Troubleshooting

Raven reports almost everything through the server console, so this page is arranged by the line or the behaviour you see. Each area gets a table of symptom, likely cause and what to check. The two situations that need more than a table row, a license that expired while the server was up and a subscription inside its renewal grace, are written out at the end.

First checks

These console commands answer most of it before you change anything. All of them are console only, and in game rac on its own opens the admin menu instead.

Commands covers the rest, including rac ban, rac kick, rac unban and rac clear.

Dashboard connection

Raven connects out to wss://ws.ravenac.net, so there is nothing to expose, forward or point at a proxy. From resource 1.8.9 that socket and the self-update requests both verify the certificate, so a firewall or proxy that intercepts HTTPS breaks them instead of passing them through. The resource retries on its own, starting at about a second and backing off to thirty, and it never prints the reason the cloud refused a socket, which is why a connection that will not come up has to be diagnosed from this table rather than from the console.

Start-up and verification

Raven logs in to the cloud before it loads anything else. It tries up to ten times, 30 seconds apart, but only keeps retrying when the refusal could change on its own, which means a rate limit or a server error. A settled refusal such as a wrong key or an expired license stops at the first attempt. When it gives up it prints the reason and then shuts the server down after a 15-second countdown, so a verification problem takes the whole server with it rather than leaving it running unprotected.

License expiry and renewal

An expired license is the one failure that changes what Raven does rather than just what it prints, so it gets the three sections below: what happens when the license runs out mid session, what the renewal grace covers, and which cases get no grace at all.

Raven stopped and says the license has expired

When your license runs out while the server is up, Raven stops itself and nothing else. On a subscription it can first keep running for up to three days past the expiry date while the renewal is charged, as explained below. A one-time purchase stops at the date itself, and a refund or chargeback that leaves your license with no time left ends it the same way, with no grace. The FiveM server and every other resource keep running, and Raven starts no new kick, ban or warning on the way out, though a kick or ban it had already decided can still drop that player. The console shows:

[Raven Anticheat] Error: Your Raven Anticheat license has expired.
[Raven Anticheat] Warning: Raven Anticheat is stopping now. Your server keeps running, only the anticheat stops.
[Raven Anticheat] Info: Renew your license at www.ravenac.net, then start the anticheat again with "ensure rac".

About three seconds later the resource stops, the same as if you had typed stop rac. The pause lets the part of Raven that runs inside your other resources stop sending events to it first. Its server and client scripts, its NUI on every player's game, its exports and commands, the in-game menu and every detection go with it. Your convar list then carries RAC:Licence:Stop set to stop rac. That is the stop command Raven queued, and it does nothing on its own.

To bring it back, renew at www.ravenac.net, then run ensure rac in the server console, with your resource name if you renamed it. Restarting the whole server works too.

Raven stops only when the cloud confirms the expiry, which it treats as confirmed only by a 403 answer whose body says the license has expired. It can learn that from the answer to any request it makes to www.ravenac.net/api/ other than the start-up login, from the dashboard connection, where the cloud sweeps its connected servers once a minute, or by asking for itself once the Expires Date it printed at start-up comes round. When it asks and the license is still valid, because you renewed in the meantime or a subscription is still inside its grace, it keeps running and asks again every 15 minutes. A network error, a timeout or a cloud outage never stops it.

Raven stops itself through the server console, so it needs the add_ace resource.rac command allow line from the Installation guide. Without that line, with a resource name the stop command cannot take (anything beyond letters, digits, dots, dashes and underscores), or if the resource is still running ten seconds after it asked to be stopped, Raven stays loaded but stands down. It bans, kicks, warns, reports and screenshots nobody, and players joining are let in without its ban check. After the three lines above, the console names the reason and says what to do:

[Raven Anticheat] Error: Raven Anticheat could not stop itself: resource.rac is not allowed to run console commands.
[Raven Anticheat] Error: Stop it now with "stop rac" in the server console. To let it stop itself, add this line to server.cfg: add_ace resource.rac command allow
[Raven Anticheat] Warning: Until then it stays loaded but has stood down and takes no action against any player.

Run that stop, add the line so it can stop itself next time, then renew and start it again.

A license that had already expired when the server started, and is not a subscription inside its grace, is refused at verification instead, which is the Reason: row in the table above. Renew, then start the server again.

The dashboard says Renewal pending

That is the renewal grace, and only a server on a subscription gets it. A monthly license counts 30 days and a quarterly one 90, but the subscription is charged once a calendar month, or once every three, so the expiry date can come round a day or so before the renewal is paid, and a payment that fails is tried again later. To cover that, a server on a subscription keeps running for up to three days past its expiry date. Raven works as usual in that time: detections, bans, kicks, the ban check on joining players and the dashboard connection all carry on, and a restart verifies as normal, though the Expires Date it prints at start-up has already passed.

On the dashboard the server still reads Online or Offline by its connection, and its License Information panel says Renewal pending with the date it is covered until. The Players List, Multi Stream and Map Interaction tabs open as usual, and bans, kicks, messages, settings and IP reset requests all go through. The Resources page and entity cleanup, on the World page and the server home, work as usual too. Nothing needs doing unless the renewal payment failed, which Manage billing in User Settings shows as past due. Then update the payment method there before the three days are up. When the renewal is paid, its time is added from that moment and the dashboard shows the license as active again. If it has still not been paid three days after the expiry date, Raven stops as described above, and once the payment goes through you can start it again with ensure rac.

Cases that get no grace

The grace is read from the subscription payments behind the license, so anything that is not a live subscription paying for the current period ends at the expiry date itself. The grace does not lift a suspension either.

Players and connections

Detections and punishments

Players kicked for missed heartbeats

The reason Missed too many heartbeats means Raven stopped hearing from its own client on that player while their game stayed connected. From resource 1.8.9 it catches a cheat that blocks Raven's heartbeat while the player keeps playing. A timeout log carries Last Heartbeat and Last Activity.

Heartbeat in the Detections reference covers the check, and Reading a detection explains the fields the log carries.

Too many false positives

Narrow before you disable. Every detection that produces false positives on a healthy server does so because one of your resources legitimately does the thing it watches for, and that resource can almost always be named and whitelisted instead.

A detection might be a false ban

Review the log evidence before you decide. See Review a potential false ban.