MINECRAFT · SETTING
How to Restart a Minecraft Server Safely
This doc covers restarting your server the right way so you don't lose world data or corrupt files.
QUICK ANSWER
Run save-all then stop from Console. Never kill the process.
Fact
Killing the process instead of running stop is the most common cause of world corruption on hosted servers.
Fact
Long uptime without a restart lets TPS drift down over time, even with no change in player count, a nightly restart usually fixes this.
Steps
- 1Open Console.
- 2Run
save-all. - 3Wait for it to get executed
- 4Run stop.
- 5Start it again once offline.
For automatic restarts, go to Schedules, add a task for save-all, then a second task a few seconds later for stop, and set it for low traffic hours like 3 AM to 5 AM.
save-all flushes the world to disk before shutdown, skipping it risks losing recent chunks. Killing the process instead of stop is the most common cause of world corruption, see how to reset your world if that ever happens. Long uptime without a restart also lets TPS drift down over time, see fixing server lag.
Verify
Console should show a clean startup log with no corruption warnings after restart.
If it doesn't work
- Server doesn't come back online. Schedule is missing a start step.
- Lost recent changes. Process was killed, or stop ran before save finished, add a delay between the two.
- TPS still drops before next restart. Add a second restart at another low traffic hour.
- Players disconnected with no warning. Add a say broadcast a minute before stop.
Do I need to run save-all before stop?
Yes. It flushes the world to disk first, skipping it risks losing recent chunk changes if stop doesn't shut down cleanly.
How do I set up automatic nightly restarts?
Go to Schedules, add a save-all task, then a stop task a few seconds after, and set it for low traffic hours like 3 AM to 5 AM.
