Rust Sandbox

A self-hosted web app (ASP.NET Core 8 + Blazor Server, C#) for running one or many Rust game servers from a browser.

What it does

Area	Highlights
All servers	Every server at a glance: status lamp, players, FPS, entities, uptime, player-count sparkline. A switcher in the sidebar keeps your place when you hop between servers.
Dashboard	Live gauges (players, FPS, entities), an hour of performance history, the last 24 h of combat (deadliest weapons, causes of death, kill distances, what players hunt), a live kill feed, who's online and a personal "You, last 24 hours" panel.
Console	Live WebRCON log with filters (commands, chat, warnings & errors) and search. Command autocomplete (Tab), ↑/↓ history, one-click quick commands you can add your own to, and a chat panel to talk as SERVER.
Players	Online list with ping, health and time online; kick/ban with reasons; copy Steam ID; jump to them on the live map; "everyone seen" with kills/deaths; full per-player stats.
Live map	Zoom/pan map with live player dots (smoothly animated), recent kills drawn as ✕ with killer→victim lines, Rust grid references, monument labels, and heat maps for where players spend time, PvP kills, deaths or scientist kills over 1 h – a whole wipe. Click a dot to open that player's stats.
Combat stats	Sortable leaderboard (kills, deaths, K/D, headshot %, longest kill, PvE, favourite weapon), weapon table with shots fired and accuracy, kill-distance histogram, kills by hour of day, what killed players, what players killed, body-part hits, daily/hourly activity.
Gathering	Who gathers what: wood, stone, metal, sulfur and HQ ore, berries, mushrooms, hemp, crops, animal parts and fish. Totals per resource type, most gathered items, where it comes from (trees, nodes, pickups, farming, animals, fishing), gathered per day and a sortable top-gatherers table. Each player's stats show what they gathered too.
Per-player stats	K/D, headshot rate, average & longest kill, favourite weapon (most kills) vs most used weapon (most shots), accuracy, nemesis, favourite target, what they killed and what killed them, per-weapon breakdown, recent fights.
Map generator	Random seeds (crypto RNG), roll six to compare, size slider with size advice, labelled preview, PNG export, a saved-seed library with favourites, RustMaps link, and "send this seed to a server".
Schedules	Daily / weekly / every N minutes / first Thursday (forced wipe) / once: restarts with an in-game countdown that finishes on time, map or full wipes with optional new seed, SteamCMD updates, announcements and command lists. Run any task on demand.
Server settings	Everything to launch and manage an instance: hostname, description, images, tags, ports, RCON, map mode (procedural / custom URL / Barren / Hapis / Craggy / Savas), seed & size, PvE, radiation, stability, decay, save interval, tick rate, FPS limit, EAC, custom convars, extra args, framework, branch, auto-restart, auto-start. Shows the exact launch command.
Hosting (optional)	When the server runs on the same machine: start/stop/restart with countdowns, crash auto-restart (with crash-loop protection), SteamCMD install/update, one-click Oxide or Carbon install, one-click plugin install, safe wipes (files are moved to wipe-backups/, not deleted).
Dashboard controls	Start, stop, restart (with countdown), map wipe and full wipe in one panel, next to a live heat map of the server and the installed vs latest Rust build and Oxide/Carbon version.
Updates	Checks every 30 min for new Rust builds (Steam) and Oxide/Carbon releases (GitHub). Shows "Update available" on the dashboard and server list, writes to the console and posts to Discord. Update now warns players, saves and stops the server, updates Rust through SteamCMD, reinstalls Oxide/Carbon to match, and starts it again. Optional fully automatic updates. SteamCMD is downloaded automatically if you don't have it.
Skills	Ten skills that level up as you play (Mining, Woodcutting, Combat, Gardening, Electrician, Survival, Mechanic, Fishing, Scrapper, Cooking), each with perks, plus a solo-friendly XP bonus. Leaderboards and each player's levels in the manager.
Daily rewards	A daily spin for a random item with rarity tiers, streak bonuses and a spinning reel. Edit the prize pool in the manager.
Quests	Quest givers you place around the map (with outfits and skins), quests to gather, hunt, loot, craft, deliver, swipe keycards or explore, a progress tracker and rewards you pick from pictures of every item.
Loot	Every crate, barrel and NPC body with Rust's own items and the real chance of each one, worked out from the game's loot tables. Keep Rust's loot, replace it with your own list or add to it, each item with an amount and a chance %. Plus a loot multiplier, scrap per crate and how many crates Patrol Heli and Bradley drop.
Events	A treasure hunt across the map's monuments and a train heist on a self-driving loot train, with an in-game HUD for running events and locked-crate timers.
Rates & stacks	Built-in gather rates (1x–10x presets, per resource, per source: hits, pickups, farming, quarries), optional "[10x]" tag in the server name, stack sizes per category or per item (item list read live from your server with vanilla sizes), smelt speed/output, food cooking speed, wood use per oven and charcoal. Applied live by the bundled RustSandboxTweaks plugin; turning it off restores vanilla values.
Plugins	Installed list with version, author and loaded/not-loaded status; turn plugins on/off (disabled ones are moved to plugins/disabled so they stay off), reload, delete; edit each plugin's JSON config with validation, a .bak backup and automatic reload; search uMod and install in one click; upload .cs files; check uMod for newer versions and update one or all.
Groups & permissions	Create/delete Oxide or Carbon groups, add/remove members, and tick plugin permissions per group or per player (grouped by plugin, with "from a group" hints).
Player admin	Ban by Steam ID (online or offline, permanent or timed), ban list with unban, mute/unmute chat, make moderator/owner or remove the role, kick. Owners/moderators listed from users.cfg for local servers.
Notifications	Discord webhook per server for online/offline, crash, restart and wipe — plus optional long-range kill posts.
Quality of life	Ctrl/⌘+K command palette (jump anywhere, or type >status to run a command), toasts that say exactly what happened, a demo server with simulated data so you can explore before connecting a real one, mobile-friendly layout.

