So I made a collection of scripts to make it much easier to setup a fairly competent minecraft server using the spigot build (better than what linode does automatically). It’s using ansible for the automation and a little python script to send rcon commands to the minecraft process rather than using screen or some other nonsense. It can do backups and restorations too. Basically it removes 99% of the effort in getting a server up and keeping it running.
The script is targeted towards entry level linux users/admins and a fairly standard minecraft installation with only one world.
I might add more to it in the future and perhaps others would be interested in building upon it too.