Minecraft server changes don't (all) take effect

Clearly this is something I am doing wrong, but I just cannot get this to work.

I want to enable cheats on the server, so people can teleport etc. I have gone in and changed the server.properties file to make the appropriate alterations ("allow-cheats=true"), and no matter what I do (including stopping server before editing), I cannot get the ability to, for example, use "/gamemode=creative" while in game.

I thought maybe none of my changes were sticking, or maybe there was a second server.properties file that was mucking things up, but I noticed that, if I change "motd", those changes are reflected after reboot.

I have tried force-gamemode=true (and false), cheats on….I have no idea. Is this something that doesn't work on Java edition? Do I need to wipe my Linode and start over?

Clearly I am being a dope - but I am not savvy enough to figure out HOW. I created this server for my students to de-stress during COVID, so would love to have it meet their wishes.

Here is my current server.properties file (with a couple of items altered for privacy)

Minecraft server properties

Sun Mar 07 20:39:48 UTC 2021

spawn-protection=16
max-tick-time=60000
query.port=25565
generator-settings=
sync-chunk-writes=true
force-gamemode=true
allow-nether=true
enforce-whitelist=false
gamemode=creative
broadcast-console-to-ops=true
enable-query=true
player-idle-timeout=0
text-filtering-config=
difficulty=easy
spawn-monsters=true
broadcast-rcon-to-ops=true
op-permission-level=4
entity-broadcast-range-percentage=100
snooper-enabled=true
allow-cheats=true
level-type=largebiomes
hardcore=false
enable-status=true
enable-command-block=false
max-players=25
network-compression-threshold=256
resource-pack-sha1=
max-world-size=29999984
function-permission-level=2
rcon.port=25575
server-port=25565
server-ip=myserverip
spawn-npcs=true
allow-flight=false
level-name=FundulusLand
view-distance=10
resource-pack=
spawn-animals=true
white-list=false
rcon.password="nothingtoseehere"
generate-structures=true
max-build-height=256
online-mode=true
level-seed=
prevent-proxy-connections=false
use-native-transport=true
enable-jmx-monitoring=false
rate-limit=0
enable-rcon=true
motd=Powered by 100s of Killifishes!

2 Replies

Hi @fundulus - Have you made sure you're an op or admin of the server? It depends on how you have things set up but as I recall in most cases only ops or admins can use the cheat/console commands even if they're enabled. Try adding your in-minecraft name to 'ops.txt' and 'admin.txt' in the server settings directory.

Thanks @mjones. That helped me sort out the issue - for anyone else with this problem, the newer versions of Minecraft use a ops.json file, and I needed to put the player name and UUID (the latter you can find using various online searches). Then you add them to the file in this format:

ops.json
[
{
"uuid": "UUID-goes-here",
"name": "fred",
"level": 4
},
{
"uuid": "UUID-goes-here",
"name": "user1",
"level": 4
},
{
"uuid": "UUID-goes-here",
"name": "player1",
"level": 4
}
]

Thanks for helping me sort that out!

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