Get server alerts in Telegram

What you get

The Kantru Server Launcher watches the servers it started. When one exits without being asked to, or a log line shows a failure a process watcher cannot see - a database connection dropping, a server unable to reach another - the launcher can send that to a Telegram chat. It is the difference between learning about a crash from a message and learning about it from a player.

Alerts are per server. A row with alerts switched off stays silent even while the rest report, which is what you want for a test subserver you restart all day.

Nothing about this sends your licence key, your database or player data. The message carries the server name, what happened, and the exit code or log line behind it.

Create the bot

A bot is free and takes about a minute. You will end up with a token that looks like 8123456789:AAH-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

1. In Telegram, open a chat with @BotFather.
2. Send /newbot and follow the two questions: a display name, then a username ending in "bot".
3. BotFather replies with the token. Keep it private - anyone holding it can post as your bot.

Choose where the alerts land

Send them to a group rather than to yourself. A group survives you changing phones, and you can add whoever else runs the server without touching the launcher again.

1. Create a group, or open the one you want to use.
2. Add your new bot to it as a member.
3. Send one message in the group so it exists as far as the bot is concerned.
4. Open the group in Telegram Web and copy the number from the address bar. A group id starts with -100.

Posting into one topic

If the group has Topics turned on, alerts can go to a single thread instead of the main chat. The topic is a separate number: Telegram calls it the message thread id, and it is NOT part of the chat id. A chat id copied out of a topic link posts to General unless the topic is given as well.

You do not have to separate them by hand. Paste the whole link into the launcher’s Chat ID box - the launcher splits "-1004291961406/?topic=86", "-1004291961406#86" and a full t.me link into the chat and the topic for you.

Enter it in the launcher

Two switches have to agree before anything is sent: the global one in this panel, and the per-server one in the list.

1. Open the Kantru Server Launcher and click Telegram Settings.
2. Turn "Send alerts" on. With it off, nothing is sent and no row raises anything.
3. Paste the bot token into Bot token, and the group into Chat ID. Fill Topic ID only if you are using a thread and did not paste a link that carried it.
4. Press Send Test. A message appears in the chat within a second or two; if it does not, the launcher log says why on the line above.
5. Press Save.
6. In the server list, switch on the Telegram column for each server you want alerts from.

Where the settings are stored

Everything lands in telegram.xml beside Launcher.exe. The bot token is encrypted with Windows DPAPI under the account that saved it, so copying telegram.xml to another machine, or running the launcher as a different Windows user, leaves the token unreadable - open the panel and enter it again under that account.

The launcher can also send one message and report what happened without opening its window, which is useful from a scheduled task: run Launcher.exe --test-alert.

When the alerts are quiet

A test that never arrives is almost always one of four things: alerts switched off, the bot not a member of the group, a chat id without the leading -100, or a topic id belonging to a different group. The launcher logs the failure for each attempt rather than failing silently, so check the Alerts lines in the log first.

A test that arrives while real events do not usually means the per-server Telegram column is off for that row, or that the server is being stopped deliberately: asking a server to stop is not a failure and does not raise an alert.

Telegram rate-limits bots. A server crash-looping produces one message per restart, so if you have set a high restart count expect the alerts to arrive in bursts.