Installing Paper Minecraft on Ubuntu Server 24.04: Issues I Ran Into & How I Fixed Them

I've been hosting game servers for years, but I recently decided to take a deeper dive into Linux server administration to strengthen my skills and prepare for IT roles professionally. This post documents my journey setting up a Paper Minecraft server on Ubuntu Server 24.04, including the challenges I ran into and how I solved them. My goal is to share practical troubleshooting tips while building a portfolio of practical Linux experience.

Along the way, I ran into a few unexpected issues. In this post, I'll share what went wrong and how I fixed it, so anyone trying this themselves can save time and frustration.

Step 1: Installing Java for Paper
I started by setting up Ubuntu Server 24.04 in a VM.
Initially, I installed Java 17, but when I tried to launch Paper, I got: UnsupportedClassVersionError

Fix: Installed Java 21 (the current supported version for Paper).

Lesson: Always check the Minecraft server's Java requirements before starting. Installing the wrong version can break your server.

Step 2: Dealing with the Keyboard Layout
On my VM, I ran into a weird problem: backslashes and some characters didn't work, which messed up my command-line usage.

Fix: Switched the VM keyboard layout to Swedish, matching my physical keyboard.

Tip: This is a common issue when working in virtual machines with non-US keyboards.

Step 3: Downloading the Paper Server JAR
At first, I tried using wget, but the jar kept getting corrupted during the download.

Fix: Switched to curl with -L -o paper.jar , which downloaded the file quickly and more reliably.

Tip: Some servers redirect URLs, which wget may not handle properly. curl -L automatically follows redirects for you.

Step 4: Networking & SSH
Using a NAT network adapter in the VM blocked my SSH connection.

Fix: Switched to a Bridged Adapter, which put the VM on the same network as my host machine, allowing SSH access.

Tip: Networking issues are common in virtual machines, bridging or port forwarding usually solves them.

Step 5: Running the Server
Once the above issues were resolved, I could finally run Paper using screen and Aikar’s JVM flags (as in my cheat-sheet on my first post).
Server started successfully, TPS stable, and logs clean.

Lessons learned from all of this

• VM settings matter: Keyboard layouts and networking can break things quickly.
• Always check Java version requirements: Paper will not run on unsupported versions.
• Know your download tools: curl is usually more reliable for redirected downloads.
• Document troubleshooting: Keeping notes makes future setups much easier.

I'm sharing this as part of my journey into Linux and server administration. If you're learning to run Minecraft servers on Ubuntu, I hope this post saves you some painful headaches!