Q: My RAM keeps increasing, and the server keeps crashing, what the h*** do I do?

An issue that generally isn't fun to fix. So we made an article on how to deal with it.

Glad you asked.

Alright, so this issue can be from a number of different things. Here's the list of possible causes:

  • You have a corrupt plugin, or file being executed which is making the RAM increase a lot;

  • Your server jar file is corrupt (if you haven't experimented/changed your server jar then just ignore this).

  • You in general don't have enough RAM. There may be tons of plugins on your server and your server doesn't have enough RAM to handle all the plugins at once. Or you don't have enough Base RAM to run the server in the first place.

Things we recommend to diagnose and check where the "imposter" (quote from many customers) is:

  • Backup the server (every server with SkylarNodes has at least 1 backup free of charge) before doing any changes.

  • Delete plugins 1 by 1 to see if there's any difference in RAM. Check the RAM graph in the console (restarting the server for every plugin you delete) to see if the graph is going up and down, or still rapidly increasing.

Making a backup is recommended so if any accidents happen while playing around to check for the faulty plugin, you'll have a backup to revert to.

To prevent these sort of things from happening:

  • Make sure the plugins you download are up-to-date with the Minecraft version and compatible with the Minecraft server software (e.g. Paper, Spigot) your using;

  • Make sure the author of the plugin is legitimate and the plugin is stable to use in-production.

The side effects we noticed from the random RAM increase:

  • Every time a player joined, the RAM increase got worse and worse;

  • Lag increased dramatically and packet errors flood the console from time to time;

  • Near when the server reaches its limit, the server gets killed, or packet errors come up on the console for every player possible until the server crashes / stops.

If you think you have an issue relating to this and this article didn't help fix it, please contact us. Double check though that it isn't your plugins causing this before diving in to ask for support.

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