Schedules

Schedules run commands and power actions on a timer, for example a restart every night at 05:00 or a backup every 6 hours. You set them up once and the panel does the rest.

How a schedule looks

The Schedules page lists your schedules. Each one shows:

• its name
• Last run at, which says never until it has run once
• the five cron fields: MINUTE, HOUR, DAY (MONTH), MONTH and DAY (WEEK)
• a status: ACTIVE or inactive

If you have none yet the page says there are no schedules configured for this server.

Create a schedule

1. Open Schedules and click Create schedule.
2. Give it a name you will recognize, such as Nightly restart.
3. Fill in the five cron fields (see below).
4. Keep it active and save it.
5. Open the schedule and add one or more tasks.

The cron fields

Each field says when the schedule runs. A * means "every".

Field	Allowed values	Meaning
MINUTE	0-59	Minute of the hour
HOUR	0-23	Hour of the day, 24-hour clock
DAY (MONTH)	1-31	Day of the month
MONTH	1-12	Month of the year
DAY (WEEK)	0-6 (or 1-7)	Day of the week. Check the value of Sunday on your screen before relying on it.

Useful patterns:

• */30 in MINUTE means every 30 minutes.
• 0,30 means at minute 0 and minute 30.
• 1-5 in DAY (WEEK) means a range of days.

Examples

What you want	MINUTE	HOUR	DAY (MONTH)	MONTH	DAY (WEEK)
Every day at 05:00	0	5	*	*	*
Every 30 minutes	*/30	*	*	*	*
Every 6 hours, on the hour	0	*/6	*	*	*
Every day at 04:00 and 16:00	0	4,16	*	*	*
First day of every month at 03:00	0	3	1	*	*

note

Do not assume the time is your local time. After saving, check the Next run time of the schedule and compare it with the clock you expect. Adjust the hour until it matches.

Tasks

A schedule does nothing by itself until you add tasks to it. A task can be:

• Send command: types a command in the server console, for example say Restarting in 5 minutes or save-all.
• Power action: Start, Restart, Stop or Kill the server.
• Create backup: makes a backup. This needs a free backup slot.

Tasks run in order. Each task has a time offset, a wait counted from the previous task, so you can chain steps.

Example: warned restart every day at 05:00

Create a schedule named Daily restart with MINUTE 0, HOUR 5, and * in the other fields. Add these tasks:

1. Send command say The server restarts in 1 minute, offset 0 seconds.
2. Send command save-all, offset 55 seconds (Minecraft).
3. Power action Restart, offset 5 seconds.

Offsets count from the previous task, so these steps run roughly one minute after the schedule starts.

Example: backup before restart

1. Create backup, offset 0.
2. Power action Restart, with an offset long enough for the backup to finish (a few minutes for a big server).

Tips

• Keep a schedule inactive while you test it, then switch it on.
• Do not schedule a backup every few minutes. Your plan has a limited number of backup slots, so delete old ones you no longer need from Backups.
• Do not restart too often. Once a day is plenty for most servers.
• If a schedule did not run, check Last run at and that the schedule is active.

Related pages

• Console
• Backups
• Panel overview