Frequently Asked Questions

This is a list of questions that come up a lot. We hope to be able to provide answers to these oft-asked questions here. If you feel that we're missing a question, you can submit an issue.

If you've gone through this page and still can't find the answer to your question, you may create a new ticket with your problem, or join us on Discord or IRC and talk to someone directly. If you decide to do the latter, please remember that people are busy and may take some time to respond.

Table of contents

• Legal stuff
  1. If I use Glowstone, do I still have to follow the EULA?
• Errors
  1. Failed to bind to address. Maybe it is already in use?
  2. Unsupported major.minor version
  3. java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: net.minecraft.server or org.bukkit.craftbukkit
• Bugs & features
  1. [Insert feature here] doesn't work!
  2. Frequently asked features

Legal stuff

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers, we're programmers. You should use the information pertaining to this section as a guideline, rather than a basis for your legal arguments in court.

If I use Glowstone, do I still have to follow the EULA?

Yes you still have to follow it!

Glowstone is a Minecraft server - that is to say, it implements the Minecraft protocol, is designed to work with Minecraft clients, and allows users to play Minecraft with other users. Anyone that plays Minecraft in any capacity or runs a service that works with Minecraft players is required to follow the Minecraft EULA. See Blizzard v bnetd.

If you feel that this is incorrect, we suggest that you seek professional legal counsel before inadvertently breaking the EULA.

Errors

Failed to bind to address. Maybe it is already in use?

22:24:15 [SEVERE] Error during server startup.
java.lang.RuntimeException: Failed to bind to address. Maybe it is already in use?
        at net.glowstone.GlowServer.bind(GlowServer.java:438)
        at net.glowstone.GlowServer.main(GlowServer.java:93)

This error means that you've already got a server running on the port that you've configured. When starting the server, please make sure you do so by following the methods in the installation instructions, instead of double-clicking the JAR. If you do double-click the JAR, the server will start up, but you won't have any console, so you'll have to kill it using the task manager or whatever process management tools are relevant to your system.

• If you're converting from Bukkit, make sure you've stopped the old Bukkit server, if you plan to use the same port.
• Make sure you're not running more than one copy of Glowstone on the same port.
• Check that you have no extra Java processes running. If you're on Windows, use the Task Manager. You might not want to kill some of them, such as the minecraft client.
• If this still isn't working, please check whether you have an ip set in the server section of your config/glowstone.yml file.
  • If you do, please consider that most people will not need this entry - it's only useful for people running large servers with multiple network cards. In the majority of cases, you can simply remove this line from your file.
  • If you're convinced that you need it, it should contain only an IP address - usually of the form a.b.c.d, from 0.0.0.0 up to 255.255.255.255 for IPv4.

Unsupported major.minor version

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: net/glowstone/GlowServer : Unsupported major.minor version 52.0

This error means that you're running a Java version older than Java 8, and you'll need to update. On Windows and Linux, this should be fairly self-explanatory, but macOS users may find that they've already upgraded Java. If you use macOS, then you should follow this excellent guide.

java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: net.minecraft.server or org.bukkit.craftbukkit

17:25:12 [SEVERE] Could not load 'plugins/MassiveCore.jar' in folder 'plugins'
org.bukkit.plugin.InvalidPluginException: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: net/minecraft/server/v1_7_R4/PlayerInventory

This error is caused by plugins whose developers refused or were unable to use pure Bukkit classes when writing their plugins, and instead used CraftBukkit or internal Minecraft classes to achieve the functionality they needed.

These plugins are often called "impure" plugins, and aren't technically Bukkit plugins at all. They will not work with Glowstone, unless Linkstone supports them. You will have to ask the developer of the plugin to add Glowstone support, or fix the plugin yourself, if you're able to.

Plugins that rely on ProtocolLib will also have the same issue, as it uses internal Minecraft classes.

You can find more information on the supported plugins at Plugin Compatibility.

Bugs & features

[Insert feature here] doesn't work!

Glowstone is a completely custom server software - that means that it does not use any of the Minecraft code. CraftBukkit (commonly known as Bukkit) heavily used internal Minecraft code for a lot of the things that it does.

As Glowstone doesn't, and can't, use the relevant Minecraft code for anything it implements, all of the features you'd expect from a Minecraft server must be rewritten from scratch.

As a result, Glowstone development is a little slow for some people's tastes, and leaves many new users somewhat confused. While we are working to be a complete Minecraft server replacement, these things take time, and so we encourage you to check out Current Features.

Frequently asked features

Some features are frequently requested to us, and some will likely never be added officially.

Support for older versions

We have taken the decision not to support older versions on Minecraft. We will always try to update to the latest Minecraft version once the Bukkit API is updated. However, you may be able to achieve this by using third-party tools and plugins like BungeeCord. We have also worked with ProtocolSupport's team to make it possible to host older Minecraft versions on the latest version of Glowstone.

Support for Sponge plugins

In the past, we have worked with Sponge's team to support the Sponge API on Glowstone. Unfortunately, we have dropped this objective and we will likely never officially support Sponge plugins on our platform. More details on this topic can be found here.

Support for Minecraft Pocket Edition

At this time, we simply do not have the time and resources to work on a Pocket Edition port for Glowstone, and we would rather focus our work on the PC version. Some third-party projects (like ProtocolSupport) are currently working on this kind of support on Bukkit platforms.

Piston functionality

Pistons are some of the most technical and complex blocks in Minecraft, and figuring out a way to replicate vanilla behavior is a difficult task. For the time being, we have decided to wait for the release of version 1.13 before pushing an implementation for pistons.