A scheduled daily restart clears out built-up memory and keeps your server running smoothly, and you can set one up in a couple of minutes on the Schedules tab.
Game servers slowly use more memory the longer they stay online, and a busy world can start to lag after a day or two of uptime. A short restart at a quiet hour clears that out before anyone notices. Instead of remembering to do it yourself, you let the panel handle it.
What a schedule is
A schedule is a named list of tasks that the panel runs automatically at a time you pick. The timing uses cron, which is just a compact way of writing "at this minute, this hour, on these days". You do not have to memorise the syntax; the Schedules tab gives you separate boxes for minute, hour, day of month, month and day of week.
Creating a daily restart
- Open your server and go to the Schedules tab.
- Choose to create a new schedule and give it a clear name like Daily Restart.
- Set the timing. For a restart every day at 5am, set the hour to 5, the minute to 0, and leave the day fields as `*`, which means "every". Pick an hour when your server is usually empty.
- Save the schedule, then open it and add a task.
- For the task, choose the Power action and set it to Restart.
- Save the task and make sure the schedule is toggled active.
That is it. From now on the panel restarts your server every day at the time you chose, whether you are online or not.
Warn your players first (optional but nice)
Many owners add a second task a few minutes before the restart to warn anyone playing. Add a Send command task timed a little earlier that pushes a message through the game's console, for example say Server restarting in 5 minutes in Minecraft. Order tasks so the warning runs before the power action.
Choosing a good time
- Pick an hour that matches your players' timezone lull, not necessarily your own.
- Once a day is plenty for most servers. Only busy or heavily modded servers benefit from twice-daily restarts.
- Avoid scheduling a restart right on top of your backup window so the two do not overlap.
Other handy schedules
The same tab can automate more than restarts. You can schedule a nightly backup task, or send a recurring in-game announcement. For Rust specifically, wipes are better handled by the built-in GuavaHost Rust Wiper, which runs scheduled map and blueprint wipes and can even post an announcement to your Discord, rather than by a raw schedule.
If a scheduled restart does not seem to fire, open the schedule and confirm it is toggled active, that the cron time is correct, and that the task's power action is set to Restart and not left blank.
Still stuck? Jump into our Discord at discord.gg/GuavaHost and the team will help you out.