How to change your Counter-Strike: Source server name, password and map

Counter-Strike: Source reads its settings from cstrike/cfg/server.cfg, which runs every time the server starts a map.

1. Open the file

1. Stop the server in the Game Panel.
2. Open the Files tab and browse to cstrike/cfg.
3. Open server.cfg, or create it if it is not there.

2. The settings you will change

Values with spaces go in quotation marks:

hostname "Friday Night Source"
sv_password ""
rcon_password "a-long-secret"

3. Changing the map

• To change map now, type map de_dust2 in the Console tab in the Game Panel. Everyone reconnects to the new map.
• To change the map the server starts on, set it on the Startup page of your server. That page is not linked in the sidebar, so add /startup to the end of your server's panel address.
• The rotation is the list in cstrike/mapcycle.txt, one map per line.

4. Player slots

The slot count is set when the server launches, so it lives on the same Startup page rather than in server.cfg.

5. Apply the changes

1. Save the file.
2. Start the server, or run exec server.cfg in the console to reload it without a restart.
3. Check status in the console to confirm the hostname.

If a setting is ignored, check for a typo in the command name. Source silently skips commands it does not recognise, and the console prints the reason when you run exec server.cfg by hand.