fredhq

As soon as I wrote about how to mod your Minecraft server, Mojang lovingly released a new version of the client which no longer worked with the server I had just wrote about. We shouldn’t complain, though. Updates are a good thing.

So how do you get from the old version (v1.2 of the client, v134 of the modded server in this case) to the new version (v1.3 of the client, v135 of the modded server)?

Grab the New Files

Obviously the files you have now are old and disgusting. It’s time to get some new shiny ones. Head back to the Minecraft forums and grab the newest release of pre-compiled files. (Yes, we’re going pre-compiled again. If you don’t want to do that, you probably know enough not to need this.)

From what I’ve seen, you should bookmark this page. The first post keeps updating with the newest releases to make it easier.

Hello? Hi, Is Your [Server] Running?

Boot your friends off the server for now and shut it down. Make a back up of your current hMod folder. If you have problems updating, you’re going to want to revert. (Believe me, your users will be really angry if you lose all of their hard work.)

Move Your Download

Let’s say that I have my folders set up like this:

To make this move easier, rename your current server folder to hMod-old and place your newest hMod folder next to it, like so:

Remember, we renamed the old folder and then we moved in the new one. If you were to start the server for your current world, it would be the one in hMod-old. (Don’t start it up, just saying, if you were going to, that’s where it would happen.)

This is where I think I get a little unorthodox. It’s a little bit more work than what I saw people were doing on the forums, but you know what? I had a flawless upgrade whereas others are complaining about missing files.

Start Your New Server

Fire up your command line and navigate into your new hMod folder. Run the command that starts the server for your platform. For me, it looks a little something like this:

You will see a bunch of text fly by recognizing that you’re missing some text files. That’s fine, it’s going to make them for you. Let it get all the way through to where the server is running.

Now stop your server. We did this just to get all of the files in the right spots.

Update Files With Your World

Now that your new server has run once and it’s all set with all of the files it thinks it needs, we’re going to replace some of them with our current world files. The new server folder has the same structure as the old one (for the most part, more on where they differ in a minute). Open both your new hMod folder and your old hMod-old folder in separate windows. It’s time to drag and drop.

This is going to be a two-step process.

Step 1: Move Over Generic Files

Files you’ll want to move over:

• banned-ips.txt
• banned-players.txt
• groups.txt
• logs/
• plugins/
• users.txt
• version.txt
• white-list.txt
• whitelist.txt
• world/

Additionally, any plugin folders that you’ve previously installed should be moved over as well. Keep them in the same place as they were on the old server.

Step 2: Your Server Properties

You’ll want to do a diff between your old server.properties file (that has all of your settings) and the new one (which is a fresh install). I found that v135 had one line that v134 didn’t have, so it’s probably worth merging these files. Once you’re happy with this file, move it to your new server folder as server.properties.

And that’s it, you should be good to go. Make sure your command line is in your new hMod folder and start up your server.

If you did everything right, things should start up without a problem.

But They Changed the File Structure of My World Folder

Yeah, you looked in there, eh? With v1.3 of Minecraft comes a new way to store world files. Have no fear! Your world will be converted automatically the next time you run your server. You’ll see it in the text as it’s starting up. It took a couple of minutes for my world to convert, but for the size of the area we’re playing in I thought it was surprisingly fast.

Oh, and finally, don’t forget to tell your friends that the server is back up and that they’ll want to update their clients to v1.3 if they haven’t already.