ASA Admin Password Breaks Options After It: Fix Launch Order

Match this symptom

Settings placed after ServerAdminPassword do not apply, or the effective administrator password appears to include pieces of the remaining command.

The answer first

Stop and back up the server, rotate the administrator secret, and move ?ServerAdminPassword= to the end of the map's concatenated question-mark options. Keep spaced hyphen arguments such as -port and -mods outside that block, then verify the effective command without printing the secret.

Gone Wrong Servers expert launch settings with the ASA administrator password redacted — Representative Gone Wrong Servers screen. Router and game screens vary by version; follow the written checks rather than matching button placement.

Assume the malformed command exposed the old secret

A launch-order bug often appears in service logs, process viewers or copied support commands. Treat the administrator password as compromised if it was pasted into a screenshot, issue or shell history. Save and stop the map, copy its persistent state, and generate a new secret before retesting.

The join password and administrator password should be different. Rotating one must not silently change the other or the recovery snapshot.

1Run SaveWorld and DoExit, then verify process exit.
2Copy ShooterGame/Saved, both INIs and the redacted launch configuration.
3Generate a new administrator password and remove the old value from support artifacts where possible.

Understand ASA's two argument grammars

The map is followed by concatenated question-mark options such as SessionName, ServerPassword, QueryPort and ServerAdminPassword. Hyphen arguments such as -port and -mods are separate tokens divided by spaces.

The official-community setup page tells ASA operators to keep ServerAdminPassword last in the question-mark sequence. Doing so prevents later question-mark text from being interpreted as password content.

Map/options block: TheIsland_WP?SessionName=...?...?ServerAdminPassword=...
Separate arguments: -port=7777 -mods=...
Never publish the completed production command with secrets visible.

Rebuild from a minimal private command

Do not keep appending tokens to a command whose parsing is already uncertain. Start with the map, session name, query port, join password and the new administrator password last. Then add the ASA hyphen port argument.

Leave mods, clusters and experimental platform filters out of the first boot. Confirm map identity and a clean save/restart before reintroducing one feature at a time.

1Start the minimal command and inspect the first parse/startup error.
2Authenticate through enablecheats without logging the password.
3Run a harmless admin status/list operation, then SaveWorld.
4Stop with DoExit and verify the same world on restart.

Store secrets outside public editorial output

A reproducible guide can show placeholder syntax without embedding a real password. The application should redact process arguments and support bundles, restrict optional RCON to a management network, and never use the join password as the RCON or admin secret.

If an orchestration layer composes the command, unit-test the rendered token order and then compare it with the actual process command in a safe local environment. The product should report that configuration failed rather than silently launching with a merged password.

Redact ServerPassword, ServerAdminPassword and RCON credentials.
Show placeholders in screenshots and code samples.
Record only pass/fail and option names in the public validation report.