Starting and stopping your server

Controlling your server's power state is straightforward. Here's what each option does and when to use it.

Power controls

You'll find the power controls at the top of your server panel. There are four options:

Start

Boots your server from an offline state. The server will initialize, load your world/map, and become joinable. This typically takes 10-60 seconds depending on the game and server size.

Stop

Gracefully shuts down your server. This sends a proper shutdown signal to the game, which:

• - Saves all player data and world changes
• - Kicks all connected players with a shutdown message
• - Closes all files and connections properly

Always use Stop instead of Kill when possible to prevent data loss.

Restart

Performs a graceful stop followed by an automatic start. Use this when:

• - You've changed configuration files that require a restart
• - You've installed or updated mods
• - The server is experiencing minor issues
• - You've changed startup parameters

Kill

Force-terminates the server process immediately. Only use this as a last resort when:

• - The server is frozen and not responding
• - Stop/Restart have been stuck for over 2 minutes
• - The console shows no activity and commands don't work

Server states

Your server can be in one of these states:

• Online: Server is running and accepting connections
• Starting: Server is booting up
• Stopping: Server is shutting down gracefully
• Offline: Server is not running

Scheduled restarts

Some games benefit from periodic restarts to clear memory leaks or refresh the server. You can set up scheduled restarts through the Startup tab's schedule options, or use in-game plugins that handle this automatically.