The Active players card says No answer from the server on Project Zomboid

The Active players card reads the player list from the game. When it says No answer from the server, the panel could not read who is on. The card shows a text it shares with other games: "The panel reads who is on from the server console and cannot tell right now: the server is starting or stopped, or it restarted while the panel was not recording. The list comes back after the next restart." For Project Zomboid the panel really asks the game over Steam's server query first, and over the remote console (RCON) when that query gets no answer. If the server is online and the message stays, both failed: the usual cause is a changed RCON Password that the game has not read yet, on a start where the game does not answer Steam queries.

Steps

1. Look at the badge. If it says Starting, Stopping or Offline, wait or start the server. The card comes back when the server is running.
2. Check the Console for RCON: listening on port .... Without that line, the remote console is not up yet.
3. If you changed RCON Password under Settings, then Game Settings, restart the server. The game reads the password at the start: How to change the RCON password of your Project Zomboid server.
4. Wait a few minutes. After a failure the panel waits before it asks again: about a minute and a half, and up to about ten minutes when the game refused the password. So the card can take a little while to recover once the server is back.

If it stays

• Make sure RCON Port and RCON Password have values in Game Settings. The port is assigned by PlayNHost and read only.
• Compare with the Console: type players in the Console. If the game answers Players connected (n):, the game is fine and the problem is only the panel's link. Open a ticket and mention that.
• Kick, ban, access level and whitelist actions use the same link. Until it works, use the Console commands: Project Zomboid admin commands that work.

Not the same as an empty server

Nobody is online means the game answered and no one is playing: How to see who is online on your Project Zomboid server.