How to Kick and Ban Players on Your GTA San Andreas Server

You remove players via RCON — either in the game through the chat or through the external remote console.

Note

You have to be logged in as an RCON admin to do this. See Add Admin.

Find the player ID

Kick and ban work with the player ID, not with the name.

1. Open the chat
   Press T in the game to open the chat.

2. List the players
   Show all connected players with their ID, name, IP address and ping:

   /rcon players

3. Note the ID
   Note the ID of the player — and for a planned ban also their IP address.

Important

The player ID is only a temporary slot. As soon as a player leaves the server, the same ID can immediately be assigned to somebody else. Always request the list again right before kicking or banning, otherwise you hit the wrong player.

Kick a player

/rcon kick 3

The player is disconnected from the server and can rejoin immediately.

Ban a player

/rcon ban 3

The player is kicked from the server and locked out.

Caution

The ban is applied to the IP address, even though you pass a player ID. There is no ban based on the player name or an account. With changing IP addresses a banned player can therefore come back — and on shared connections you may lock out several people at once.

Ban an IP address directly

/rcon banip 123.45.67.89

This locks out an IP address even when the player is not currently connected. Wildcards are accepted, so entire ranges can be blocked:

/rcon banip 123.45.67.*

Lift a ban

/rcon unbanip 123.45.67.89

Command overview

Command	Description
/rcon players	List all connected players with ID, name, IP address and ping
/rcon kick <ID>	Disconnect a player from the server
/rcon ban <ID>	Lock a player out (applied to their IP address)
/rcon banip <IP>	Ban an IP address, wildcards allowed
/rcon unbanip <IP>	Lift the ban for an IP address
/rcon reloadbans	Reload the ban list

Edit the ban list via SFTP

All bans are written to a file in the main directory of your server. Which one it is depends on your server variant:

Server	File
open.mp	bans.json
SA-MP	samp.ban

Among other things the file contains the banned IP address as well as the date, time and the name or reason of the ban.

1. Connect via SFTP
   Connect to your server via SFTP.

2. Edit the file
   Open the ban file in the main directory and remove or add the entries you want.

3. Reload the list
   Afterwards run the following command in the game:

   /rcon reloadbans

Caution

After editing the ban file manually, reloadbans is mandatory. Without that command the running server keeps using the old list and may overwrite your changes again.

Note

Whether an existing samp.ban is migrated to bans.json automatically when switching from SA-MP to open.mp is not documented. Check your ban list after switching and re-add missing entries with /rcon banip.