Direct answer

If Java vanishes without a normal crash report or meaningful final exception, investigate outside the Minecraft process. The OS, container, hosting panel, service manager, or hardware can terminate Java before it has a chance to write a crash report.

Linux: check for an OOM kill

Paper recommends checking the kernel log with:

dmesg -T | grep -i killed

If the kernel killed Java for memory pressure, lower -Xmx or raise the container/host limit and leave memory for non-heap JVM use and the OS.

Hosting panels and containers

A panel can impose a hard memory limit that is lower than the physical machine RAM. If -Xmx is close to that limit, native memory and other JVM overhead can push the whole process over the cap even though Java heap itself has not reached Xmx.

If it was not memory

  • Check service-manager logs, container exit codes, host reboots, disk/I/O errors, and provider events.
  • Check whether an administrator or scheduled task issued a normal stop.
  • On Paper, enabling debug=true can help diagnose an unexpected graceful shutdown that looks like someone typed stop.

Do not keep increasing Xmx

If the host is already memory-constrained, a larger heap can make external OOM kills more likely. Establish which layer terminated Java before changing resource values.

Find evidence outside latest.log
  1. Record whether the Java process was killed by the host, the container OOM killer or a watchdog. A missing Minecraft crash report is normal for some external terminations.
  2. Check the hosting panel event history and operating-system journal for a matching timestamp; ask the host for termination reason when system logs are inaccessible.
  3. If Java exits immediately, redirect standard error to the panel log and test the exact start script with the intended working directory.

Official references

These references were checked while preparing this fix. Version-specific behavior can change, so use the project documentation for your exact release when a detail differs.

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