Quick start

Requirements: .NET 8 SDK.

cd src/RustSandbox
dotnet run

Open http://localhost:5080 and sign in with admin / changeme. You'll land on a Demo Server full of simulated players, kills and positions — every screen works with it. Remove it later from its Settings → Danger zone.

Change the password before exposing the app: edit Auth:Password in appsettings.json or set the Auth__Password environment variable.

Publish for a server

dotnet publish src/RustSandbox -c Release -o ./publish
cd publish && ./RustSandbox          # Linux
RustSandbox.exe                      # Windows

Settings live in appsettings.json next to the binary:

Key	Default	Meaning
Urls	http://0.0.0.0:5080	Where the web UI listens
Auth:Username / Auth:Password	admin / changeme	Sign-in
ConnectionStrings:Default	Data Source=rustsandbox.db	SQLite file
Manager:PublicUrl	http://localhost:5080	Address game servers use to reach the manager (can also be set in Preferences)
Manager:CreateDemoServer	true	Create the demo server on first run
Manager:PositionSampleSeconds	30	How often positions are stored for heat maps
Manager:RetentionDays	30	Days of positions to keep (kills are kept 4× longer)

Windows installer

installer\build-installer.cmd (or installer\build-installer.ps1 -Version 1.2.0) builds installer\output\RustSandbox-Setup-<version>.exe. It needs the .NET 8 SDK and Inno Setup 6 (winget install JRSoftware.InnoSetup).

The installer copies a self-contained build (no .NET needed on the target PC) to C:\Program Files\Rust Sandbox, registers the RustSandbox Windows service (starts with Windows, restarts if it crashes) and adds a Start Menu shortcut that opens the dashboard. The first install asks for the web port, username and password.

The database, appsettings.json overrides and SteamCMD live in C:\ProgramData\RustSandbox (readable by Administrators only). Upgrades keep it; uninstall asks before deleting it. To bring an existing database across, stop the service, copy rustsandbox.db into that folder and start the service again. Set Manager:DataDir to use that layout without the service.

Put it behind a reverse proxy with HTTPS (Caddy, nginx, IIS) if it's reachable from the internet. WebSockets must be allowed for Blazor.

Adding a server

Hosted elsewhere (GPortal, Nitrado, a VPS…): Add a server → Connect to an existing server, enter IP, RCON port and RCON password, press Test connection. The server must run with +rcon.web 1 (the default on modern Rust).

On this machine: Add a server → Run a server on this machine, pick an install folder and the path to SteamCMD. Then in Settings → Hosting press Install / update Rust, optionally Install Oxide/Carbon, and Start from the server's header bar.

Combat stats, heat maps and the live map

Vanilla RCON doesn't expose kills, distances or positions, so the manager ships a small plugin: plugins/RustSandboxTelemetry.cs (Oxide/uMod or Carbon).

1. Open the server's Plugin & telemetry page.
2. Set the address the game server can reach the manager on (LAN/public IP — not localhost unless both run on the same box).
3. Either press Install on this server (managed servers), or download the .cs and the .json config and drop them into oxide/plugins and oxide/config (carbon/plugins, carbon/configs for Carbon).
4. The status turns green within seconds.

The plugin batches events every 5 s and posts them to POST /api/telemetry/{serverId} with a per-server X-Api-Key. It keeps events and backs off if the manager is down. Make sure the manager's port is reachable from the game server (firewall!).

