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BlueMap

Installation

  1. General Prerequisites
  2. Where do i find…
    1. …the “config-files”?
    2. …the “webroot”?
    3. … the map-files?
  3. Installing BlueMap (basic setup)
    1. Prerequisites
    2. Steps
  4. Installing BlueMap with an SQL-Server
    1. Prerequisites
    2. Steps
  5. Using BlueMap on the CLI / standalone
    1. Prerequisites
    2. Steps
  6. Using BlueMap Docker image
    1. Prerequisites
    2. Volumes
    3. Steps
    4. Notes

General Prerequisites

To run bluemap you need:

  • Java 11 or newer
  • Minecraft Java-Edition

BlueMap only works with Java-Edition worlds, Bedrock-Edition worlds are not supported!

Where do i find…

…the “config-files”?

They are located in your server-root folder at ./plugins/BlueMap/ (Spigot/Paper) or ./config/bluemap/ (Forge/Fabric/Sponge) or directly next to the BlueMap.jar if you are using the CLI-Version of BlueMap.

…the “webroot”?

The webroot is the folder that contains all the files that will be hosted by the webserver and that can be accessed by the browser. By default, it is located in your server-root folder at ./bluemap/web/.

… the map-files?

The webapp expects the map-files inside the web-root at ./maps/. This is also the place where maps are stored by default.

Installing BlueMap (basic setup)

This is the basic setup for BlueMap. BlueMap will run as a plugin/mod on your server, render/update the maps as your world changes and host a small webserver to serve the map-files and the webapp where you can view the maps.

Prerequisites

  • A Spigot/Paper, Sponge, Fabric or Forge server
  • Any second port that you can use, besides the one that is used by the minecraft-server (Ask your hosting service if & how you can open a second port)

Steps

  • First you want to download the bluemap-jar. You can choose and download a version from here. Make sure it fits to the version of your server!
  • Put the downloaded jar in the plugins or mods-folder of your server and restart the server.
  • BlueMap will now generate the default config-files and pre-configure one map for each world it finds on your server.
  • Open the core.conf config-file, read through the comments and agree to downloading some extra resources from Mojang by changing accept-download to true.
  • Open the webserver.conf config-file and change the port to the second port that you got from your hosting-provider to use.
  • Now you can go through the rest of the config-files and change the settings to your liking. (More info for configuring BlueMap can be found here)
  • After you have edited the configs, use the command /bluemap reload on your server or restart the server.

If everything is set up correctly, BlueMap should start to render your maps. Check the console/logs for any errors or warnings.

You can use /bluemap to see the progress and go to http://<your-server-ip>:<port>/ to view the maps.

Installing BlueMap with an SQL-Server

This setup extends the basic setup by using an SQL-Server to store your maps.

Prerequisites

  • All the prerequisites from the basic setup
  • An SQL-Server that can be accessed from your server

Steps

  • Use the basic setup above to install BlueMap like normal
  • In your config-files, open the storages/sql.conf-file and configure the connection to your SQL-Server. (See this page for more info about this config-file)
  • Now open each of your map-config-files and set storage to "sql".
  • Reload BlueMap with /bluemap reload.
  • Now that your maps are stored on your database, you should delete the old map data from your filesystem, to prevent it from interfering.
    You can do this by running the command /bluemap storages file delete <map> for each of the maps you have just switched to SQL. Or just manually delete the old map-data folder on your filesystem, which usually is at ./bluemap/web/maps.

If everything is set up correctly, BlueMap should start to render your maps and store them on the SQL-Server. Check the console/logs for any errors or warnings.

Using BlueMap on the CLI / standalone

You can use BlueMap as a standalone app on the CLI. This is useful if you want to render a map of a minecraft-world, but don’t want to set up an entire minecraft-server.

