Schedule Restarts and Backups

Times are in UTC

The panel says "the cron inputs below always assume UTC". Ottawa / Toronto is UTC−4 in summer (EDT) and UTC−5 in winter (EST):

The schedule page shows Next run in your timezone (UTC), so check it matches what you expect.

Create a daily restart with a warning

Restarting once a day clears memory leaks from plugins and mods and keeps the server snappy.

1. Open your server → Schedules → the Create Schedule icon at the top left.

2. Name: Daily restart.

3. Only when Server is Online? On: there's no point restarting a stopped server.

4. Enable Schedule? On.

5. Set the time. Use the Daily button, then change Hour. For 5:00 am Eastern in summer: Minute 0, Hour 9, Day of Month *, Month *, Day of Week *.

   

6. Choose Create. You land on the schedule's page.

7. Choose Edit, then the + (Create Task) button in Tasks.

8. First task: Action Send Command, Command say Daily restart in 1 minute. Please find a safe spot!. Choose Create.

   

9. Second task: Action Send Power Action, Power action Restart, Time Offset 60 seconds. Choose Create.

   

10. The schedule now has both tasks in order:

    

Time Offset is how long to wait after the previous task. Want more warnings? Add say … 5 minutes as the first task, say … 1 minute with offset 240, then the restart with offset 60.

To test it, choose Run now on the schedule's Edit page.

Automatic backups

1. Create a schedule called Nightly backup, e.g. at hour 7 (3:00 am EDT).
2. Add tasks:
   1. Send Command → save-all (writes everything to disk first).
   2. Create Backup, Time Offset 10 seconds. Optionally list folders to skip, such as logs.
3. Leave at least one backup slot unlocked. When the slots are full, the scheduled backup replaces the oldest unlocked backup. If all of them are locked, the backup fails.

Cron cheat sheet

Other ideas