Adding User Accounts to your Starbound Server

In order to control who joins your Starbound server, you can create "User Accounts" in the game's config files which will limit who can join your server. Each user account will allow only that player to connect to it, and each will have their own individual password.

Changing The Config File

The file that controls this is called starbound_server.config, and is normally located in the /storage folder.

Note: the entire /storage folder, and the files inside of it is only created on first start up. Start the server, let it finish, and then stop the server. If you do not do this, you will not find the file.

Once you have located the file starbound_server.config, select it in the file manager, and then click the "edit" button at the top of the file manager window. You should see something similar to this below:

Find the "ServerUsers" Line in the Config

Scroll down through the file, until you find a line that begins with "ServerUsers". It will be followed by two curly brackets, { and }, looking something like this.

"serverUsers" : {
  ...
},

Please be careful in how you edit the file. The file is in .json format, which is a very specific system for entering information. The formatting, syntax, curly brackets, and commas are all very important. If a single character is missing, it can keep the file from working properly.

You can copy and paste the following lines.

"username" : {
    "admin" : false,
    "password" : "userpassword"
}

when finished, it will look like this example below. This is for only one user account.

"serverUsers" : {
    "username" : {
        "admin" : false,
        "password" : "userpassword"
    }
},

Adding additional Users

If you need to add multiple users, just keep adding more sections, one after the other.

It's very important that that whole block begin with and end with curly brackets, that were there originally. The following adds three user accounts.

"serverUsers" : {
    "username" : {
        "admin" : false,
        "password" : "userpassword"
    },
    "username" : {
        "admin" : false,
        "password" : "userpassword"
    },
    "username" : {
        "admin" : false,
        "password" : "userpassword"
    }
},

Enter User Names and Passwords

Now that the extra lines are entered int he config file, inside each one replace the text username with each player's name, and then replace userpassword with their chosen password.

Setting Admin

While you are editing this information, if any players are to be set as admins, you can do that too. Simply find the "admin" line and change false to true. That will indicate they are an admin to the game.

Turn off "Anonymous" connections

In the same config file, up near the beginning is a setting for "anonymous connections".

In order to finish the setup of user accounts, this needs to be set to false. Otherwise, even though there are accounts setup, it will still let in any player, from anyplace. Hilariously, if anonymous connections are still allowed, it will make all the players with accounts login in with name and password, and then random strangers can still just breeze right into the server without anything.

Look for the following line, which will usually be line # 4 in the stock config file.

"allowAnonymousConnections" : true

Just change true to false.

Save Config File, and Restart server

Save your changes to the config file. Following a restart of the server, only those users in the config file will be able to join, using their passwords!

Your server is now set to private!