How to run a Blockland server in Linux

1. Introduction

So you want to host your own Blockland server more than likely on a VPS. A lot of people already do such a thing, and you probably can't even tell when playing on their servers.
It can be a bit of a hassle if you make it one, but it's actually pretty straightforward if you can read.

STEAM USERS: This guide will not work for you, you need to have a standard Blockland key to host with.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE NOTE THIS IS A **WORK IN PROGRESS**. The Linux distro you want to use may not be listed as a choice for this guide. I'm either working on a guide for it already if you've mentioned to me (TheBlackParrot) to add one, or not if you haven't. I may not add one depending on the distro (like older distro versions)

1.1. VPS Providers

The first question that probably pops into your head is "what exactly is a VPS?". It's essentially a virtual computer/server in the cloud, in general-public-easy-to-understand terms. It's not using physical hardware, but instead virtual hardware.
There are VPS providers upon VPS providers out there, feel free to choose any one you can find.

1.1.1. List of (recommended) VPS providers

• NFOservers
• DigitalOcean
• Linode
• OVH
• 1&1

1.1.2. VPS Specification Requirements

Blockland servers do require a decent amount of power to run compared to your average cloud-hosted application. It is a game server, after all.

To run a Blockland server at a decent speed, your VPS should have at least these:

• 2GB RAM
• 1 CPU core
• 10GB HDD space (SSD doesn't exactly matter here)

You can use virtual memory/swap if need be if you want to drop below 2GB of RAM, but your performance may take a hit during peak times (we'll set this up later in the guide).

Do not choose any kind of managed hosting. This is not what you want, you want "full root access"; if the provider you chose doesn't mention such a thing, it's assumed you will have "full root access".

If you have no idea on what Linux distribution to use, choose Ubuntu 16.04 if it's available, Ubuntu 14.04 otherwise.

Since Blockland is a game where players tend to use Denial of Service attacks against one another, some services may threaten to cancel your service if these attacks persist. (As far as I know) NFO will not threaten you about it, considering they primarily host game servers and are able to deal with these attacks with ease.