Backup and Restore

The default MCIWB Minecraft server provides a backup and restore facility described below.

If you are an advanced Minecraft user running your own server instead of the default provided by MCIWB then you will need some extra config to make backups work. Jump to Backups of your own custom server to see how to do this.

Backups of mciwb-server

Backups provide a way to save our world to a file when we are happy with it. Then we are protected from loosing our work if we make a programming error. When things go wrong we can just restore back to a previous version of the world.

To backup the world type this at the Python Prompt:

world.backup()

This will create a backup with a name that is the current date and time. You can also specify a name if you want. Let’s do that now, naming the backup after the flat area that we made in Try out Some Action Signs:

world.backup('flat-area-backup')

It is better not to use spaces in backup names so I used dash to separate the words.

You can also make a backup from the bash prompt, without the Python Prompt:

mciwb backup --backup-name my-second-backup

Leave out --backup-name to name the backup with the current date and time. If the server is running, mciwb backup connects to it over RCON, tells it to save the whole world to disk (save-all flush) and pauses saving until the backup is complete, so the backup is consistent. If the server is not running, the world folder is simply copied.

mciwb backup looks for the server on port 20100 with the password default_pass, the defaults of mciwb start. If you started your server with a different --port or password, give the same options to mciwb backup:

mciwb backup --port 20101 --password-file ~/.mciwb-password

See The RCON password for the ways to give the password.

If the password is wrong, mciwb backup warns you and copies the world without asking the server to save it first. Use --folder and --backup-folder if your server or backups are not in the default folders.

Now lets do a restore. You can first have your player dig a hole in our flat area, this is to make a change that we don’t want to keep. Then exit the Python Prompt using ‘Ctrl+D’. Now we are back at the bash prompt and we can look in the backups folder to see our list of backups e.g

This command:

ls $HOME/mciwb-backups

Shows my backup files like this:

22-07-13.06.26.01.zip  flat-area-backup.zip  my-second-backup.zip

Your backups are stored in a folder called $HOME/mciwb-backups and ls is a terminal command that lists the contents of that folder.

Note that the backup files all end in .zip. One of them is dated but you also see the flat-area-backup.zip and my-second-backup.zip files that we named explicitly.

Now you can restore from backup with the following command:

mciwb restore flat-area-backup

The output should look something like this:

INFO:   Stopping Minecraft Server mciwb-server ...
INFO:   Restored /home/giles/mciwb-server/world from /home/giles/mciwb-backups/flat-area-backup.zip
INFO:   Launching existing Minecraft server in /home/giles/mciwb-server
INFO:   Launching Minecraft Server 'mciwb-server' on port 20101 ...
INFO:   waiting for server to come online ...
INFO:   Server mciwb-server is online on port 20101

The mciwb restore command can be given the name of the backup to restore or if you specify no name it will restore the most recent backup.

When the server restarts you can reconnect your client. You should see that the hole you dug has disappeared.

Note that the bash terminal has a history of commands. So to reconnect to your client you just need to hit up arrow a couple of times until you see the command that you typed earlier:

mciwb shell --player <player_name>

and then hit enter. This saves some typing. You’ll find that most command line tools have recall and editing of previous commands, including iPython. This is one of the reasons that a command line interface is a good thing!