Symptoms: Server crashed, Exception in server tick loop, Failed to start the minecraft server

Possible Causes

  • The wrong Java version is in use
  • A broken or incompatible plugin is installed
  • A faulty config file (YAML syntax error)
  • Not enough RAM allocated

Step-by-Step Fix

Step 1

Check the server logs — the real cause is written on the very last line of the error message

bash
tail -50 logs/latest.log

Step 2

Remove every plugin and start the server as vanilla. If it runs, add the plugins back one at a time

bash
mv plugins/ plugins-backup/ && mkdir plugins

Step 3

Check your config files with a YAML validator — one missing space is enough to crash the server

bash
python3 -c "import yaml; yaml.safe_load(open('server.yml'))"

Step 4

Increase the RAM value in the start script

bash
java -Xms4G -Xmx4G -jar server.jar nogui