoid bukkit if you want to just use mods, but tbh my expertise in server side mods is zero as I've only ever used bukkit plugins with FTB through mcpc+ But from what i've heard, there isn't much variety or choice through forge mods so bukkit really is the easier way to go :/

hope that helps.

 

[xBlizzDevious]

Sorry about that, it essentially puts a border to your world, and stops you from going too far out. Well, thats its primary use, but having set a border you can use a fill command so that it pregenerates all the chunks within that border, which basically reduces a lot of loading lag when exploring new areas. I can't speculate much with group manager, it may just require a couple of basic permissions to get started. But if you put this into your permissionsex config (permissions.yml) and delete the default group it will show when you open it the first time then it should get you started.

http://pastebin.com/aAZCm5uH

You will need to use your console and type /pex user <ign> group set <groupname> to put them into the group, everyone should get put in the member one automatically, but for you, you will need to put yourself in the 'owner' group to get access to all permissions for every mod/plugin. I would also do:
/pex group owner prefix &9 just to get rid of the owner tags as you are not running a public server (&9 is my favourite mc chat blue )

Oh, and also, you can avoid bukkit if you want to just use mods, but tbh my expertise in server side mods is zero as I've only ever used bukkit plugins with FTB through mcpc+ But from what i've heard, there isn't much variety or choice through forge mods so bukkit really is the easier way to go :/

hope that helps.

Yay! Sorted, thanks. I'm still wanting to improve my performance a little and so I'm thinking of selling my server and buying a Haswell setup with a Xeon. That could be fun. Haha! Might just go with a 4670k/4770k though so I can overclock down the line.

 

[Connor Gavitt]

Yay! Sorted, thanks. I'm still wanting to improve my performance a little and so I'm thinking of selling my server and buying a Haswell setup with a Xeon. That could be fun. Haha! Might just go with a 4670k/4770k though so I can overclock down the line.

I can resell you a deduced server with up to 64Gb ram and a processor that can be overclocked, the 3930k is what I use overclocked to 4.32ghz and it runs like a boss, message me if you want one. The prices are less then a quarter of what intreppid does, I change less then 180 a month for this overclocked server.

 

[xBlizzDevious]

I can resell you a deduced server with up to 64Gb ram and a processor that can be overclocked, the 3930k is what I use overclocked to 4.32ghz and it runs like a boss, message me if you want one. The prices are less then a quarter of what intreppid does, I change less then 180 a month for this overclocked server.

"deduced server"? Also, I've got a 3930k, but my server runs an i7 950 (first gen i7 series) that is OCed a small amount (3.84GHz) to improve performance a small amount. But the difference on single threaded performance between my server's CPU and the Xeon 1240V2 is just under double. So I'm pretty eager to go for it. I've already got a possible buyer for the current machine. Back to the point about your servers, I can't stand over the net servers for a couple of reasons. One: my internet is too terrible to handle playing on one and two: the ping is a major factor for me. If I have to wait even a quarter of a second for a block to break, it annoys me.

 

[Connor Gavitt]

"deduced server"? Also, I've got a 3930k, but my server runs an i7 950 (first gen i7 series) that is OCed a small amount (3.84GHz) to improve performance a small amount. But the difference on single threaded performance between my server's CPU and the Xeon 1240V2 is just under double. So I'm pretty eager to go for it. I've already got a possible buyer for the current machine. Back to the point about your servers, I can't stand over the net servers for a couple of reasons. One: my internet is too terrible to handle playing on one and two: the ping is a major factor for me. If I have to wait even a quarter of a second for a block to break, it annoys me.

Well I do offer a very low latency network, from a datacenter in France and me being in Florida US it only takes me 75ms to connect.

 

[xBlizzDevious]

Well I do offer a very low latency network, from a datacenter in France and me being in Florida US it only takes me 75ms to connect.

Well as much as you are trying to sell your product, I'm afraid I'm not interested. It doesn't suit my needs. My server gets used as a normal computer when friends come over, so a server in France is useless to me.

 

[Connor Gavitt]

Well as much as you are trying to sell your product, I'm afraid I'm not interested. It doesn't suit my needs. My server gets used as a normal computer when friends come over, so a server in France is useless to me.

That's ok, this has gotten off topic much more then I expected I so be leaving this topic now.

 

[xBlizzDevious]

Sorry about that, it essentially puts a border to your world, and stops you from going too far out. Well, thats its primary use, but having set a border you can use a fill command so that it pregenerates all the chunks within that border, which basically reduces a lot of loading lag when exploring new areas. I can't speculate much with group manager, it may just require a couple of basic permissions to get started. But if you put this into your permissionsex config (permissions.yml) and delete the default group it will show when you open it the first time then it should get you started.

http://pastebin.com/aAZCm5uH

You will need to use your console and type /pex user <ign> group set <groupname> to put them into the group, everyone should get put in the member one automatically, but for you, you will need to put yourself in the 'owner' group to get access to all permissions for every mod/plugin. I would also do:
/pex group owner prefix &9 just to get rid of the owner tags as you are not running a public server (&9 is my favourite mc chat blue )

Oh, and also, you can avoid bukkit if you want to just use mods, but tbh my expertise in server side mods is zero as I've only ever used bukkit plugins with FTB through mcpc+ But from what i've heard, there isn't much variety or choice through forge mods so bukkit really is the easier way to go :/

hope that helps.

Hey, I've got permissions working - thanks for that pastebin - and I have got all of the other plugins I want (well, that I want right now) set up, but I can't seem to get the auto-restart or auto-backup to work. Autosaving works perfectly, however. Any ideas what I'll have done wrong? Also, I can't easily respond as we've got no internet at the moment and won't do for a couple of days.