RCON Tutorial

Patch 185.0 introduced the RCON-Feature. It allows you to execute commands on your server without having to be in-game. That is a huge improvement over the previous mechanic, because it allows you to automate commands, and generally do stuff on machines where you can’t simply start up the game.

Setup

To enable RCON you will have to add the following to your server startup command line

?RCONEnabled=True?RCONPort=32330?ServerAdminPassword=YOURPASSWORD

Replace “YOURASSWORD” with the password of your choice. Specifying the password in the command line is only neccessary if you haven’t already set an admin-password for your server in the configuration.

Usage

Windows

To receive text and enter commands you will need a client software on your computer.

EDIT: There now is a graphical RCON client for ARK. Check out our Mod-Spotlight to learn more.

For Windows, you could use mcrcon, though that’s only a suggestion. Execute the launch.bat and enter the connection data (server IP, port and password) there and you should be able to connect. Once you’re in there you can use the commands like you would in the ingame console. To exit your console simply type exit

Linux

Finding a good linux client is quite another matter. For use on your server, we can recommend this code. Download it, use

gcc -o rcon rcon.c

to compile it (if you haven’t installed gcc already, you’ll have to install that too, or any other C compiler). You can then use

./rcon -PYOURPASSWORD -a127.0.0.1 -p32330 listplayers

to execute the command of your choice (in this example listplayers). It will automatically exit after it sent the command. To connect to a remote server you’ll have to fill in the correct information for IP (-a) and port (-p), and make sure that your firewall permits the connection.

About the author

15 thoughts on “RCON Tutorial”

  1. rcon port is open and runing but still cant conect to the server. password ok, ip ok. dunno what else to do. restarted updated still nothing. any help would be much apreciated

    1. Could you please go into more detail? Are you trying this on a dedicated server, or on your own computer. Have you tried using RCON from the same machine? Have you checked the firewall settings? What does the tool say?

      1. I have the same issue, my firewall settings are closed and i could not connect to the server, everything is okay IP, RCON port and admin password
        it’s freaking me out

        1. you could check with “netstat -a” on the commandline, if your rcon server is really running.

          It should show up sth like that:

          TCP 0.0.0.0:32330

  2. I coded an RCON tool that can be used on any matching that can compile and run python 2.7

    Compiled Windows Version: Download

    I have also included instructions on how to compile the windows version yourself on the steam page. http://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/0/530646715642046262/

    You can always find the source code @ https://github.com/nuthing/pyARKon

    Note: The windows compiled version doesn’t require you to have python installed, it works as a stand-alone RCON client.

    [EDIT by the redaction: Merged two comments into one]

Leave a Reply

  • Deutsch
  • Русский
  • Svenska
  • 中文 (中国)
  • Español
  • Português
  • Français

Featured Articles

Advertisement

Categories