I am going to assume anyone following this tutorial is familiar with booting a Raspberry Pi. Contact me if you need help with this part. Start with a fresh copy of Raspbian. Burn it to your SD card and boot up. At the Raspi-Config screen that pops up on the first boot, we will need to configure a few things.

First, expand the file system. We will need that extra space for the world you are about to create. Next, change the password to whatever you want it to be. After that, change the International Options to reflect wherever you live and the appropriate keyboard layout. To make the Raspberry keep up, it will need to be overclocked. Go to the Overclock settings, approve all the warnings, and set to Turbo. Under Advanced Options, change the hostname to something clever if you want, set the Memory Split to 16 and enable SSH. Approve these settings and let the Raspi reboot.

Once rebooted, log in with username pi and your new password. Run updates (btw, you need to be connected to the internet through the ethernet port for a while) by typing 'sudo apt-get update' and then 'sudo apt-get upgrade' This will take a while, so go do other things for a while.

After the updates are installed, do another reboot, as the kernel was probably updated as well. When it comes back up, we need one more program and a two files. Type 'sudo apt-get install screen' to install a really useful program we will use later. It allows multiple "windows" in a terminal so Minecraft wont shut down every time you exit the terminal.

Download PiFi by typing 'wget https://cdn.hackaday.io/files/4224180719616/pifi.sh'

Download Minecraft by typing 'wget https://cdn.hackaday.io/files/4224180719616/setup'

Both of these files need to be made executable. Do this by typing 'chmod +x pifi.sh' and 'chmod +x setup'

If you have already inserted the Wifi dongle, power off the Raspberry and take it out. Pulling it out while the Raspberry is running may corrupt your filesystem on the SD card. Now that you are running without the Wifi dongle, lets set up the AP. Adafruit has made a wonderful script that walks you through the whole process seamlessly (as long as you have the right drivers on the Wifi dongle).

From your home directory, where you probably already are, type 'sudo ./pifi.sh'

Follow the guidelines, create a Wifi name and password. If you are reading the lines on the screen during the setup, you will see errors. This is OK. It will reboot and you will see another error about hostapd not starting. This is OK too. Power off the Raspberry, insert the WiFi dongle start it back up. Those error messages should now be gone, and if you use a laptop, smart phone or tablet, you SHOULD see a new wifi connection. Congrats, it worked!

This, in itself, is a complete wireless router. If the ethernet cable is connected to an internet connection, then anything connected to the Raspberry's wifi connection should be online as well. If you disconnect the ethernet, the wifi will still work, but it will only be a local wifi network, which is just fine for a Minecraft LAN party. Next we will set up the Minecraft server.

I wrote this script to make the server setup go just as easily as the AP setup. To get it going, type './setup' and follow the prompts. This script downloads the bukkit server, modifies the properties files to your liking and creates a startup script.

The server is now installed and the AP is up and running. To start the server itself, we are going to start with a new screen. Type 'screen -R Minecraft' to get a new screen. Next go to the Minecraft folder by typing 'cd Minecraft' then type './start-whatever' for the appropriate type of Pi or Linux distribution you are starting the server on.

The initial start is going to be REALLY slow. It has to create the world, spawn points, etc. After this first server start, starting the server will be a faster process (not fast, but faster than the first time) To exit the "Minecraft" screen but keep it running, hit Ctrl+A then D. This [D]isconnects you from that screen. To go back to it, type 'screen -r Minecraft'. Notice the small -r instead of the big -R. R creates a screen with the name you give it, if it doesnt already exist, or connects to the preexisting screen with that same name. The little r only connects to a preexisting screen. Exiting and closing out a screen session is the same as from a standard terminal. Just type exit.

Connect your client computers to the server by adding a new server. The address will be 192.168.42.1 over the wifi AP. If the Raspberry is connected to another router, you can also access the server from the ethernet IP address if your client is connected to the same network.