Yes, it does appear to be different than what is requested. If you look at the instructions.html, it states that you write the starting procedure in the readme.txt file, and that it uses the
java command to start the server and client.
So by having a "start" or "shutdown" sound to me like a bat file or shell script that you created to aid in starting and shutting down the server, which is not asked for in the assignment instructions.
To start the server, it should be as easy as
java -jar server.jar
with maybe the starting of RMIRegistry, if not started in code.
Good Luck
Mark