Server Auto Restart

Server maintenance can be somewhat automated without plugins, by utilizing a couple features from your server’s Config.json file.

Scheduled Maintenance

We recommend restarting your server once every 24 hours, as much of the game’s older code still uses single-precision floating point time.

There are three settings for scheduled shutdowns:

  1. Enable_Scheduled_Shutdown: When true, the server will shutdown at a specified time.
  2. Scheduled_Shutdown_Time: Local time for when the server will shutdown.
  3. Scheduled_Shutdown_Warnings: Players will be notified via a chat broadcast at these times before the scheduled shutdown. For example, 30:00 will broadcast in chat 30 minutes before the shutdown.

Checking for Updates

Your server can monitor for updates, and shutdown when one is detected. Three settings are important when checking for updates:

  1. Enable_Update_Shutdown: When true, the server will monitor for updates.
  2. Update_Steam_Beta_Name: Defaults to public, but can be set to preview for servers running on the preview branch.
  3. Update_Shutdown_Warnings: After an update is detected, the server will wait for the longest of these durations to notify players before shutdown. For example, if the longest time is 2:30, the server will broadcast in chat 2 minutes and 30 seconds before the shutdown.

Practical Application

These options are most useful in conjunction with a script that updates and restarts the server in a loop. For example, this Windows .bat script can be placed in the steamcmd folder to infinitely update and restart the server:

 1@echo off
 2rem @ suppresses echo command from being echoed, and then disables echoing in this script.
 3
 4rem This is a label for use with "goto". The script will return to this label to update and restart the server.
 5:loop
 6
 7rem %~dp0 expands to the path to this script's directory, allowing it to be called from a different working directory.
 8rem The "/wait" option pauses our script until steamcmd is finished.
 9rem Start steamcmd, download latest version of Unturned Dedicated Server, then close cleanly.
10echo Updating...
11start "" /wait "%~dp0steamcmd.exe" +login anonymous +app_update 1110390 +quit
12
13echo Finished update! Launching server...
14start "" /wait "%~dp0steamapps\common\U3DS\Unturned.exe" -batchmode -nographics +InternetServer/MyServer
15
16echo Server has exited. Restarting after timeout...
17echo:
18echo Press CTRL+C and then Y during this timeout to cancel restart.
19timeout 10
20
21rem Return to the "loop" label to update and restart the server.
22goto loop

Here’s a similar example for Linux, tested on Ubuntu. Note that the U3DS install path may be different depending how steamcmd was installed and whether +force_install_dir was specified, but typically one of these locations:

  1. ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/U3DS

  2. ~/Steam/steamapps/common/U3DS

As such, it may be helpful to create a symbolic link to the U3DS directory:

ln -s ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/U3DS ~/U3DS

OR

ln -s ~/Steam/steamapps/common/U3DS ~/U3DS

This example script assumes the symbolic link exists at ~/U3DS.

  1. Save script as MyServer.sh in your home directory (e.g., nano ~/MyServer.sh):

 1#! /usr/bin/bash
 2while true; do
 3        echo Updating...
 4        steamcmd +login anonymous +app_update 1110390 -validate +quit
 5
 6        echo Finished update! Launching server...
 7        cd ~/U3DS
 8        source ServerHelper.sh +InternetServer/MyServer
 9
10        echo Server has exited. Restarting after timeout...
11        echo Press Ctrl+C during this timeout to cancel restart.
12        read -t 10
13done

  1. Open a screen to run the server in with screen -S MyServer.

  2. Run script with bash MyServer.sh.

  3. If everything’s working OK, press Ctrl + A then D to detach, leaving the script running.

  4. You can re-attach to the screen with screen -r MyServer.