What Crashes a Rust Server

This guide gathers the faults Facepunch's own wiki and support pages describe, with what to do about each on your Rust server. Checked against Facepunch's Rust wiki, its support site and Rust server build 2635, October 2026.

Not enough memory or disk

Facepunch's Creating a server page lists 12 GB of free RAM and 15 GB of free disk space as the requirements. It adds that a 6k map "will use more" and that the numbers "are not fixed and highly depend on the use case and population of the server".

Open the Console tab and watch the RAM card on a busy night, such as wipe day. If it sits near the limit, the server is the wrong size for the map or the plugin list. How much RAM does a Rust server need? goes through the sizing.

Plugins that don't match the game

A Rust update changes the game and Oxide has to follow. Facepunch's wiki says that after a server update Oxide "will come out with an update shortly after" and that you must install it every time the server is updated. Its custom map troubleshooting page also says that on a modded server you should "always make sure that all of your plugins are up to date".

Open the Plugins tab, switch to Installed and press Update on anything that offers it. The Console shows a red compile error for a plugin that can't load. How to install Oxide/uMod plugins on your Rust server covers updating and removing them.

A custom map that doesn't load

Facepunch lists several map faults that stop the server:

• No ocean. The server can freeze while loading a map that has no ocean, or is all water, because the Cargo Ship has no area to build its paths in. The fix is to add ocean around the map.
• A broken prefab. A NullReferenceException on start means a map holds a broken prefab. Facepunch says the server console only shows the error and the detail is in the full log.
• A bad link. The server can't download a map unless Custom Map URL is a direct download link, with no spelling mistakes, on a site that stays up.

Clear Custom Map URL on the Startup tab to go back to a generated map.

Changing convars you don't understand

Facepunch's guidelines for community servers say you may change any vanilla convar, but that "most convars are for development and debugging purposes" and changing the defaults "may have undesired side effects on the server's performance". If a crash began after you edited server/rust/cfg/server.cfg, remove your lines and restart, then add them back one at a time.

Profiler snapshots

If you run Facepunch's profiler to find a lag source, its wiki warns that the server "may experience significantly degraded performance" while a snapshot records and to wait until a snapshot is fully saved before starting another, "otherwise your server can crash".

How to keep a server steady

1. Take a backup in the Backups tab before changing the map, a framework or a batch of plugins.
2. Change one thing at a time and watch the Console after each restart.
3. Keep plugins updated after every monthly Rust update.
4. Keep an eye on RAM and CPU on the Console tab, and move up a plan before the RAM card is full.