You might be right: I am indeed using https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/minecraft-server. I thought IDLE_SERVER was an upstream feature but it seems to part of that package's management script.
> I don't know if that is an Arch distribution specific feature.
That's unlikely for two reasons, first because minecraft is closed source, and second because arch packages usually follow upstream very closely.
Re:Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3
by ChoosesBarbecue on Sunday July 19, 2026 @11:27AM
(#48969015)
Based on my read of the `minecraft-server` package [0], I think it is using a management script wrapper around the raw Minecraft JAR [1], which implements the aforementioned idle functionality [2].
[0]: https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/about/?h=minecraft-se...
[1]: https://github.com/Edenhofer/minecraft-server
[2]: https://github.com/Edenhofer/minecraft-server/blob/421ff0ff3...
I do see `pause-when-empty-seconds` [1] when looking at the wiki, which seems the closest, although I can't find doc on what "paused" means (this is the closest [2]). Looks like a fairly new feature (2024), but it's neat they've thought about it.
[0]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Minecraft/Java_Edition_serv...
[1]: https://minecraft.wiki/w/Server.properties
[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/admincraft/comments/1k330eg/what_ha...