Console and commands

The Console tab is the live output of your server, as it happens, plus a box to type commands into. It is the page to have open whenever you are working on the server.

Starting the server#

Four buttons sit under the output.

• Start brings the server up. Watch the output while it does.
• Restart stops it and starts it again. This is how you pick up a change you made to a config file or a startup setting.
• Stop asks the server to shut down properly, so it saves first.
• Kill cuts the process off at once.

Kill asks you to confirm, and you should read the warning. Anything the server was holding in memory, such as recent world or player changes, is lost. Use Stop unless the server has stopped responding.

The first start after a server is built takes longer than the rest, because most games download the bulk of themselves on that first run. Let it finish.

Reading the output#

The console streams live. The label in the bottom right tells you where the connection stands: Streaming live, Connecting to your server, Reconnecting or Not connected. If it drops, it reconnects on its own.

It holds the last 2000 lines. Scroll up and a button appears telling you how many new lines have arrived while you were reading. Click it to jump back to the bottom.

The output starts from the moment you open the page, not from the start of the server's life. For the whole log, look in the server's own log files on the Files tab.

Sending commands#

Type into the Command box at the bottom and press Enter. The command goes straight to the server exactly as if you had typed it on its own console.

Do not put a leading slash on it. In the console you type say hello, not /say hello, even though in the game chat you would use the slash.

Press the up arrow to bring back earlier commands. It remembers your last hundred.

The box only works while the server is running. There is nothing listening when it is off.

Commands are limited to 1024 characters and to 60 a minute.

Some commands you will want#

These depend entirely on what you run, so check the documentation for your own game. A few common ones:

say The server restarts in 5 minutes
stop
list
save-all

stop is usually safer than the Stop button for games that want a clean shutdown command, because it is the game's own shutdown path.

When the console will not connect#

The page says the server is offline. That is not a connection problem. Press Start.

It says reconnecting and stays there. Reload the page. If it still will not settle, the server itself may be in a bad state. Try Restart.

It says it asked for a new session too often. You have reloaded the page a lot in a short time. Wait a moment and it tries again on its own.

The service is suspended. The console is read only until the invoice is settled. You can still see the output.

What is written down#

Starting, stopping, restarting, killing and every command you send are written to the activity log, with your name and the time. So is anyone else's. If you share the server, that is how you see who did what.