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How to wipe your Rust server

Many Rust communities reset their world on a fixed cycle, for example every week, every two weeks or every month, to keep the server fresh. You can wipe right away or schedule wipes on the Wipes tab of your server in the Fragnet dashboard.

danger

A wipe deletes files for good. Keep Back up first ticked when you wipe now, or make a backup before you wipe by hand.

What a wipe deletes​

Wipe now and scheduled wipes offer the same choices under What to wipe:

OptionWhat it deletes
MapThe map and its saves. Players keep their blueprints.
Map and blueprintsThe map, its saves and every player's blueprints.
Full wipeMap, blueprints, player data, teams, clans and sign images. Rust+ pairings stay.

Bans stay after a wipe.

The monthly forced wipe​

Facepunch releases the monthly Rust update on the first Thursday of each month at 19:00 UK time, and every server's map is wiped. The dashboard shows when the next one is:

  • The Wipes tab shows it in the Next forced wipe card.
  • The Wipes card on the Overview tab shows it as Forced wipe, next to your Next scheduled wipe. In the last three days before a forced wipe, the card also shows a reminder.

Restart your server after the release to get the update. To wipe on that day automatically, schedule a wipe that repeats On forced wipe day.

Wipe now​

  1. Open the Fragnet dashboard, go to My servers and select your Rust server.
  2. Select the Wipes tab. If you don't see it in the tab row, look under More. You can also select Manage wipes in the Wipes card on the Overview tab.
  3. In the Next forced wipe card, select Wipe now.
  4. Under What to wipe, pick Map, Map and blueprints or Full wipe.
  5. Leave Back up first ticked to make a backup before anything is deleted. The backup holds your saves, configs and plugins (not the game files) and uses one backup slot.
  6. Tick New random map seed if you want a new procedural map. A custom map keeps its own.
  7. Type the server name shown in the dialog to confirm, then select Wipe now.

The server stops and saves, the files are deleted, and the server starts again if it was running. Players are disconnected while this happens. The dialog shows each step. It takes a few minutes, and you can close the dialog without stopping the wipe. When it's finished you see "Wipe done." and how many files were deleted.

If the backup fails, nothing is deleted. Delete an old backup to free a slot, or wipe without a backup.

Schedule a wipe​

Scheduled wipes run on their own: at the set time the server stops, the files are deleted and the server starts again.

  1. On the Wipes tab, check the line at the top of the Scheduled wipes card. It says which timezone your wipes run in ("Times are in" followed by the timezone). If no timezone is set yet, wipes run in UTC. To change it, select Change timezone, pick a Wipe timezone and select Save.
  2. Select Schedule a wipe.
  3. Under What to wipe, pick Map, Map and blueprints or Full wipe (see What a wipe deletes).
  4. Under Repeat, choose Once, Every week, Every two weeks, Every month or On forced wipe day.
  5. Under When, pick the date and time of the (first) wipe in the wipe timezone. A repeating wipe keeps this clock time, also across summer time. With On forced wipe day the time is fixed: the first Thursday of each month at 19:00 UK time. Your server updates when it starts again after that wipe.
  6. Enter the Server name after the wipe and the Description after the wipe. Both are set at every wipe. %DAY% and %MONTH% become the wipe date, for example My Rust Server | Wiped %DAY%/%MONTH%.
  7. Under Map seed, choose:
    • Keep the current seed: the same procedural map comes back fresh.
    • New random seed at every wipe: a new procedural map each time.
    • Use this seed: enter a seed from 0 to 2147483647.
  8. Under Chat warnings before the wipe, tick when players get a warning in chat: 60, 30, 15, 10, 5 or 1 minutes before. Edit the message if you like. {min} becomes the minutes left, so the default "Server wipe in {min} minutes" reads "Server wipe in 10 minutes".
  9. Select Schedule. You see "Wipe scheduled."

The wipe appears under Scheduled wipes with its time, how often it repeats, the seed, the number of warnings and whether the server uses a custom map. After it has run, the row shows when it last ran, or why the last run failed.

tip

The scheduled wipe sets the server name and description at every wipe. If you change the name or description on the Configuration tab later, update your scheduled wipes too, or the next wipe sets them back.

Edit or delete a scheduled wipe​

  1. On the Wipes tab, open the ⋯ menu on the wipe's row.
  2. Select Edit to change it, then Save. Or select Delete and confirm with Delete. Deleting a scheduled wipe changes nothing on the server.

A wipe can't be changed while it's running.

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  • Older wipes that were set up with a hand-picked list of files show the tag Custom files. When you edit one, you can keep its stored file list or switch it to one of the options above. New wipes always use one of the three options.
  • If the Scheduled wipes card says that creating and editing wipes comes with an update, your existing scheduled wipes still run and you can delete them, but you can't create or edit wipes on that server yet.

Map size and custom maps​

Wipes don't change the map size. To change it, or to switch to a custom map, use the World group on the Configuration tab. See Load a custom map. A new map, size or seed starts a fresh world at the next restart.

Wipe by hand in the Files tab​

You can also delete the save files yourself.

  1. Stop the server with Shut down at the top of the server page. See Power controls.

  2. On the Files tab, open the server/rust folder. If you changed your server identity, open server/<identity> instead.

  3. Delete the files for what you want to wipe:

    • The world: files ending in .map and files with .sav in their name. On a procedural map their names start with proceduralmap.
    • Blueprints: files whose names start with player.blueprints. and end in .db.
    • Other player data: the other files whose names start with player. and end in .db.

    To delete several files at once, tick them and select Delete. See Select several items.

  4. Start the server.

Don't delete the cfg folder. It holds server.cfg, users.cfg (owners and moderators) and bans.cfg.

warning

Wipe server in the Danger zone of the Configuration tab is not a Rust wipe. It deletes every file on the server, including your configs and plugins, and installs Rust fresh. See Danger zone: wipe the server.