Gaming Azure

Crafty Controller on Ubuntu 24.04 on Azure User Guide

| Product: Crafty Controller on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on Azure

Overview

Crafty Controller is an open source, self hosted control panel for creating, running and administering Minecraft and other game servers from your browser. Create, start, stop and restart servers, watch a live console and send commands, edit configuration and files, schedule automated tasks and backups, set per server CPU and memory limits, and give your team role based access, all without touching the command line.

The cloudimg image runs Crafty Controller from the vendor's official container (crafty-controller/crafty-4, pinned by digest), published only on loopback 127.0.0.1:8443, and fronts it with nginx on port 443 over TLS. nginx is WebSocket aware, so the live console and status channels work through the proxy, and it is ready for your own certificate. The panel's embedded SQLite datastore lives in Docker volumes captured into the image.

Secure by default: Crafty generates a fresh, random administrator password uniquely on the first boot of every instance. It is never baked into the image, and cloudimg writes it to a root only file, /root/crafty-credentials.txt, for you to retrieve. A crafty-firstboot.service oneshot generates a per VM TLS certificate, starts the stack, captures that per VM admin password and resolves the instance URL on first boot, then disables itself.

What is included:

  • Crafty Controller 4.10.7 (GPL-3.0) from the official crafty-controller/crafty-4 image, pinned by digest
  • Embedded SQLite datastore in Docker volumes (crafty-config, crafty-servers, crafty-backups, crafty-logs, crafty-import)
  • crafty.service running the container, published on 127.0.0.1:8443
  • A unique random admin password generated at first boot, stored 0600 root:root in /root/crafty-credentials.txt
  • nginx TLS reverse proxy on port 443 (80 redirects to 443), WebSocket aware, with a per VM self signed certificate
  • crafty-firstboot.service for first boot certificate generation, admin capture and stack start
  • Bundled Java runtime handling for the game servers Crafty manages
  • Docker Engine runtime
  • Ubuntu 24.04 LTS base, fully patched
  • 24/7 cloudimg support, 24h response SLA

Prerequisites

An active Azure subscription, an SSH key pair, and a VNet with a subnet. Recommended VM size: Standard_B2s (the panel is lightweight; the game servers you later create are the workload to size for).

Step 1: Deploy from the Azure Portal

Search the Marketplace for Crafty Controller on Ubuntu 24.04, choose your VM size, and attach an NSG that allows TCP 22 (SSH) from your management network and TCP 443 (the panel) from the networks that need it. To run game servers that players connect to, you will also open the relevant game ports later.

Step 2: Deploy from the Azure CLI

RG="crafty-prod"; LOCATION="eastus"; VM_NAME="crafty-01"
GALLERY_IMAGE_ID="/subscriptions/<sub-id>/resourceGroups/azure-cloudimg/providers/Microsoft.Compute/galleries/cloudimgGallery/images/crafty-controller-ubuntu-24-04/versions/<version>"
SSH_KEY="$(cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub)"
az group create --name "$RG" --location "$LOCATION"
az network vnet create -g "$RG" --name crafty-vnet --address-prefix 10.80.0.0/16 --subnet-name crafty-subnet --subnet-prefix 10.80.1.0/24
az network nsg create -g "$RG" --name crafty-nsg
az network nsg rule create -g "$RG" --nsg-name crafty-nsg --name allow-ssh --priority 100 \
  --source-address-prefixes "<your-mgmt-cidr>" --destination-port-ranges 22 --access Allow --protocol Tcp
az network nsg rule create -g "$RG" --nsg-name crafty-nsg --name allow-panel --priority 110 \
  --source-address-prefixes "<your-mgmt-cidr>" --destination-port-ranges 443 --access Allow --protocol Tcp
az vm create -g "$RG" --name "$VM_NAME" --image "$GALLERY_IMAGE_ID" \
  --size Standard_B2s --storage-sku StandardSSD_LRS \
  --admin-username azureuser --ssh-key-values "$SSH_KEY" \
  --vnet-name crafty-vnet --subnet crafty-subnet --nsg crafty-nsg --public-ip-sku Standard

Step 3: Connect via SSH

ssh azureuser@<vm-ip>

Step 4: Verify the services are running

Crafty runs in a container published on loopback 127.0.0.1:8443; nginx fronts the panel on port 443 over TLS and proxies its WebSocket traffic.

systemctl is-active docker crafty nginx crafty-firstboot
sudo ss -tlnp | grep -E ':443 |127.0.0.1:8443'
sudo docker ps --format 'table {{.Names}}\t{{.Status}}'

All services report active, nginx is bound to :443, the container is published only on 127.0.0.1:8443, and the crafty container is Up.

docker, crafty, nginx and the first boot service all active, nginx bound to port 443, the Crafty container published only on loopback 127.0.0.1:8443, and the container running

Step 5: Retrieve your unique admin password

No known password ships in the image. Crafty generated a random administrator password for this VM at first boot, and it was written to a root only file.

sudo stat -c '%n perms=%a owner=%U:%G' /root/crafty-credentials.txt
sudo cat /root/crafty-credentials.txt

The file is 600 root:root and holds CRAFTY_ADMIN_USERNAME (admin) and a unique CRAFTY_ADMIN_PASSWORD generated for this instance. Copy the password, then change it after your first login.

