Crafty

Phase 11

Prerequisite: FileBrowser

This page is optional, but it is a common reason people start self-hosting in the first place.

Crafty Controller gives you a web UI for managing Minecraft servers, backups and configuration without doing everything manually over SSH.

If you have no interest in Minecraft, skip this page and move on.

Why Run It This Way?

Because Minecraft servers are one of the easier ways to learn the tradeoffs of self-hosting:

CPU and RAM allocation matter
backups matter
modpacks complicate things
public exposure changes the risk profile immediately

Crafty helps by giving you a cleaner management layer than “just throw a Java command in a screen session”.

Prepare Directories

mkdir -p ~/docker/appdata/crafty/{backups,logs,servers,config,import}
mkdir -p ~/docker/compose/minecraft

Create the Compose File

Create ~/docker/compose/minecraft/crafty.compose.yml:

services:
  crafty:
    image: registry.gitlab.com/crafty-controller/crafty-4:latest
    container_name: crafty
    environment:
      - TZ=America/New_York
    ports:
      - "8443:8443"
      - "25565:25565"
      - "25565:25565/udp"
    volumes:
      - /home/<your-user>/docker/appdata/crafty/backups:/crafty/backups
      - /home/<your-user>/docker/appdata/crafty/logs:/crafty/logs
      - /home/<your-user>/docker/appdata/crafty/servers:/crafty/servers
      - /home/<your-user>/docker/appdata/crafty/config:/crafty/app/config
      - /home/<your-user>/docker/appdata/crafty/import:/crafty/import
    restart: unless-stopped

Again, replace /home/<your-user> with your actual home directory path.

Start Crafty

docker compose -f ~/docker/compose/minecraft/crafty.compose.yml up -d

Then open:

https://<nixos-ip>:8443

Because Crafty uses a self-signed certificate by default, your browser will likely warn you. That is expected on first setup.

Resource Planning

Minecraft can consume a surprising amount of RAM and CPU depending on:

player count
world size
view distance
plugins/mods

If the server performs poorly:

lower view distance
allocate more RAM to the Minecraft instance itself
avoid oversubscribing your VM if several other services are busy

If this box is primarily for storage and media, be realistic about how much game-server load you want to mix into it.

Public Access vs Private Access

If only you or a small group of trusted friends need access, the safest option is:

everyone joins via Tailscale

That avoids exposing the game server directly to the public internet.

If you do want normal public internet access, you will need to forward the appropriate router port(s) to the NixOS VM.

For vanilla Java edition, that is commonly:

TCP 25565

But before doing that, understand the tradeoff:

the moment you expose a game server publicly, it becomes part of your attack surface

That is not automatically a deal-breaker. It just means you should do it intentionally.

Backups Matter Here

Minecraft worlds are one of those things people assume they can “just recreate” right up until they lose months of work.

At a minimum:

keep Crafty backups enabled
store backups somewhere other than only the live container path
consider copying important worlds to your NAS backup area

We will come back to broader backup strategy later.

Next Steps

Next, we will set up a basic web server and reverse proxy foundation so your container stack can be presented more cleanly.

Proceed to NGINX.

Last updated: March 2026

← FileBrowser NGINX →