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+++ title = "Install MCSManager on FreeBSD" description = "This blog will go trhough how to install and steup properly mcsmanger on FreeBSD" date = 2026-03-25 [taxonomies] tags = ["FreeBSD", "Minecraft", "Admin"] +++
Base documentation is pretty good and mostly work for FreeBSD but some specific details are left out.
We will go through the each step of the isntallation and setup process but before that I still recomend checkig the official documentation.
Some steps may be out of date and its still a good source of information.
Dependencies
The main dependency you will need for mcsmanager is node.js, you can install it with npm as a normal FreeBSD package.
pkg install node npm
It could also be usefull to install at least one version of Java to be used by your Minecraft instancies even if there is now a Java version manager integrated.
For example java17:
pkg install openjdk17
Installing MCSManager
First go to wher you want it installed. Here I choosed /usr/local/mcsmanager. Then you can download the latest release directly from github or any other version for tha matter, untar it and luach the install script.
cd /usr/local/mcsmanger
# download
fetch https://github.com/MCSManager/MCSManager/releases/latest/download/mcsmanager_linux_release.tar.gz
# extract
tar --strip-components=1 -xzvf mcsmanager_linux_release.tar.gz
rm mcsmanager_linux_release.tar.gz
# install (its downloading node pacakges)
bash install.sh
Those steps might not be necessary for you since when you are reading this those might be installed automatically but in my case they were not. So check that those libs are present in deamon/lib and if not you can just follow the steps to install them at teh right places.
cd /usr/local/mcsmanger/daemon/lib/
# download libs
fetch https://github.com/MCSManager/Zip-Tools/releases/download/latest/file_zip_freebsd_x64
fetch https://github.com/MCSManager/PTY/releases/download/latest/pty_freebsd_x64
# set permissions
chmod +x file_zip_freebsd_x64 pty_freebsd_x64
If you want to be able to use the webui zip/unzip functionality you will also need 7-zip and a small wrapper so it can be found and used correctly.
# 7zip
pkg install 7-zip
# 7z wrapper
cd /usr/local/mcsmanager/deamon/lib
printf '#!/bin/sh\nexec /usr/local/bin/7zz "$@"\n' > 7z_freebsd_x64
chmod +x 7z_freebsd_x64
Dedicated user
It is highly recomended to run the whole stack and instancies as an unprivileged user. So just create one and change the permissions of the relevant directory.
cd /usr/local/mcsmanger
# ownership
chown -R mcserver:mcserver .
Test run
You can now start each process to detect any error.
bash start-daemon.sh
bash start-web.sh
RC files
As you could have guessed from previous specific FreeBSD libs, the project has explicit compatibility with it even though the documentation does not sepcific a FreeBSD intstall seciton.
However it has a section about rc scripts that you should go check out here
Then just create the files in /usr/local/etc/rc.d/ and follow the usual steps.
# service permissions
chmod +x /usr/local/etc/rc.d/mcsm*
# enable
service mcsmd enable
service mcsmw enable
# start services
service mcsmd start
service mcsmw start
Final result
You now have a fully working MCSManager stack. You can go to the webui and create your first instancies.
To update just stop mcsmanager, run the intallation steps again this will override the necessary files and update the node dependencies.