The per VM admin credentials file stored 0600 root:root at /root/crafty-credentials.txt, holding the admin username and the unique password generated for this VM at first boot

Step 6: Log in to the panel

Open https://<vm-ip>/ in your browser. Because the panel uses a per VM self signed certificate, your browser shows a certificate warning the first time; accept it (or install your own certificate, see the HTTPS section). Enter the Username (admin) and the Password from /root/crafty-credentials.txt, then click Log In.

The Crafty Controller sign in page with username, password and an optional authenticator code field, served over TLS by nginx

Step 7: The dashboard

After signing in you land on the dashboard, which shows host CPU, memory and storage, how many servers are online and offline, and an All Servers panel. A fresh instance has no servers yet, so it invites you to create your first one.

The Crafty Controller dashboard showing host CPU and memory usage, storage, server and player counts, and a welcome panel prompting you to create your first server

Step 8: Create a game server

Click Create New Server from the dashboard or the Servers menu. Choose the server type (Minecraft Java, Minecraft Bedrock or Hytale), pick the server flavour and version, give it a name, and set the minimum and maximum memory and the server port under Quick Settings. Click Create Server and Crafty downloads the server files and provisions it; you can also import an existing server from a zip archive.

The Create New Server wizard with Minecraft Java, Bedrock and Hytale tabs, server type, version and name fields, quick settings for memory and port, and an import from zip archive option

Step 9: Users, roles and configuration

Open Panel Settings to reach the Crafty Configuration area. Under Panel Config you can add users, assign them to servers, and create roles with fine grained permissions, so your team shares access without sharing the admin password. Your admin account is a super user with access to all servers.

The Crafty Configuration panel showing the Users table with the admin super user, Add New User, and the Roles section with Add New Role for role based access control

Step 10: The stack

sudo docker inspect --format '{{.Config.Image}}' crafty
sudo docker exec crafty cat /crafty/app/config/version.json | tr -d ' \n'
nginx -v
curl -sk -o /dev/null -w 'GET / -> HTTP %{http_code}\n' https://127.0.0.1/

The pinned crafty-4 image runs the panel, the Crafty version is 4.10.7, nginx fronts it over TLS, and the panel returns HTTP 200 through nginx.

The pinned Crafty image reference, the Crafty version 4.10.7 from version.json, the nginx version, and the panel returning HTTP 200 through the nginx TLS front

Step 11: Data and persistence

All Crafty data lives in the embedded SQLite database and the server files inside Docker volumes, captured into the image and carried onto every instance.

sudo docker volume ls | grep crafty
sudo docker exec crafty ls -lh /crafty/app/config/db/crafty.sqlite
systemctl is-enabled crafty-firstboot.service
apt-mark showhold

The volumes are present, the database file is on disk inside crafty-config, the first boot service is enabled for the next fresh instance, and there are no held packages, so the OS security baseline is intact.

The crafty Docker volumes, the crafty.sqlite database inside the config volume, the first boot service enabled, and an intact OS patch baseline with no held packages

Step 12: Install your own TLS certificate

The image ships with a per VM self signed certificate so the panel is encrypted from first boot. To remove the browser warning, point a DNS record at your VM and install a trusted certificate with certbot:

sudo apt-get install -y certbot python3-certbot-nginx
sudo certbot --nginx -d <your-domain> --agree-tos -m <your-email> --redirect

certbot obtains the certificate, rewrites the nginx server block to use it, and sets up automatic renewal. Your panel is then served over HTTPS with a trusted certificate.

Running game servers

Crafty runs your game servers inside its container. To let players reach a server you create, open the game's port on your NSG (for example TCP 25565 for a default Minecraft Java server) and publish it from the container. Because the panel image publishes only the management port by design, adjust the container's published ports for the game servers you run, then restart the service:

sudo systemctl status crafty --no-pager | head -n 6
sudo docker logs --tail 8 crafty

Managing the service

Restart the stack with sudo systemctl restart crafty and follow the live container logs with sudo docker logs -f crafty; nginx logs are under /var/log/nginx/. Back up the instance by snapshotting the OS disk or using Crafty's built in scheduled backups. Change the admin password from the Crafty user settings after your first login.

Support

cloudimg provides 24/7 support for this image via email and live chat: deployment, nginx TLS termination, upgrades, game server configuration and performance tuning. Email support@cloudimg.co.uk.

This is a repackaged open source software product with additional charges for cloudimg support services. Crafty Controller is a trademark of its respective owner. All product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.