Installing Paper Minecraft on Ubuntu Server 24.04: Issues I Ran Into & How I Fixed Them

I've been hosting game servers for years, but I recently decided to take a deeper dive into Linux server administration to strengthen my skills and prepare for IT roles professionally. This post documents my journey setting up a Paper Minecraft server on a Ubuntu Server 24.04, including the challenges I ran into and how I solved them. My goal is to share practical troubleshooting tips while building a portfolio of practical Linux experience. Along the way, I ran into a few unexpected issues. In this post, I'll share what went wrong and how I fixed it, so anyone trying this themselves can save time and frustration. Step 1: Installing Java for Paper
I started by setting up Ubuntu Server 24.04 in a VM.
Initially, I installed Java 17, but when I tried to launch Paper, I got: UnsupportedClassVersionError Fix: Installed Java 21 (the current supported version for Paper). Lesson: Always check the Minecraft server's Java requirements before starting. Installing the wrong version can break your server. Step 2: Dealing with the Keyboard Layout
On my VM, I ran into a weird problem: backslashes and some characters didn't work, which messed up my command-line usage. Fix: Switched the VM keyboard layout to Swedish, matching my physical keyboard. Tip: This is a common issue when working in virtual machines with non-US keyboards. Step 3: Downloading the Paper Server JAR
At first, I tried using wget, but the jar kept getting corrupted during the download. Fix: Switched to curl with -L -o paper.jar , which downloaded the file quickly and more reliably. Tip: Some servers redirect URLs, which wget may not handle properly. curl -L automatically follows redirects for you. Step 4: Networking & SSH
Using a NAT network adapter in the VM blocked my SSH connection. Fix: Switched to a Bridged Adapter, which put the VM on the same network as my host machine, allowing SSH access. Tip: Networking issues are common in virtual machines, bridging or port forwarding usually solves them. Step 5: Running the Server
Once the above issues were resolved, I could finally run Paper using screen and Aikar’s JVM flags (as in my cheat-sheet on my first post).
Server started successfully, TPS stable, and logs clean. Lessons learned from all of this I'm sharing this as part of my journey into Linux and server administration. If you're learning to run Minecraft servers on Ubuntu, I hope this post saves you some painful headaches! Templates let you quickly answer FAQs or store snippets for re-use. Are you sure you want to hide this comment? It will become hidden in your post, but will still be visible via the comment's permalink. Hide child comments as well For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse - VM settings matter: Keyboard layouts and networking can break things quickly.
- Always check Java version requirements: Paper will not run on unsupported versions.
- Know your download tools: curl is usually more reliable for redirected downloads.
- Document troubleshooting: Keeping notes makes future setups much easier.