Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask this or I've overlooked something obvious, but I'm having some trouble getting a new server up and running.
It's a vanilla 1.8.3 server – ironically enough chosen as I thought it would be simpler with the current situation with Bukkit. I've tried all this with both the exe and the jar version. It's running on a Windows Server 2012 VM (hosted on a VMWare ESX server if that makes any difference). It has 6GB of RAM and I'm running JRE7u76. I have accepted the EULA, and the server is running without errors according to the logs.
The clients are running 1.8.3 as well, and can successfully ping the server by name. I've added server connections in the clients by machine name and IP, both with and without the 25565 port number added on.
I've added explicit firewall rules for 25565 for TCP and UDP, on the server and the clients.
They all just time out, and the server doesn't log any kind of error or failed logon attempt at all.
I'm basically out of ideas.. anyone?!
UPDATE: Looked deeper into the firewall as suggested by @Frank. I've enabled every logging option I can find on the firewall, and it would appear the server is not receiving any packets at all.
I've also done the same on the client, and can see no sign of that firewall either succeeding or failing to SEND any packets at all. At this point it looks like minecraft is simply not actually trying to connect to the server.
I've also added a well known online server (which is running 1.7.10) and connected without issue.
Just to be doubly sure, I've tried completely disabling the firewall on server and client to no effect as well.
Is this a 1.8.3 problem? (not that this makes much sense, as the client wouldn't know my server was 1.8.3 until it connected…)
UPDATE 2:
I've downloaded, compiled and hosted the 1.8.3 version of Bukkit, with much the same results.
However – when I run the server on the client machine and use localhost it works.
This means of course there is no specific 1.8.3 problem, and it is a network issue of some sort – but the server can see the client and vice-versa, and the problem remains even when I disable both firewalls completely.
Does anyone know of any other reason TCP access between the two machines might fail?
Best Answer
This is barely an answer, but it did "solve" the problem.
I flattened the VM and installed Server 2008 R2 instead.
As far as I know everything was configured in exactly the same way, and I don't doubt that you can get this running on 2012. I guess something just went wrong at some point during the install process or something.
At any rate, I've got a nice shiny new 1.8.3 up and server running now - thanks for your help!