How Oxide and Carbon Permissions Work

You installed a plugin, restarted, the console says it loaded, and in game nothing happens. Almost every time, the plugin is fine and nobody has been given permission to use it. Oxide and Carbon ship a permission system that starts closed, and this is how you open it.

1Understand the Two Halves

• A permission is a single ability, named by the plugin, like kits.use or teleportation.tpr.
• A group is a bag of permissions you hand to people rather than granting one by one. Oxide creates default and admin for you, and every player is in default automatically.
• You can grant to a group or to one player. Granting to a group is almost always what you want.

2Find Out What a Plugin Offers

• Open the Console page in your panel and run:

oxide.show perms

• That lists every permission registered on the server. For one plugin specifically:

oxide.show perms Kits

• The plugin's own page on umod.org lists the same names with an explanation of each. Read that first, because the names alone rarely tell you what they do.

3Grant It

• To everyone, by granting to the default group:

oxide.grant group default kits.use

• To one player, by Steam ID or name:

oxide.grant user 76561198000000000 kits.use

• Carbon uses the same commands, so nothing changes if you switched frameworks.

4Build Groups That Match Your Server

Most servers end up with three or four groups. Create them once and you stop thinking about permissions.

oxide.group add vip
oxide.grant group vip kits.vip
oxide.usergroup add 76561198000000000 vip

• oxide.group add <name> creates a group, oxide.usergroup add <player> <group> puts someone in it.
• A common shape is default for everyone, vip for supporters, moderator for your staff, and admin for you.

5Test It as a Normal Player

• This is the step people skip. As an admin you often bypass permission checks entirely, so a command working for you proves nothing.
• Ask someone without admin to try it, or check with oxide.show user <name> which lists that player's groups and permissions.

Good to Know

• Revoking mirrors granting. oxide.revoke group default kits.use and oxide.revoke user <id> kits.use.
• Permissions survive a normal wipe. They live in the framework's data files, not in the world, so wiping the map does not reset who can do what. The exception is the Reset permissions preset on the wipe page, which clears groups and grants on purpose. Do not tick it out of habit on a monthly wipe unless you mean to re-grant every VIP rank afterwards.
• Server owner is not the same as a permission. Being in users.cfg as an owner gives you Rust's own admin powers. It does not automatically give you plugin permissions. See how to make yourself admin.
• Reinstalling a plugin keeps its grants. Permissions are stored per name, so updating a plugin does not wipe who had access.

Finished

Your plugins do something now. If a plugin still refuses to respond, check its own config file under the framework's config folder, as described in how to install plugins.