Automatic Daily Restart - Smart, Player-Aware
Your server automatically restarts when no players are online and the selected time interval has passed. This keeps the server running smoothly without interrupting gameplay. Restarts only occur when the player count is zero.
How It Works
The host agent checks every 5 minutes whether your server is due for a restart. A restart is triggered only when all three conditions are met: the server is running, the game server process has been up for at least the configured interval, and the player count is zero.
If players are online when the interval expires, the restart is deferred. The agent re-checks every 5 minutes and restarts as soon as the server is empty. There is no catch-up: a server that is busy every time it is checked simply keeps running, however far past the interval it goes.
The interval is measured against how long the game server process has been running, not against a clock. Starting the server, restarting it yourself, a crash-restart or an update all start it again from zero, so a server you restart every evening will rarely reach a 24-hour interval on its own.
Automatic restart cannot be switched off — the only choice is which of the three intervals applies. Because the check is player-aware, that is not the same as a forced daily reboot.
Configurable Intervals
Choose from three restart intervals:
- Every 6 hours - frequent restarts for stability-sensitive servers
- Every 12 hours - balanced, restarts twice per day at most
- Every 24 hours (default) - daily restart for routine maintenance
The default for new servers is 24 hours. You can change this at any time on the Admin tab. Only 6, 12 and 24 are accepted — the database itself refuses anything else.
Player Detection
The check asks the game itself, using whichever channel the game provides: the telnet console for 7 Days to Die, the REST admin API for Palworld, the A2S query port for Windrose, the server-list ping for Minecraft, and the bridge plugin for Valheim.
Every supported game now reports a real player count for this check. Minecraft uses the server-list ping protocol, and Valheim uses the GameGrid bridge plugin (with a log-reading fallback).
If the query fails or the count is unreliable — the query port is briefly unresponsive, the console is not answering — the restart is skipped for that cycle rather than going ahead. An unanswered probe is treated as "we do not know", never as "nobody is online", because restarting a busy server is the worse mistake. The next check is five minutes later.
Restart Process
When a restart is triggered, the host agent stops the game server process gracefully, waits 5 seconds, starts it again on the port the platform has allocated, and records the outcome — success or failure — for the panel and the event feed.
The agent starts the server and reports that it accepted the restart; the server itself still has to come up, which takes as long as that game normally takes to start. A restart that fails is recorded as failed and is not retried until the next five-minute cycle.
Configuration
Configure automatic restarts on the Admin tab of your server panel, in the "Automatic Daily Restart" card. Pick 6, 12 or 24 hours; the choice saves as soon as you pick it, and the card shows the last recorded restart underneath. The same setting is available from Discord with /auto-restart hours:24 and from the Customer API.
Restart checks run on the host agent itself, so they continue even if the backend is temporarily unreachable. The backend sends your configured interval to the host agent, which enforces it locally.