Server Basics

New to RedM hosting? This page covers what you need in place before installing anything from the catalog.

What a RedM server is made of

Piece	What it does
Server artifacts	The RedM server binary itself. Download the rdr3 build for your OS.
server.cfg	Your configuration: identity, endpoints, and the list of resources to start.
resources/	Every script, MLO and framework resource lives here.
A database	MySQL or MariaDB. Required by every framework and most scripts.
A CFX license key	Free from the Cfx.re Keymaster. One per server.

Most people run all of this through txAdmin, which ships with the artifacts and gives you a web panel for starting, stopping and watching the server. It supports RedM as well as FiveM — pick the RedM/rdr3 recipe or deployment type when you create the server.

The resources folder

resources/
├── [redmorrow]/          ← your purchases
│   ├── redm_shops/
│   └── vorp_phone/
├── [vorp]/               ← framework
│   ├── vorp_core/
│   └── vorp_inventory/
├── [maps]/               ← streamed MLOs
└── [standalone]/

Folders in [brackets] are categories, not resources. Everything inside them is discovered automatically, so you never ensure the bracket folder itself — only the resources within it.

Categories cannot be nested more than one level. [a]/[b]/resource will not be found.

Starting resources

Add one ensure line per resource to server.cfg:

ensure redm_shops

ensure is what you want in a config file — it starts the resource, and restarts it if it was already running. start only starts it, and restart only works on something already loaded.

Load order

Resources start in the order they appear in server.cfg. Anything that depends on something else must come after it:

# 1. Database first — everything else needs it
ensure oxmysql

# 2. Framework core, then its modules
ensure vorp_core
ensure vorp_utils
ensure vorp_inventory
ensure vorp_character

# 3. Shared libraries
ensure vorp_menu

# 4. Your scripts last
ensure redm_shops
ensure vorp_phone

# 5. Maps and MLOs can go anywhere, but last is tidy
ensure redm_house_mlo

This is the most common cause of first-boot failure

attempt to index a nil value on startup almost always means a script tried to reach its framework before the framework had loaded. Move the framework higher in server.cfg and restart.

Minimum server.cfg

Beyond the resource list, a working RedM server.cfg needs at least:

endpoint_add_tcp "0.0.0.0:30120"
endpoint_add_udp "0.0.0.0:30120"

sv_maxclients 32
sv_hostname "My RedM Server"
sv_licenseKey "your_cfx_key_here"

set mysql_connection_string "mysql://user:password@localhost/dbname?charset=utf8mb4"

# then your ensure lines

Never share your server.cfg publicly

It contains your CFX license key and your database password in plain text. Redact both before pasting it into a support ticket or a Discord channel.

Checking it works

1. Save server.cfg.
2. Start the server (or restart it from txAdmin).
3. Read the console output from the top. Resource start lines are printed in order — the first red error is the one that matters, and everything after it is often just fallout.

If you need to reload a single resource without a full restart:

refresh
restart redm_shops

refresh re-scans the resources folder — you need it after adding, renaming or removing files, but not after only editing an existing file's contents.

Where the client cache lives

When a player reports stale UI or missing assets, this is the folder to clear:

%localappdata%\RedM\RedM.app\data\cache

Note RedM.app — not FiveM.app. Players with both installed clear the wrong one constantly.