It records: every player death (killer, weapon, distance, body part, headshot, positions, cause for environmental deaths), players killing scientists/animals/heli/Bradley, shots fired and hits per weapon, what players gather (plugin 1.5.0+), positions, and connects/disconnects.

Game plugins included

The manager ships these Oxide/Carbon plugins and installs each one with a button on the Telemetry page (servers on this machine), or you can download the .cs from there.

Plugin	What players get	Commands
RustSandboxTelemetry	Feeds combat, gathering and position stats to the manager.	–
RustSandboxTweaks	Gather rates, stack sizes, smelting and cooking speed, inventory sorting, furnace auto-split, remove tool.	/sort, /autosplit, /remove
RustSandboxEventHud	HUD tiles for airdrops, Patrol Heli, Bradley, Cargo, Chinook and oil rigs, locked-crate timers, a radiation detector and a compass/grid tile.	/eventhud
RustSandboxSkills	Ten skills with levels and perks.	/skills
RustSandboxDaily	A daily reward spin with streaks.	/daily
RustSandboxEvents	Treasure hunt and train heist events.	/hunt
RustSandboxQuests	Quest givers, quests, tracker and rewards.	/quests, admin /questgiver
RustSandboxHelp	A /help guide with a page per system, shown to new players.	/help
RustSandboxRecycler	Repair Recycler: one deployable item that places a recycler and repair bench joined in an L. Optional full repair, recycler speed and output (vanilla by default).	/recycler, /recycler craft
RustSandboxSkins	A /skins picker for clothes, weapons, tools and deployables. Shows the skins each player owns on Steam plus Facepunch's free ones, because Facepunch's server rules forbid handing out paid skins people don't own.	/skins
RustSandboxLoot	Custom loot per crate, barrel and NPC type (edited on the manager's Loot page). Anything you don't change keeps Rust's own loot.	console sandboxloot.refill

Each plugin's settings are in its config file (oxide/config/<plugin>.json) and most are also editable in the manager.

About the map previews

The map generator and the live map background are drawn in the browser from the seed and size with a procedural approximation (coastline, biomes north→south, rivers, ring road, monument markers). They're consistent for a given seed and good for comparing the feel of seeds, but they are not Facepunch's world generator — use the RustMaps link to see the real terrain, or paste an exported map image URL into Settings → World → Live map image to use it as the live-map background. Player positions, kills and grid references are always exact.

Project layout

src/RustSandbox/
  Program.cs                 DI, auth, telemetry + download endpoints
  Data/                      EF Core entities, ServerSettings, seed data
  Services/
    Rcon/                    WebRCON client and reply parsers
    ServerConnectionManager  one RCON connection per server, console/chat buffers
    ServerMonitorService     polling (serverinfo/playerlist), up/down alerts, retention
    ProcessManager           local RustDedicated process, SteamCMD, Oxide/Carbon, wipes
    SchedulerService         scheduled tasks
    TelemetryService         plugin ingest, live positions
    StatsService             combat analytics
    HeatmapService           heat-map aggregation
    Demo/                    simulated demo world
  Components/                Blazor layout, pages and shared components
  wwwroot/                   CSS, map/heat-map JavaScript
plugins/RustSandboxTelemetry.cs   stats plugin
plugins/RustSandboxTweaks.cs      rates, stacks & smelting
plugins/RustSandbox*.cs           the other game plugins (see "Game plugins included")

Notes & limits

• One admin account (from configuration). Everyone signed in shares the same view.
• Plugin files, configs and installs need the server to run on this machine. For servers hosted elsewhere the Plugins page can still load, unload and reload over RCON, and groups/permissions/bans work fully over RCON.
• Update checks use api.steamcmd.net (Steam build ids), the GitHub releases API (Oxide/Carbon) and umod.org's search API (plugins). If one is unreachable the dashboard shows the error and everything else keeps working.
• Mute uses Rust's mutechat/unmutechat commands.
• On Linux, SteamCMD needs 32-bit libraries (sudo apt install lib32gcc-s1).
• Starting/stopping servers you don't host on this machine isn't possible over RCON; Stop sends quit and Restart uses Rust's restart command, so your host must bring the server back.
• Carbon on Linux has to be launched through Carbon's environment.sh; the built-in process manager targets Windows and Oxide-on-Linux best.
• If the manager restarts, it loses track of server processes it started (they keep running); stop them from the console with quit or restart the server manually.

Changes

See CHANGELOG.md.

License

Free to use, learn from and change under the MIT License. Rust is a trademark of Facepunch Studios; this project is not affiliated with them.