Are guys sure you restarted the server after making the change to the whitelist? I've had no problems. Run /serverconfig whitelistmode off, then restart the server and you shouldn't have any problems. I always use /stop to shutdown the server so that it writes any changes made to configs... then start it back up as usual.
As an aside, I too would like to know how to add players to the file directly. I'd hope the server was smart enough to parse the list with just player names, but the way the entries in the whitelist appear, it seems a jumbled mess of random info.
If you'd like the safety of a whitelist, without the hassle of constantly turning it off and on... another option is to change default player role to suvisitor, or define your own default role. This would allow you to control what permissions players have when connecting.
Somewhere around line 326 of the serverconfig.json you can see something like this:
"DefaultRoleCode": "suplayer",
"ModPaths": [
"Mods",
"path to mods folder"
],
If you change it to "suvisitor" then by default, players will have the following role:
"Code": "suvisitor",
"PrivilegeLevel": -1,
"Name": "Survival Visitor",
"Description": "Can only visit this world and chat but not use/place/break anything",
"DefaultSpawn": null,
"ForcedSpawn": null,
"Privileges": [
"chat"
],
"RuntimePrivileges": [],
"DefaultGameMode": 1,
"Color": "Green",
"LandClaimAllowance": 0,
"LandClaimMinSize": {
"X": 5,
"Y": 5,
"Z": 5
},
"LandClaimMaxAreas": 3,
"AutoGrant": false
The above role can be customized however you like... but by default they can't do anything except use chat. You can even turn that off if you like.
I personally like this option because if you want to invite new friends, it's much easier since you don't have to do anything for them to be able to join. Any server mod can change their role to "suplayer" once they arrive and then they can play as normal.