Nexal Restarts

A scheduled server restart manager with player warnings, configurable notifications, and graceful shutdown handling for Minecraft Paper and Spigot servers.

Requirements

Nexal Restarts stops the server (Bukkit.shutdown()); it does not start it again. The server comes back only when something restarts the process:

• Hosting panels (Pterodactyl, Pelican, most Minecraft hosts): turn on the panel's auto-restart / crash detection, or schedule a start after the stop. Most panels restart a server that stops on its own.
• Your own machine: run the server in a loop script or as a service that restarts on exit, e.g. while true; do java -jar server.jar; sleep 5; done, or a systemd unit with Restart=always.

Features

1. Cron-based Scheduled Restarts - Flexible scheduling using cron expressions with timezone support
2. Configurable Warning Intervals - Alerts at any times before a restart (30min, 10min, 5min, 1min, 30s by default)
3. Multi-channel Notifications - Chat messages, titles, subtitles, actionbar and sounds, each with its own toggle
4. Live Final Countdown - Actionbar countdown with title flashes during the last 10 seconds
5. Graceful Shutdown - Run commands globally, per world and per player, then kick players with a message
6. Manual Restarts - /restart admin in 5m schedules a restart with the usual warnings
7. Instant Restart - /restart admin now restarts right away
8. Cancel Restarts - /restart admin cancel cancels a manual restart, or skips a scheduled one; the schedule resumes with the next occurrence
9. Admin GUI - /restart admin opens a hub to schedule, cancel or trigger restarts, see the status, and change the settings (schedule, cron, timezone, warning intervals, notifications)
10. Restart Status - /restart status shows the next restart time
11. PlaceholderAPI Support - Placeholders for the next restart, countdown and status
12. Hot-reload Configuration - Config and messages reload when saved, keeping any pending restart
13. Proxy Sync - Share schedules, restarts and cancels across servers behind BungeeCord or Velocity
14. Server Exemption - Mark servers as exempt from receiving sync commands (master/slave setup)

Technologies

• Paper/Spigot API 1.20.1+ - Minecraft server API
• nexal-core - Help menu and license check
• Utilizer - Configuration, messages, GUIs, tasks
• ACF - Annotation Command Framework
• cron4j - Cron expression parsing
• PlaceholderAPI - Placeholder integration (optional)

Commands

Player Commands

Command	Description	Permission
/restart or /restart help	Show help information	None
/restart status	View next restart time	nexalrestarts.status

Admin Commands

Command	Description	Permission
/restart admin	Open the admin GUI (shows the admin help in the console)	nexalrestarts.admin
/restart admin help [page]	Show the admin commands	nexalrestarts.admin
/restart admin in \<time>	Schedule a restart (e.g. 5m, 1h)	nexalrestarts.restart
/restart admin now	Restart immediately	nexalrestarts.restart.now
/restart admin cancel	Cancel the pending restart	nexalrestarts.cancel

Proxy Sync Commands

Command	Description	Permission
/restart admin sync	Send this server's schedule (cron, timezone, on/off) to all other servers	nexalrestarts.sync
/restart admin sync restart <time|now>	Restart all servers, this one included (at least 5 seconds, or now)	nexalrestarts.sync
/restart admin sync cancel	Cancel the restart on all servers, this one included	nexalrestarts.sync

/restart has the aliases /nexalrestart and /ar. There is no reload command: config.yml and messages.yml reload by themselves when saved.

Time Format Examples

• 30s - 30 seconds
• 5m - 5 minutes
• 1h - 1 hour
• 1d - 1 day

Pending and cancelled restarts

A restart is pending when it was scheduled with /restart admin in, or when a scheduled restart is within its warning window (by default 30 minutes away). /restart admin cancel cancels a pending manual restart and skips a pending scheduled one; the schedule carries on with the following occurrence.

Admin GUI

/restart admin opens the hub:

• Configuration (nexalrestarts.config): the settings screen
  • Toggles for the schedule, final countdown, kicking players, chat, titles, actionbar, sounds and proxy sync
  • Cron Expression: left click cycles through common schedules, right click to type your own in chat
  • Timezone: left click cycles through common timezones, right click to type your own in chat
  • Warning Intervals: turn each warning time on or off
• Plugin Info: schedule, next restart, pending restart, proxy sync and version
• Schedule Restart (nexalrestarts.restart): restart in 1m, 5m, 10m, 15m, 30m, 1h or 2h
• Cancel Restart (nexalrestarts.cancel): cancel the pending restart
• Restart Now (nexalrestarts.restart.now): shift left click to restart right away

Permissions

Permission	Description	Default
nexalrestarts.status	View restart status	true
nexalrestarts.admin	Admin GUI and admin help; grants all the admin permissions below	op
nexalrestarts.restart	Schedule manual restarts	op
nexalrestarts.restart.now	Instant restart	op
nexalrestarts.cancel	Cancel restarts	op
nexalrestarts.sync	Sync across proxy servers	op
nexalrestarts.config	Change the settings in the admin GUI	op
nexalrestarts.*	All permissions	op

Placeholders

Requires PlaceholderAPI.