Prerequisites

  • A minecraft-world that you want to render
  • Any port that you can use to host the webserver on (Ask your hosting service if & how you can open a port)

Steps

  • First you want to download the bluemap-jar. You can choose and download a version from here. Make sure it targets CLI and is compatible with the minecraft-version of the world you want to render.
  • Choose/create a directory where you want BlueMap to run and generate its config-files and store your downloaded jar in this folder.
  • Open the CLI and change your cwd to the folder containing your jar. (usually using the command cd <path-to-your-folder>)
  • Run java -jar BlueMap-cli.jar so BlueMap generates the configuration-files next to the jar in your cwd.
  • Open the core.conf config-file, read through the comments and agree to downloading some extra resources from Mojang by changing accept-download to true.
  • Set up your map-configs for the world(s) you want to render.
  • Now you can go through the rest of the config-files and change the settings to your liking. (More info for configuring BlueMap can be found here)
  • After you have edited the configs run java -jar BlueMap-cli.jar -r to start the render.
  • With java -jar BlueMap-cli.jar -w you can also start the builtin web-server to be able to view your map. Or you can read this to learn how to setup NGINX or Apache for BlueMap.

Using BlueMap Docker image

You can use BlueMap CLI in a Docker container. This is perfect for container loving sysadmins. The image is available on GitHub container registry as ghcr.io/bluemap-minecraft/bluemap. For latest and greatest the latest tag is the latest release (which can be a pre-release) and master the latest git commit. You can also choose a latest minor of a major with tags such as v3 or a specific version tag such as v3.14. For production usage you should always pin the version to the minor version as even the latest minor might still be a pre-release. You can see the list of available Docker tags on GitHub. The documentation will now on substitute the version with <version>.

Prerequisites

  • A minecraft-world that you want to render
  • Working Docker installation
  • Reading the CLI instructions

Volumes

Path Purpose
/app/config Default config folder
/app/web Default web application
/app/web/maps Default render data (included in web mount)
/app/data Other persistant data
/app/world Your world (you can also mount others)

You can also change these paths to be whatever you want in the configs. To change the used config folder use the -c /path/to/config flag.

Steps

  • Somehow obtain the configuration folder. Easiest is to run docker run --rm -it -v "$(pwd)/config:/app/config" ghcr.io/bluemap-minecraft/bluemap:<version>. Which creates a config folder in your current working directory with the default configs.
  • Configure the application however you like.
  • Start a container to render and host a webserver. 
    docker run --rm -it \
  --name bluemap \
  -p 8100:8100 \
  -v "$(pwd)/config:/app/config" \
  -v "$(pwd)/world:/app/world" \
  -v "$(pwd)/data:/app/data" \
  -v "$(pwd)/web:/app/web" \
  ghcr.io/bluemap-minecraft/bluemap:<version> \
  -r -u -w

    Change the $(pwd)/world to an actual path to your world.
    The final two flags -r is for rendering, -u enables auto-updating the map, -w is for the webserver.
    See CLI usage and --help for more.
    If you changed the default paths in the config to something else, make sure to account for that in the volume mounts.
    If you want it running on the background remove the --rm -it and replace with -d --restart always.

Here’s a Docker Compose example for running in the background. Just start with docker compose up -d.

version: '3'

services:
  bluemap:
    image: ghcr.io/bluemap-minecraft/bluemap:<version>
    restart: always
    command: -r -u -w
    ports:
      - '8100:8100'
    volumes:
      - './config:/app/config'
      - './world:/app/world'
      - './world_nether:/world_nether'
      - './world_the_end:/world_the_end'
      - './data:/app/data'
      - './web:/app/web'

Notes

Relative paths in the config are relative to the /app folder. If you find this confusing, use absolute paths to your mounts.

If you want you can precreate the volume folders with specific user ownership and then start BlueMap as a non root user using the Docker --user uid:gid flag or compose user field.

To change the webserver’s port or ip binding, you don’t need to change BlueMap’s config. Instead just change where Docker publishes the port by chaging the -p 8100:8100 flag.

To change Java flags, just overwrite the entire default java -jar cli.jar entrypoint.