minetest(6)

💖 MINETEST(6) — the manual, but make it make sense 💖

okay so bestie. this is the minetest(6) man page, section 6, and i'm gonna walk you through the whole entire thing. every flag, every env var, every last crumb. no gatekeeping, we die like real ones 🫶

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🌸 NAME 🌸

minetest, minetestserver — a multiplayer infinite-world block sandbox. yes. that's the whole vibe. infinite blocks. multiplayer. sandbox. go build a castle, i'll wait 💅

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

here's the shape of the thing, copy it exactly babes:

minetest [--server SERVER OPTIONS | CLIENT OPTIONS] [COMMON OPTIONS]
[WORLD PATH]

minetestserver [SERVER OPTIONS] [COMMON OPTIONS] [WORLD PATH]

so like, minetest can go server mode or client mode, and minetestserver is the server-only girlie. both take common options and a world path. simple!

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Minetest is literally one of the first InfiniMiner/Minecraft(/whatever)-inspired games — it started in October 2010, which is like ancient history in internet years 😭 — and the whole goal is taking survival multiplayer gameplay in a slightly different direction.

The main design philosophy? Keep it technically simple, stable and portable. it has to stay lightweight enough to run on fairly old hardware. lowkey iconic of them. not everything needs to eat 32 gigs of RAM 💀

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🎀 COMMON OPTIONS 🎀

these ones work for both the client and the server, so learn them once, use them everywhere ✨

• --help — prints all the allowed options and dips. like a little menu, then bye.
• --version — prints version info and exits. say hi to the version number on your way out 👋
• --config <value> — load your configuration from the file you specify.
• --logfile <value> — set the logfile path. pass '' (empty string!) for no logging at all. silence. peace. 🙈
• --info — print more information to the console.
• --verbose — print even more information to the console. we're escalating.
• --trace — print an enormous amount of information to the console. like, ENORMOUS. buckle up bestie 🔥
• --quiet — print only errors to console. minimal queen energy 👑
• --color <value> — colorize the logs. your options are 'always', 'never' or 'auto', and it defaults to 'auto'.
• --gameid <value> | list — set the gameid, or pass list to see which ones you've got available.
• --worldname <value> — set the world path by name.
• --world <value> — set the world path.
• --worldlist path | name | both — get a list of worlds. 'path' lists paths, 'name' lists names, 'both' lists both. choose your fighter.
• --map-dir <value> — same as --world. but it's deprecated bestie, so maybe don't start anything new with it 🫶
• --port <value> — set the network port (UDP) to use.
• --run-unittests — run the unit tests and exit. science!! 🧚

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🦄 CLIENT OPTIONS 🦄

client-side only. this is the playing-the-game side of the operation 💜

• --address <value> — the address to connect to.
• --go — disable the main menu. straight into it, no lobby, no small talk.
• --name <value> — set your player name.
• --password <value> — set your password. (in the command line. where people can see it. i'm just saying 👀)
• --password-file <value> — set the password from the contents of a file. much more discreet, love that for you.
• --random-input — enable random user input, for testing. client only! it's for the tests, not for your actual gaming session 😭
• --speedtests — run speed tests.

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🔥 SERVER OPTIONS 🔥

server girlies, this is your section. migrating backends and running terminals, the whole deal ⭐

• --migrate <value> — migrate from the current map backend to another one. possible values are sqlite3, leveldb, redis, postgresql, and dummy.
• --migrate-auth <value> — migrate from the current auth backend to another. possible values are sqlite3, leveldb, and files.
• --migrate-players <value> — migrate from the current players backend to another. possible values are sqlite3, leveldb, postgresql, dummy, and files.
• --migrate-mod-storage <value> — migrate from the current mod storage backend to another. possible values are sqlite3, dummy, and files.
• --terminal — display an interactive terminal over ncurses while it's running. very hacker, very main character 💻✨

⚠️ okay tiny heads up: those --migrate* options are doing real actual backend surgery on your world data. the man page doesn't say more than that, so i'm not gonna invent extra warnings — just, like, read before you run, bestie. fr fr.

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🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

the vibes your shell hands over before the program even starts:

• MINETEST_SUBGAME_PATH — a colon delimited list of directories to search for games.
• MINETEST_MOD_PATH — a colon delimited list of directories to search for mods.

colon delimited = you separate the directories with : characters. ikyk 🐚

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💀 BUGS 💀

found a bug? don't suffer in silence, please report all bugs at https://github.com/minetest/minetest/issues. they literally want to know 🙏

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🍓 AUTHOR 🍓

Perttu Ahola <celeron55@gmail.com> and contributors. icons, all of them.

This man page was originally written by Juhani Numminen <juhaninumminen0@gmail.com>. thank you for your service 🫡

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🌸 WWW 🌸

http://www.minetest.net/ — go touch grass on the website 🌱

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and that's the whole page, bestie. no cap, every single flag accounted for 💖

this little beauty is from 2 February 2019, and yeah, it's still signed minetest(6) at the bottom — mwah, go play some blocks 💅✨