Placeholder	Description
%nexalrestarts_next%	Next restart time (formatted), or None
%nexalrestarts_countdown%	Time until restart (e.g. "5m 30s"), or None
%nexalrestarts_seconds%	Raw seconds until restart
%nexalrestarts_pending%	"true" while a restart is pending, else "false"
%nexalrestarts_scheduled%	Same as %nexalrestarts_pending%
%nexalrestarts_enabled%	"true" if any restart is coming up

Configuration

config.yml

# Cron schedule for automatic restarts
schedule:
  enabled: true
  # Timezone for cron schedule (default: Europe/Athens)
  # Find your timezone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones
  timezone: "Europe/Athens"
  # Examples:
  #   "0 */6 * * *"     - Every 6 hours
  #   "0 0,12 * * *"    - Twice daily (midnight and noon)
  #   "0 4 * * *"       - Daily at 4:00 AM
  cron: "0 */6 * * *"

# Warning intervals in seconds before restart. Each uses its own
# warnings.\<seconds> entry in messages.yml, or warnings.default without one.
warnings:
  - 1800  # 30 minutes
  - 600   # 10 minutes
  - 300   # 5 minutes
  - 60    # 1 minute
  - 30    # 30 seconds

# Final countdown (last 10 seconds). When off, the restart still happens on time.
final-countdown:
  enabled: true
  title-at: [10, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1]

# Notification channels
notifications:
  chat: true
  title: true
  actionbar: true
  sound: true

# Graceful shutdown
shutdown:
  kick-players: true
  commands:
    global:
      - "save-all"
    per-world: []      # %world% placeholder
    per-player: []     # %player% placeholder

# How times are shown in messages and placeholders.
# A part that is 0 is left out (1h instead of 1h 0m).
time-format:
  hours: "%hours%h %minutes%m"
  minutes: "%minutes%m %seconds%s"
  seconds: "%seconds%s"

messages.yml

Every message is customizable in MiniMessage format (<gradient:#E67E22:#EB984E>, \<bold>, \<white>), and can carry:

• message (one line or a list), title, subtitle, actionbar
• sound, plus volume and pitch for the warnings and the countdown
• fade-in, stay, fade-out for titles

The colors are listed at the top of the file for find-and-replace. Warnings are keyed by their seconds (warnings.600); any interval without its own entry uses warnings.default, with %time% as the time left.

When an update brings new messages, they are added to your messages.yml on startup; entries you already have are left as they are. To get changes to existing messages (such as new sounds), rename your messages.yml and let the plugin generate a fresh one.

Cron Expression Guide

Cron expressions follow the format: minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week

Field	Values
Minute	0-59
Hour	0-23
Day of Month	1-31
Month	1-12
Day of Week	0-6 (0 = Sunday)

Common Examples

Expression	Description
0 */6 * * *	Every 6 hours
0 0,12 * * *	Midnight and noon
0 4 * * *	Daily at 4:00 AM
0 3 * * 0	Every Sunday at 3:00 AM
30 */4 * * *	Every 4 hours at :30
0 0 * * 1-5	Weekdays at midnight

Installation

1. Download the plugin JAR
2. Place in /plugins folder
3. Make sure your host or start script restarts the server when it stops (see Requirements)
4. Start/restart server
5. Set your schedule with /restart admin → Configuration, or in config.yml
6. Customize messages in messages.yml; changes apply when you save the file

Proxy Sync

Synchronize restart schedules, restarts and cancels across multiple servers connected via BungeeCord or Velocity.

Configuration

proxy-sync:
  enabled: true
  server-name: "survival"  # Unique name for this server
  secret: "change-me-to-a-long-random-value"  # The same on every server
  exempt: false            # Set true to ignore incoming syncs (master server)
  receive:
    schedule: true         # Accept schedule syncs
    restart: true          # Accept restart commands
    cancel: true           # Accept cancel commands
  auto-sync-on-reload: false

How it works

1. Enable proxy sync on all servers
2. Give each server a unique server-name
3. Set the same secret on every server. Sync stays off while it is empty
4. Use /restart admin sync to send your schedule (cron, timezone and on/off) to all servers; they save it to their config.yml
5. Use /restart admin sync restart 5m to restart all servers, including the one you run it on (/restart admin sync cancel cancels it everywhere)
6. Set exempt: true on master servers that shouldn't receive syncs

Messages travel through the proxy's BungeeCord plugin channel (Forward), which players cannot send on, and each one is signed with the secret. On Velocity, keep bungee-plugin-message-channel = true in velocity.toml (the default). Plugin messages always travel through a player, so the sending server needs a player online, and only servers with a player online receive the message. Online staff with nexalrestarts.admin on the receiving servers are told what arrived.