How to Set Up Automatic Restarts

A Rust server that runs for days gets slower: memory creeps up, entity counts grow, and players start to feel it. A daily restart clears that, and the panel can run it for you with warnings in chat so nobody loses a raid to it.

1Open Automatic Restarts

• Log in to your game panel and click your Rust server.
• Click Rust Settings in the left menu under GAME SERVER.
• Find Automatic restarts and press Edit.

2Pick Your Times

• Turn Automatic restarts on. Leaving it off keeps everything below saved for when you want it.
• Add a time under Restart times. Up to eight per day, and they use the server timezone shown above the field.
• One restart a day is enough for most servers. Pick a quiet hour: early morning in your players' timezone, not the middle of your prime time.
• Busy servers with high entity counts sometimes want two, for example 06:00 and 18:00.

3Warn Your Players

• Warn players posts a message in chat before the restart. The options are 30, 15, 10, 5, 3 and 1 minute.
• Pick at least one long warning and one short one. 5 and 1 minute is a sensible pair: long enough to get out of a fight, short enough to be the last word before it happens.
• A restart with no warning reads as a crash, and players who lose loot to it blame the server.

4Save First, and Tell Discord

• Save the world first runs server.save before restarting, so nothing built in the last few minutes is lost. Leave this on.
• Post to Discord announces the restart in your announcements channel. It uses the webhook from the Discord notifications block on the same page. See Rust settings.

Press Save.

Good to Know

• It doubles as a keep-alive. If the scheduled time arrives and the server is offline, the panel starts it. A server that crashed overnight is back up by morning without anyone noticing.
• Restarting also updates you. Rust, Oxide and Carbon all update themselves on boot, so a daily restart keeps you current without thinking about it. See how to install Oxide or Carbon.
• It is not a fix for a real problem. If your server needs restarting every few hours to stay usable, something else is wrong. Check the entity count first: why your Rust server is lagging.
• Wipes are separate. A wipe restarts the server too, but it also deletes things. See how to wipe your Rust server.

Finished

Your server restarts itself, warns your players and stays current. Watch what it does to memory and FPS on the Performance tab.