The Ultimate Guide to Hosting a Palworld Dedicated Server on Linux (High RAM Optimization)

Palworld is a massive multiplayer survival hit, but managing a server comes with a well-known technical challenge: severe memory leaks. As your world expands, bases grow, and large guilds capture more Pals, the server's RAM usage skyrockets. Standard shared hosting plans simply cannot keep up, resulting in lag, rubberbanding, and inevitable crashes.

If you want a flawless multiplayer experience, you need to host a Palworld Dedicated Server on Linux using a machine equipped to handle massive memory loads.

In this comprehensive tutorial, we will walk you through setting up a high-performance Palworld server on Ubuntu Linux, optimizing it for high RAM (64GB+), mitigating memory leaks, and keeping your server online 24/7.

Server Requirements for Palworld

To run a stable, lag-free environment for medium to large communities, you must over-provision your hardware. Unreal Engine 5 multiplayer servers can be incredibly resource-heavy.

• OS: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or 24.04 LTS (Recommended for stability)
• CPU: 4+ Cores (High clock speed preferred)
• Storage: 50GB+ NVMe SSD (Crucial for fast world saving and loading)
• RAM (The Critical Factor):
  - Vanilla/Small Group (1-4 players): 16GB RAM
  - Medium Guilds (5-12 players): 32GB RAM
  - Large Guilds & Public Servers (12-32 players): 64GB+ RAM highly recommended. Because of Palworld's background memory leaks, servers with 64GB of RAM (like those offered at FitServers) provide the necessary overhead to keep the game running smoothly between scheduled restarts.

Step 1: Prepare Your Linux Server

First, connect to your dedicated server via SSH as the root user. We need to update the system packages and create a dedicated user for security purposes. Running game servers as the root user is a major security risk.

# Update and upgrade your system packages
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

# Create a new user named 'palworld'
sudo adduser palworld

# Switch to the new user for the remaining installation steps
su - palworld

Step 2: Install Dependencies and SteamCMD

Palworld is installed via SteamCMD, the command-line version of the Steam client. Because SteamCMD is a 32-bit application, we need to enable 32-bit architecture on our 64-bit Linux machine.

Switch back to a user with sudo privileges (or root) to install these dependencies:

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt update
sudo apt install software-properties-common -y
sudo apt-add-repository non-free
sudo apt install lib32gcc-s1 steamcmd -y

(During the SteamCMD installation, you will be prompted to agree to the Steam license agreement. Use the Tab key to select OK, and press Enter.)

Step 3: Download the Palworld Server Files

Switch back to your palworld user to download the game files safely into their home directory.

su - palworld

# Create a directory for the server files
mkdir -p ~/server

# Launch SteamCMD, login anonymously, and download Palworld (AppID: 2394010)
/usr/games/steamcmd +login anonymous +force_install_dir /home/palworld/server +app_update 2394010 validate +quit

Depending on your dedicated server's network speed, this download may take a few minutes.

Step 4: High RAM Optimization & Memory Leak Mitigation

Because of Palworld's memory allocation behaviors, a server can slowly consume all available RAM, triggering the Linux OOM (Out of Memory) killer, which abruptly terminates your server. Here is how we optimize for this.

A. Setup a Swap File

Even with a 64GB RAM dedicated server, a Swap file acts as an emergency overflow buffer. Switch back to your root user for this step:

# Create a 16GB Swap file
sudo fallocate -l 16G /swapfile
sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
sudo mkswap /swapfile
sudo swapon /swapfile

# Make the swap file permanent across reboots
echo '/swapfile none swap sw 0 0' | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab

B. Launch Parameters for Multi-Threading

Unreal Engine 5 servers benefit heavily from specific startup arguments. We will implement these in the next step when we create the startup service. The key flags are:

• -useperfthreads
• -NoAsyncLoadingThread
• -UseMultithreadForDS

Step 5: Create a Systemd Service for Auto-Restarts

To ensure your Palworld server runs in the background, starts automatically on server reboots, and recovers gracefully from crashes, we will create a systemd service.

As root, create a new service file:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/palworld.service

Paste the following configuration into the file. Notice the startup arguments designed to optimize processor thread usage:

[Unit]
Description=Palworld Dedicated Server
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=palworld
WorkingDirectory=/home/palworld/server
ExecStart=/home/palworld/server/PalServer.sh -useperfthreads -NoAsyncLoadingThread -UseMultithreadForDS
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=30

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Save the file (CTRL + O, Enter) and exit (CTRL + X).

Now, enable and start the service:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable palworld
sudo systemctl start palworld

You can check the live status of your server by running: sudo systemctl status palworld.

Step 6: Configure the Linux Firewall (UFW)

Players need to be able to connect to your server. Palworld uses port 8211 over the UDP protocol by default.

sudo ufw allow 8211/udp
sudo ufw reload

Step 7: Configuring Palworld Server Settings

After launching the server for the first time, it generates a configuration file. You can customize your server name, admin password, and game rates (like EXP multipliers and Pal capture rates) here.

Locate the PalWorldSettings.ini file:

nano /home/palworld/server/Pal/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/PalWorldSettings.ini

Note: If this file is empty, you can copy the default parameters from /home/palworld/server/DefaultPalWorldSettings.ini.

Update the ServerName and AdminPassword fields, save the file, and restart your server:

sudo systemctl restart palworld

Pro-Tip: Schedule Daily Server Restarts

Because the Palworld memory leak is an engine-level issue, the best high-RAM optimization strategy is a combination of massive raw RAM (64GB+) and scheduled daily reboots to clear the memory cache.

You can set this up using a simple cron job as root:

sudo crontab -e

Add this line to the bottom to restart the server every day at 4:00 AM server time:

0 4 * * * /bin/systemctl restart palworld

Ready to Host Your Own World?

Hosting a massive world with complex automated bases requires serious hardware. Don't let your guild's progress get wiped out by memory crashes on cheap VPS hosting.

Get a dedicated machine that can handle the load. Check out our High-RAM Gaming Dedicated Servers at FitServers, perfectly optimized for heavy-load game servers like Palworld, Rust, and ARK.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for Palworld Server Hosting

• Why does my Palworld Dedicated Server use so much RAM?
  Palworld currently has unresolved memory leaks tied to Unreal Engine 5 and in-game pathfinding for base-building Pals. As players explore and build, the server retains object data in its active memory. This is why high-RAM servers (32GB to 64GB+) are considered the industry standard for stable public servers.
• What port does Palworld use?
  By default, a Palworld dedicated server runs on port 8211 UDP. Ensure this port is open on your Ubuntu UFW firewall and your hosting provider's network firewall.
• How do I update my Palworld Linux server?
  To update the server, stop the systemd service (sudo systemctl stop palworld), run the SteamCMD installation command again (steamcmd +login anonymous +force_install_dir /home/palworld/server +app_update 2394010 validate +quit), and then restart the service (sudo systemctl start palworld).
• Can I run Palworld on a 16GB Linux server?
  Yes, but strictly for very small groups (1-4 players) playing casually. For larger guilds or public servers with heavy base-building, the server will quickly exhaust 16GB of RAM and crash. 64GB RAM servers are highly recommended for optimal performance.