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.