Minecraft Logs – How To Use Minecraft Logs

INTRODUCTION TO MINECRAFT LOGS

Every turn in Minecraft offers a view of beauty and danger from the gorgeous windy plains covered in flowers to the cold floating End world protected by a dragon. While enjoying your time in Minecraft, nothing is more frustrating than running into issues with lag. Fortunately, if you host with Nitrado you can access your Minecraft logs providing useful insight into improving and resolving these issues.

While Minecraft logs are detailed, they can be difficult to read and understand due to their complexity. In this guide learn how to read Minecraft logs, find where they’re located, and how you can fix any issues found in those log files for both your Minecraft game and Minecraft game server!

HOW TO FIND MINECRAFT LOGS ON SERVERS

1. Head to your Minecraft server control panel.
2. On the left side, press “Log Files” under “INFORMATION”.
   
3. This will display your Minecraft log, including the latest.log and restart.log.
   
4. You can scroll through the log to read it, use the “Reload” option to refresh the latest log file, and press the “Download” button to download that log file for review and storing purposes.

FINDING MINECRAFT LOGS IN SINGLE-PLAYER

FINDING MINECRAFT LOGS ON WINDOWS PCS

1. On Windows, search “%appdata%” on your PC and press “Enter”.
2. Within your files, enter the folders “.minecraft” and “logs”.
3. Each file will be in the format GZ, requiring an archiving program such as 7Zip to open and view that log file.
   

VIEWING MINECRAFT LOGS ON MAC PCS

1. Press the keys “Command+Shift+G” to open the Finder’s Go To Folder command and then type in ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft.
2. Once in your Minecraft files, access the “logs” folder to find your logs.
3. Similarly to Windows PCs, Mac users can use a program such as 7Zip to open and read the different Minecraft logs.

READING MINECRAFT LOGS

When reading Minecraft log files, these files will begin from the top to the bottom, with the bottom portion of the log being the latest log information from your server. We’ll explore some of the different log messages you’ll see upon starting a Minecraft server.

MINECRAFT SERVER & GAME STARTING

[Server thread/INFO]: Starting minecraft server version 1.19.2
[Server thread/INFO]: Loading properties
[Server thread/INFO]: Starting Minecraft server on XX.XXX.X.XX:25565

When a Minecraft server initially starts, you’ll see messages similar to the ones above. The message “Starting minecraft server version” and “Loading properties” indicates your server is beginning to come online and is loading the files on your server.

ADDON FILES LOADING

[Server thread/INFO]: [Essentials] Loading Essentials v2.19.8
[Server thread/INFO]: [Essentials] Enabling Essentials v2.19.8

When loading addon files to a Minecraft server including plugins, mods, data packs, and resource packs, additional log messages will appear as these load into your server. In our above example, these are log messages from the plugin EssentialsX. These types of messages will often occur after the initial server startup and before, during, and after the Minecraft world generation and loading process.

MINECRAFT WORLD GENERATING

[Server thread/INFO]: Preparing start region for dimension minecraft:overworld
[Worker-Main-7/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 0%

World generation messages will appear each time your Minecraft server is started. These messages will indicate that your server is coming online and is loading the current worlds on your server.

PLAYERS JOINING & LEAVING

[User Authenticator #1/INFO]: UUID of player MCUSERNAME is MINECRAFTUUID
[Server thread/INFO]: MCUSERNAME joined the game
[Server thread/INFO]: MCUSERNAME issued server command: /fly
[Server thread/INFO]: MCUSERNAME lost connection: Disconnected
[Server thread/INFO]: MCUSERNAME left the game

Seeing these messages in your server logs and Live Server Console will show when players join your server and when those players leave. Watching these messages is great for monitoring who is currently playing on your server and the commands they’re using.

SERVER & GAME SHUTTING DOWN

[Server thread/INFO]: Stopping server
[Server thread/INFO]: [Essentials] Disabling Essentials v2.19.8-dev+1-0897ef7
[Server thread/INFO]: Saving players
[Server thread/INFO]: Saving worlds

During the server stopping or shutdown process, your server will provide messages indicating that the server is stopping, disabling your addons, and saving your world and player data.

COMMON MINECRAFT LOG ERRORS AND HOW TO FIX THEM

MINECRAFT FILE CORRUPTION

at com.google.gson.Gson.fromJson(Gson.java:902)
at net.minecraft.server.dedicated.DedicatedPlayerList.loadUserBanList
at com.google.gson.stream.JsonReader.syntaxError(JsonReader.java:1562)

When you experience errors similar to those above relating to JSON files and dedicated player lists, this can indicate a file issue with your Minecraft game or server. These types of errors can occur if a file was incorrectly edited or uploaded to your game or dedicated Minecraft server. Thankfully with the latest versions of Minecraft, servers and the Minecraft game will backup the files that are broken and create a new copy of that file meaning Minecraft automatically fixes the issue!

[Server thread/WARN]: Unable to read file banned-players.json, backing it up to {0}.backup and creating new copy.

MINECRAFT ADDON OUTDATED OR MISSING DEPENDENCY

[STDERR] [org.bukkit.craftbukkit.v1_19_R1.legacy.CraftLegacy] Initializing Legacy Material Support. Unless you have legacy plugins and/or data this is a bug!
[21:40:29 WARN]: Legacy plugin Tablist v1.3.2.9 does not specify an api-version.

Minecraft add-ons can experience issues if they’re outdated or missing a dependency that they rely on such as another plugin or mod. It’s important to always check the version of a plugin or mod before installing it, and if you experience issues check to see if that plugin is up-to-date and either update, remove or replace that addon.

[21:45:38 ERROR]: Could not load 'plugins/worldguard-bukkit-7.0.7-dist.jar' in folder 'plugins'
org.bukkit.plugin.UnknownDependencyException: Unknown/missing dependency plugins: [WorldEdit]. Please download and install these plugins to run 'WorldGuard'.

For plugin dependencies missing it is recommended that you check that addon’s main page and verify if all of the dependencies were installed. An addon’s website page will display what the addon does and if any other plugins or mods are required. You can then use this information to find and download that addon’s requirements, install them, and then restart to fix those issues.

OUTDATED OR CORRUPTED WORLD

[Server thread/ERROR]: Encountered an unexpected exception
at net.minecraft.server.v1_9_R2.NBTCompressedStreamTools.a(SourceFile:117)
at org.bukkit.craftbukkit.v1_9_R2.chunkio.ChunkIOProvider.callStage1
at net.minecraft.server.v1_9_R2.ChunkProviderServer.getChunkAt

If you’re noticing errors associated with your worlds as they’re loading this can often be due to a chunk issue or a rogue entity. Chunk and entity errors are often due to the world being from an older version of Minecraft, as specific chunks and blocks are not fully supported on the newer versions of Minecraft. You can follow the below steps to help resolve chunk and entity-based issues:

1. If changes were recently made to the server, try a backup restore by going to your “Restore Backup” area on your Minecraft server and restoring a backup from before the change had been made.
2. If a “Version Change” was performed to update your server, try going back to the previous version your Minecraft server was on and then restore your latest backup.

MONITOR YOUR SERVER WITH MINECRAFT LOGS

Explorations within Minecraft offer endless fun as you play together with others, improve your character, take on dangerous bosses, and build your dream creations! When enjoying Minecraft, experiencing errors can stop the fun and that’s why it’s great to be able to monitor your game and server using Minecraft logs. Begin monitoring your Minecraft server logs today to keep your server safer so that you and your friends can have a blast without interruptions!