might set up a minecraft server at home

[Thorin]

Two kids at my house have been playing Minecraft together.  One starts up a single player game, then opens it to lan.  Then the other connects, and they happily play.  Except, the one who opened the game to lan (aka "the host"), their skin doesn't show for the other player.  Instead the second player sees the host's default skin (Steve or Alex, these days).

This is a bug in Minecraft that hasn't been addressed for over a year: https://bugs.mojang.com/browse/MC-52974.  Apparently the problem is that the host's UUID (identifier) is prefixed with the text "host-", which the skins server doesn't understand.  The only real way around it is to run a server and have everyone connect to that so no one is a host.

So now I'm seriously considering setting up a local server just so these poor kids can see each others' skins when playing together...  Seems pretty straightforward, actually.

[Lazybones]

Accept for maintenance scripts for backup it is fairly simple unless you want to start modding or make it public and need to secure it.

[Thorin]

Looks like I would just run it in from a logged-in user.  I've already got a user on a decent computer that stays on all the time for <ahem>"stuff"</ahem>.  So I'd just have another perma-open window there.  Set a couple of server properties and a couple of game rules, and we're off to the races.

I think the kids want creative, so I'd look at these properties and gamerules:
  properties:
    force-gamemode=true
    gamemode=1
    level-type=flat
    max-players=4
    max-world-size=5000
    pvp=false
    server-port=25570
    snooper-enabled=false
    spawn-protection=0
  commands:
    /defaultgamemode creative
    /gamerule doDaylightCycle false
    /gamerule keepInventory true
    /gamerule mobGriefing false

I think that's all I really need to think about.  And I'm kinda recording it for myself here, but feel free to suggest other changes

I will not be port-forwarding, so don't have to worry about whitelisting.  I am putting it on a non-standard port, though.

[Tom]

Yeah, it's not too hard. Might want to restart it occasionally if you're running it on a machine that gets used for other things.