docker-minecraft-server/docs/misc/troubleshooting.md

To troubleshoot the container initialization, such as when server files are pre-downloaded, set the environment variable DEBUG to true. The container logs will include much more output, and it is highly recommended including that output when reporting any issues.

To troubleshoot just the command-line used to start the Minecraft server, set the environment variable DEBUG_EXEC to true.

To troubleshoot any issues with memory allocation reported by the JVM, set the environment variable DEBUG_MEMORY to true.

If you are experiencing any issues with the "Changing ownership of /data" step, that can be disabled by setting SKIP_CHOWN_DATA to true.

To confirm the image version that has been pulled, use the following command, replacing itzg/minecraft-server as needed for specific image tags:

Image labels

docker image inspect itzg/minecraft-server -f "{{json .Config.Labels}}"

such as

{
  "org.opencontainers.image.authors": "... <...@gmail.com>",
  "org.opencontainers.image.created": "2025-04-03T02:15:51.405Z",
  "org.opencontainers.image.description": "Docker image that provides a Minecraft Server for Java Edition that automatically downloads selected version at startup",
  "org.opencontainers.image.licenses": "Apache-2.0",
  "org.opencontainers.image.ref.name": "ubuntu",
  "org.opencontainers.image.revision": "d6897a649ecbc16b5fb2e1500e24b64ef80270a0",
  "org.opencontainers.image.source": "https://github.com/itzg/docker-minecraft-server",
  "org.opencontainers.image.title": "docker-minecraft-server",
  "org.opencontainers.image.url": "https://github.com/itzg/docker-minecraft-server",
  "org.opencontainers.image.version": "java21"
}

The labels that are most interesting are:

• org.opencontainers.image.created : the date/time the image was built
• org.opencontainers.image.revision : which maps to https://github.com/itzg/docker-minecraft-server/commit/REVISION
• org.opencontainers.image.version : image tag and variant as described in this page