rcon.web (Rust server ConVar)

rcon.web chooses which RCON protocol the server speaks. The server's help text: "If set to true, use websocket RCON. If set to false use legacy, source engine RCON. Source engine RCON is DEPRECATED".

1 or 0

• 1 (true) is WebSocket RCON, often called WebRCON. Clients connect to ws://<host>:<rcon.port>/<password> and exchange JSON messages. Facepunch's wiki suggests it.
• 0 (false) is the older Source engine RCON protocol, which the help text itself calls deprecated. The server binary also contains a warning for it: "Source engine style TCP RCON is deprecated and will be removed. Please switch to Websocket RCON by setting rcon.web to true".

The two are different protocols, so a client has to speak the one the server is set to. Tools that work with Rust over WebRCON include rcon-cli by gorcon, but only with -t web; without that flag it speaks Source RCON.

Where to set it

On the command line, together with the port and password:

+rcon.port 28016 +rcon.web 1 +rcon.password <password>

The protocol is fixed when the listener starts at boot, so treat a change as a restart. Our test server's log shows rcon.web: "True" during startup followed by WebSocket RCON Started on :28016, which is the quickest way to confirm what you got. server.writecfg does not save it.

Panelra passes +rcon.web 1 in every server's systemd unit and writes rcon.web 1 into the generated server.cfg as well, so both sources agree.

Reading it back

Over RCON, the server answers with a capitalised boolean:

rcon.web: "True"

If a script compares that with 1 or true in your config, it reports a difference that is not there. Panelra compares boolean values without regard to case, and treats 1 and 0 as True and False, for the same reason.

The password is part of the URL

Because WebRCON puts the password in the URL path, characters like #, ?, /, % and spaces can cut it short or change it. Use a long password made of letters and digits only.