Dapex Game Server ARM

A self-hosted multiplayer game platform for running Valheim and a modded Minecraft Fabric server on one ARM64 machine.

Small ARM servers are capable of hosting either game, but running both at once creates unnecessary CPU and memory contention. This project treats the machine as one exclusive game slot: Valheim, Minecraft, or offline. A local controller performs every transition, verifies that the selected server is ready, and rolls back to the previous game when startup fails.

The repository also includes a web dashboard, a player-facing Minecraft pack portal, Discord operations, backups, health monitoring, and systemd deployment.

What it does

• Runs Valheim on ARM64 through Box64/Wine using tsx-cloud/valheim-arm.
• Runs Minecraft Java 1.21.1 with Fabric and Java 21 using a pinned itzg/minecraft-server image.
• Guarantees that Valheim and Minecraft cannot intentionally run together.
• Switches games gracefully and restores the previous server after a failed boot.
• Reconciles the selected game automatically after a host restart.
• Provides a private admin dashboard and a public player onboarding page.
• Builds versioned Dapex Fabric releases that players can import into Prism Launcher as .mrpack files.
• Supports pinned Modrinth projects, required dependency resolution, manual Fabric JAR uploads, and CurseForge modpack manifests through the official API.
• Verifies downloaded file hashes and respects CurseForge author distribution permissions.
• Keeps Docker logs bounded and game data outside the containers.

Architecture

                         Cloudflare Access
                                │
                    ┌───────────▼───────────┐
                    │ Admin dashboard       │
                    │ server.example.com    │
                    └───────────┬───────────┘
                                │ localhost:8787
Discord bot ── bearer token ──► Game controller ◄── Player portal
                                │                    + MRPACK downloads
                       exclusive operation lock
                         ┌───────┴────────┐
                         │                │
                    Valheim           Minecraft
                  Box64 + Wine       Fabric + Java 21
                         │                │
                   world saves       world + mods

Both game containers use restart=no. The controller is the only component that owns desired game state and boot reconciliation. The Valheim watchdog reads that same state, so it will not mistake an intentional switch to Minecraft for an outage and restart Valheim behind it.

Discord integration

The included Discord bot keeps operations in the same place players already coordinate:

• a persistent status card for whichever game owns the slot;
• transition, unhealthy-server, and high-memory alerts;
• current Valheim player count and PlayFab join code;
• /valheim status, /valheim join, and /valheim players;
• admin-only /valheim restart and /valheim backup;
• /game status for the shared game slot;
• admin-only /game switch for Valheim, Minecraft, or offline.
• /minecraft status plus admin-only whitelist add, remove, and list commands.

Discord never receives direct Docker access from a command. Game switching goes through the bounded localhost control API, uses the same exclusive lock as the web dashboard, and accepts only the three known targets.

Minecraft mod workflow

1. An administrator selects the Minecraft and Fabric versions.
2. Mods are added from Modrinth, uploaded as Fabric JARs, or imported from a CurseForge modpack ZIP.
3. The controller resolves exact versions and required dependencies.
4. Compatibility and distribution rules are checked before publishing.
5. Publishing creates an immutable release manifest, the server mod directory, configuration overrides, and a versioned MRPACK.
6. Players import that MRPACK into Prism Launcher and connect with their normal Microsoft-authenticated Minecraft Java account.

Minecraft runs with online-mode=true and a whitelist. Current Prism Launcher releases require a supported modern operating system; Windows 7 is best-effort and is not a supported deployment target.

Repository layout

Path	Purpose
control/	Web UI, authentication, game orchestration, mod profiles, and systemd units
discord/	Discord status, alerts, backups, and game-switch commands
minecraft/	Minecraft environment template, pinned image, world and generated-profile mounts
monitoring/	Valheim process/PlayFab watchdog and bounded recovery policy
backup/	Provider-neutral encrypted off-host backups with restic and systemd timers
scripts/	Container entrypoints, startup scripts, and consistent backups

Detailed documentation:

• Control plane, security, Cloudflare, and rollback
• Minecraft profiles and player onboarding
• Valheim watchdog
• Discord operations
• Off-host backup and restore

Resource model

The production host that motivated this project is an ARM64 VM with two CPU cores and roughly 12 GB RAM. Current container limits are:

Game	Memory	CPU	Typical idle memory
Valheim	9 GiB	1.5 cores	approximately 2.7 GiB
Minecraft Fabric	7 GiB	1.75 cores	approximately 1 GiB without mods

These are operational limits, not player-capacity guarantees. Mod complexity, world generation, base size, exploration, and concurrent players must be tested with the actual pack and world.

Deployment outline

The host requires Docker, Node.js 20+, flock, systemd, and an ARM64 Linux environment.

cp .env.example .env
cp minecraft/.env.example minecraft/.env
cp control/.env.example control/.env
cp discord/.env.example discord/.env
chmod 600 .env minecraft/.env control/.env discord/.env

Configure strong unique secrets and the required IDs, then install the watchdog and controller according to their directory READMEs. The control service binds to 127.0.0.1 and should only be exposed through a protected reverse tunnel.

Minecraft uses raw TCP port 25565. A normal Cloudflare Tunnel public hostname does not proxy a vanilla Minecraft connection, so its DNS record must remain DNS-only and the port must be allowed by both the cloud firewall and host firewall.

Security model

• No real secrets, world saves, backups, uploaded mods, or runtime state belong in Git.
• Admin web traffic is expected to pass through Cloudflare Access and an exact email allowlist.
• Browser mutations require the configured same origin.
• Discord authenticates with a separate same-host bearer token.
• Uploaded archives are inspected without unsafe extraction and are constrained by path, symlink, entry-count, and expanded-size limits.
• Container images and published mod versions are pinned.
• Docker group membership is root-equivalent; the control service is an operational boundary, not a sandbox against a compromised host account.

Project status

The controller, both game containers, Discord integration, watchdog, profile publishing, and rollback flow have been exercised on an ARM64 host. Valheim and Minecraft were each booted to application-level readiness, switched in both directions, and verified never to run concurrently.

This is a personal, non-commercial project for a small private group. It is not affiliated with Iron Gate, Mojang, Microsoft, Fabric, Modrinth, CurseForge, Overwolf, or the upstream container authors.