PterodactylPowerAction

A Velocity plugin to start and stop servers using the Pterodactyl client API.

How it works

This plugin will stop a server after a given delay (1 hour by default) if it is empty after a player left or changed server.

When a player tries to connect to a stopped server, they will be redirected to a waiting server such as Limbo and will be automatically redirected to the requested server once it is started.

If the player is already connected on the network, they will simply be informed by a message that they will be automatically redirected once the server is ready.

If the server fails to start, the player will be informed to try again.

This plugin is also able to redirect your player that has been kicked from a backend server to the waiting server, this is toggleable in the configuration file.

Configuration

Pterodactyl Panel

If you have a Pterodactyl Panel to manage your servers, you can use this method.

First, create a client API key which can be found under "Account Settings" then "API Credentials", the URL path should be /account/api.

Configure a waiting server in your velocity.toml file, such as:

[servers]
limbo = "127.0.0.1:30066"

Install the plugin on your Velocity proxy, a default configuration file will be created when the proxy is started. Finally edit the plugin's configuration file to include your Pterodactyl credentials.

type: "pterodactyl" # Can also be "shell", see the README for more information
# Create a new client API key which can be found under "Account Settings" then " API Credentials", the URL path should be https://pterodactyl.test/account/api.
pterodactyl_api_key: "ptlc_xxx"
pterodactyl_client_api_base_url: "https://pterodactyl.test/api/client" # No trailing slash
servers:
  # "survival" is the name of the configured server in your "velocity.toml" file
  # "abc" should be replaced with the identifier of your server in Pterodactyl
  # this can be found in the URL such as: https://pterodactyl.test/server/:server_id
  # where ":server_id" is the identifier of the server
  survival: "abc"
waiting_server_name: "limbo" # "limbo" is the name of the configured server in your "velocity.toml" file
maximum_ping_duration: 60 # in seconds
shutdown_after_duration: 3600 # in seconds
redirect_to_waiting_server_on_kick: true

Shell commands

If you don't have a Pterodactyl panel, and you are running servers directly from the Linux shell, you can modify the plugin's configuration to instead run shell commands.

This has not been tested on Windows and please note that the cd command will not work, you will have to use the working_directory setting instead.

Here is an example using docker compose to manager servers:

type: "shell"
servers:
  survival:
    # "working_directory" can be omitted and the current working directory will be used instead
    working_directory: /path/to/docker/compose
    start: docker compose start survival
    stop: docker compose stop survival
waiting_server_name: "limbo"
maximum_ping_duration: 60 # in seconds
shutdown_after_duration: 3600 # in seconds
redirect_to_waiting_server_on_kick: true

Motivations

I am running Minecraft servers on dedicated hardware at home, and I wanted to save energy costs by stopping empty servers.

My Limbo server is running on a low power ARM Single Board Computer to further save costs.