Terminology
Shared vocabulary for the console, backend logs, audit evidence, and player investigations. Use these meanings when writing an incident note or escalation.
Operational terms
| Term | Definition | Operator implication |
|---|---|---|
| Server | The running 7 Days to Die game process and its world, players, console, and native save files. | A backend response does not prove that the game process has applied a change. |
| Backend | The ServerAdmin mod/API process that stores data, runs jobs, exposes Swagger, and communicates with the game process. | Check backend reachability, logs, and feature state before diagnosing the frontend. |
| Frontend | The browser-based administration console that calls the backend API. | Browser time, locale, and cached client code can affect display without changing server execution. |
| Feature module | A ServerAdmin capability that can be enabled, disabled, initialized, and permission-gated independently. | A missing menu or rejected request can be an intentional module state. |
| Runtime state | In-memory state held by the running backend or game process, such as registered jobs, cooldowns, pending restarts, and undo entries. | Restarting or reloading can rebuild it; do not treat it as durable history. |
| Audit log | A record of an administrator or system action with source, target, reason, result, and time when available. | Use it to attribute a change; redact identifiers when exporting evidence. |
| Game event log | A record of supported gameplay lifecycle events such as player login, joins, leaves, deaths, and kills. | Use it for lifecycle evidence; read Chat History for chat and Player Tracking for item acquisition sources. It is separate from who changed an admin setting. |
| Cron | The five-field schedule expression used by a registered backend job, for example 0 5 * * *. | The expression has no inherent time zone; pair it with TimeZoneId and validate the runtime history. |
| Time zone | The zone used to interpret a schedule and render a date, such as UTC or Asia/Shanghai. | An empty value may fall back to the server local zone; a browser can display another zone. |
| Retention | The policy that removes old history rows, logs, backups, or records after a configured period. | A missing old row may be retention, not a failed write; verify the configured period first. |
| Snapshot | A point-in-time copy of a player's or system's current state, such as inventory, profile, or metrics. | A snapshot answers “what was present then,” not necessarily “where each item was first created.” |
| Acquisition record | A record that attributes an item gain to a supported source event, quantity, time, and optional coordinate. | Use it as investigation evidence; a gap is not proof of unauthorized behavior. |
| Loot container | An entity-backed drop container, such as a zombie or other entity drop, that can be observed as an item source. | Coordinates can be recorded when the source event supplies them. |
| Recovery | The controlled process of restoring service or data from a backup, history, undo entry, or documented rollback. | Verify the artifact and target before applying recovery; record the operator and result. |
Evidence terms
NextRunAt: A calculated next-run timestamp shown by the API or UI. It is a display hint; the savedCronExpressionandTimeZoneIddetermine scheduling.TriggerSource: The origin of a run, such asCronorManual, used to distinguish scheduled and operator-triggered actions.- Run history: The status and detail rows for restart, scheduler, backup, or event-automation executions. A suppressed event may intentionally have no row.
- Player tracking: The acquisition view in a player workflow. It focuses on supported item-source observations and does not follow every later transfer or stack merge.
- Source coordinate: The location supplied by a supported source event. It can be empty when the game or a mod does not expose a reliable position.
Usage rules
- Name the source of evidence: audit log, game event log, run history, snapshot, or live-server check.
- Record the applicable time zone alongside any schedule or timestamp.
- Separate a missing observation from a confirmed negative result. Keep the escalation boundary explicit.