In order to run a Minecraft server, we need Java 1.7 to be installed on the server. To install Java 1.7, run the following commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk

Now, we are going to download the Minecraft server via wget. If you don’t have wget installed, then you can install it via sudo apt-get install wget. Replace 1.10.2 with the current release of Minecraft.

wget https://s3.amazonaws.com/Minecraft.Download/versions/1.10.2/minecraft_server.1.10.2.jar
chmod +x minecraft_server.jar

The Minecraft install is complete. Accept the license agreement.

echo "eula=true" > eula.txt

You can now start your Minecraft server via the following command:

java -Xmx1024M -Xms1024M -jar minecraft_server.jar nogui

This command starts the Minecraft server with 1024MB RAM allocated. How to allocate more RAM to Minecraft server is easy. Simply change the -Xmx and -Xms attributes in the command.

In case you want the server to run in the background, you can install screen:

apt-get install screen

To start the Minecraft server in screen, open a screen instance, then run the Java command again.

screen
java -Xmx1024M -Xms1024M -jar minecraft_server.jar nogui

To exit out of the screen window, press CTRL + A, then d. If you want to open the window again, use the command screen -r.