Minecraft

Windows Operating System

My tips for running Minecraft on Windows machines.

Update video driver
Update Java software at Java website
Allocate more memory only if you get "out of memory errors"

Allocate More Memory to Minecraft

Thought I'd share my success at memory allocation changes with those who are interested.

Note: I only changed my memory allocations on my machine due to in-game memory crashes every 90 to 120 seconds when exploring outside. Once I allocated 768m I haven't had a memory crash. This memory allocation started happening to my machine since 1.7 beta.

I was trying various configurations to allocate memory but my command window would open up then immediately close or Java Virtual Machine (JVM) would not launch, etc.

I have Win7 Ultimate 64-bit, 12 GB RAM, with current version of Java installed.

I created a batch file & updated my PATH variable with directory of current Java version.

Batch file contains (use your own c:\path2minecraft.exe here):

javaw -Xms768m -jar "c:\minecraft\Minecraft.exe"

Added this to PATH (don't forget the semi-colon to separate this path from previous one):

;C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre7\bin

Add to PATH steps: For Win7 Ultimate I right click Computer > Properties > Advanced System Settings > Advanced Tab > Environmental Variables > System Variables > highlight PATH then click EDIT. Add semi-colon then PATH to current version of Java then press Okay.

Side Note: The same machine runs minecraft flawless in Fedora Core 15 & 16 without memory modifications. Only the lack of Ventrilo support on Linux causes me to use Windows to run minecraft.

I've read about other people starting minecraft.exe with -Xmx parameter but I could not get various options to work, even though I have 12 GB RAM.

Fedora Core Linux Operating System

My tips for running Minecraft on Fedora Core 14, 15 & 16 systems.

Update video driver
- I use NVidia video cards. See my Linux NVidia driver installation page
Update Java software at Java website
- Launch Java from command line by pointing to current version of Java (or update your PATH variable)
- Example [client start]: /usr/java/latest/bin/java -jar minecraft.jar
- Example [server start]: /usr/java/latest/bin/java -Xmx1024M -Xms1024M -jar minecraft_server.jar nogui

Note: Above commands assume you are in same directory as minecraft .jar files, otherwise, specify path to .jar files

Ubuntu Operating System

If you launch minecraft client and see an error message with ".minecraft/bin/natives/liblwjgl.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32 (Possible cause: architecture word width mismatch)" then follow these steps:

Install Lightweight Java Game Library

Go to http://lwjgl.org/download.php
Click the link to download the newest stable release
Download lwjgl-x.x.x.zip (lwjgl-2.8.4.zip was latested on 8-21-2012)
In your home directory Ctrl + H to show hidden files
Go to .minecraft/bin directory and copy matching .jar files from the jar folder in the lwjgl directory. I found these three files:
1. jinput.jar
2. lwjgl.jar
3. lwjgl_util.jar
Go to .minecraft/bin/native directory and copy matching .so files from the native/linux folder in the lwjgl directory
Launch minecraft client

Linux Mint 14

MATE Desktop

Cinnamon Desktop

Setup current Oracle Java 64-bit (Java version 7 update 9 as of this writing):

Download latest version of Linux x64
Create directory you want to install Java. As root mkdir /usr/java/
Change to directory cd /usr/java
Move the jre-7u9-linux-64.tar.gz file to the /usr/java directory.
Uncompress and unpack the tarball to install Java. tar zxvf jre-7u9-linux-x64.tar.gz
- The Java files are installed in a directory called /usr/java/jre1.7.0_09/
Delete .tar.gz file rm /usr/java/jre-7u9-linux-64.tar.gz

Setup minecraft server:

Create minecraft directory. As root mkdir /minecraft
Change ownership to user. As root chown username:username /minecraft
Swith to username then download minecraft_server.jar to /minecraft directory
Launch minecraft server using Oracle's 64-bit Java: /usr/java/jre1.7.0_09/bin/java -Xmx1024m -Xms1024M -jar minecraft_server.jar nogui
Type /help at Minecraft prompt to get a list of server commands.
I stop server here and customize the server.properties folder to what you want. Then restart server.

Using the minecraft_server.jar in nogui mode does not require any changes to your video card drivers

Example of successful start:

/minecraft $ /usr/java/jre1.7.0_09/bin/java -Xmx1024m -Xms1024M -jar minecraft_server.jar nogui
208 recipes
27 achievements
2012-12-01 13:16:34 [INFO] Starting minecraft server version 1.4.5
2012-12-01 13:16:34 [INFO] Loading properties
2012-12-01 13:16:34 [INFO] Default game type: SURVIVAL
2012-12-01 13:16:34 [INFO] Generating keypair
2012-12-01 13:16:35 [INFO] Starting Minecraft server on *:25565
2012-12-01 13:16:35 [INFO] Preparing level "hillville"
2012-12-01 13:16:35 [INFO] Preparing start region for level 0
2012-12-01 13:16:36 [INFO] Preparing spawn area: 54%
2012-12-01 13:16:36 [INFO] Done (1.499s)! For help, type "help" or "?"

Mods

Tale of Kingdoms I'm researching

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