Quick Start

Storage Set-Up

zPermissions was primarily developed with using a (real) SQL database in mind. However, you can also opt to use it with a simple flat-file storage method. For SQL storage, zPermissions uses the persistence library included with CraftBukkit (called Avaje Ebean). This persistence library is normally configured from the bukkit.yml file, under the database section.

The first thing to do is to decide how you want to set up zPermissions's permission storage: Will you be connecting to a database server? Use a flat-file? Or as another alternative, use an embedded database?

Database Server

The most common free and open source database servers are MySQL and PostgreSQL. Note that if you don't already have a basic understanding of setting up and administering these database servers, look and read their respective documentation. Alternatively, you might want to consider using the zPermissions flat-file approach.

Detailed instructions on configuring zPermissions with SQL database servers may be found at the For Server Admins page.

Flat-File Storage

To use flat-file storage, you must start your server with zPermissions at least once to create its config.yml. You can leave bukkit.yml as-is (i.e. configured for SQLite, which isn't compatible with zPermissions) since zPermissions will fall back to flat-file storage anyway. Once the config.yml has been created, set the following option to false:

database-support: false

Embedded Database

To use an embedded database (similar to SQLite), see the H2 instructions at the For Server Admins page.

ebean.properties SEVERE message

Note that you may see the following error in your logs:

[SEVERE] ebean.properties not found

This is perfectly normal and harmless. But if you want to get rid of the message, simply create an empty file called ebean.properties in the same directory as bukkit.yml.

The Default Group

The default group is determined by the default-group option in zPermissions's config.yml. Out-of-the-box, the default-group is named default. (If you change this option, be sure to reload your server or /permissions reload zPermissions.)

Regardless of whether or not you change the default group, when zPermissions starts up with a new database or a new flat-file, it will have no groups defined.

So one of the first things you'll probably want to do is create the default group.

If you left the default group alone:

/permissions group default create

Or if you changed it, for example, to guest:

/permissions group guest create

Once this is done, you can start assigning permissions to it.