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Server won't connect

Adding or editing a server checks only the address fields — RCON host and SFTP host — for whether they point into a private network. If one does, the save is refused with Address must not point into a private network shown on that field. Nothing else is checked at save time: not the RCON password, not the SFTP credentials, not whether the Game server folder is right, and not whether either service actually responds. A server with a wrong password or a wrong folder saves successfully.

A refused save keeps none of the connection changes from that save; the previous details stay. When you add a server, the server is created first, so after a refused address it already exists without a connection. The form stays open: fix the address and click Create server (or Add server in the dialog on Settings → Servers) again, and no second server is added. An edit that touches no connection field, such as a change of config management, does not check the addresses at all.

Once a server exists, heliana polls it. The server’s header on the Dashboard carries one summary pill: Connected while every channel is fine, otherwise the worst one by name, such as RCON down. Click it to open the list of channels — RCON, SFTP, and on servers with Config managed by heliana a third, Config. Each row has a status dot, the state written out, what the channel is for, and (for RCON and SFTP) when it last answered (last OK). Hover a channel: it shows the transport’s last error when heliana recorded one, and the status word otherwise. The status is one of these:

Status word Written next to the dot Meaning
down Down The last poll of this channel failed — including a channel that has never answered.
misconfigured Misconfigured The collector reported the channel’s settings as unusable.
unconfigured Not configured Required fields for this channel were never filled in.
pending Pending The channel is configured, but this poll didn’t go out to your server.
unknown Unknown heliana’s collector didn’t answer, or said nothing about this channel.
ok OK The channel answered on the last poll.

Only OK is green and only Pending is grey — Down, Misconfigured, Not configured and Unknown all show a red dot. The summary pill is red when the worst channel is Down, Misconfigured or Not configured, and grey when it is only Pending or Unknown. When a channel is down, a red strip under the header says which channel it is, what is not updating, and links to Open server settings.

The Config row is about the last write of Admins.cfg, and its dot is green, grey or red. Hovering it shows “Applied” with the date and time when green, Changes are waiting to be applied. when grey, and The last apply failed: <reason>. when red, with Changes are still waiting. added when changes are queued. Servers with the switch off show no Config row.

  • Confirm RCON host is the server’s public IP or a hostname that resolves publicly — not a LAN address.
  • Confirm RCON port matches Port= in Rcon.cfg (default 21114).
  • Confirm RCON password matches Password= in Rcon.cfg exactly — it’s case-sensitive.
  • Confirm bEnabled=True in Rcon.cfg and that the RCON port accepts inbound TCP. See Configure RCON.

The SFTP channel has three states and no more: unconfigured (the Game server folder was left empty), pending (the channel is configured) and unknown (heliana’s collector didn’t answer at all). heliana does not open an SFTP session just to paint a dot, so a configured SFTP channel stays grey pending — that is its healthy state, not a problem waiting to be fixed. It never turns green, and it never turns red on a bad credential.

The consequence is worth spelling out: a wrong SFTP password, a wrong SFTP host or port, and a wrong Game server folder show up in no channel status at all. Their only symptom is an empty Live feed, and the checklist for that is No events are coming in, which goes through the SFTP credentials and the folder one by one.