Installing Pterodactyl Panel

Dependency Installation

We will first begin by installing all of Pterodactyl's required dependencies.

1. Add add-apt-repository command:

   sudo apt -y install software-properties-common curl apt-transport-https ca-certificates gnupg

2. Add additional repositories for PHP:

   LC_ALL=C.UTF-8 add-apt-repository -y ppa:ondrej/php
   # or
   LC_ALL=C.UTF-8 add-apt-repository -y ppa:ondrej/nginx

3. Add Redis official APT repository:

   curl -fsSL https://packages.redis.io/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/redis-archive-keyring.gpg
   echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/redis-archive-keyring.gpg] https://packages.redis.io/deb $(lsb_release -cs) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/redis.list

4. MariaDB repo setup script:

   💡

   MariaDB repo setup script can be skipped on Ubuntu 22.04+

   curl -sS https://downloads.mariadb.com/MariaDB/mariadb_repo_setup | sudo bash

5. Update repositories list:

   apt update

6. Install dependencies:

   sudo apt -y install php8.1 php8.1-{common,cli,gd,mysql,mbstring,bcmath,xml,fpm,curl,zip} mariadb-server nginx tar unzip git redis-server

Installing Composer

Composer is required for dependency management in PHP. It will be used to ship all code needed to operate the panel.

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | sudo php -- --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer

Download Files

Before we can download the files, we need a place to store them.

mkdir -p /var/www/pterodactyl
cd /var/www/pterodactyl

Once you've created the necessary directories for Pterodactyl, we can proceed to download the files.

curl -Lo panel.tar.gz https://github.com/pterodactyl/panel/releases/latest/download/panel.tar.gz
tar -xzvf panel.tar.gz
chmod -R 755 storage/* bootstrap/cache/

Installation

Now that we have all the files needed, we can configure the base Panel.

Database Configuration

mysql -u root -p

NOTE: Remember to change 'yourPassword' below to be a unique password.

CREATE USER 'pterodactyl'@'127.0.0.1' IDENTIFIED BY 'yourPassword';
CREATE DATABASE panel;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON panel.* TO 'pterodactyl'@'127.0.0.1' WITH GRANT OPTION;

Creating a Database Host for Nodes

CREATE USER 'pterodactyluser'@'127.0.0.1' IDENTIFIED BY 'somepassword';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'pterodactyluser'@'127.0.0.1' WITH GRANT OPTION;
exit

Environment Configuration

cp .env.example .env
composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader

php artisan key:generate --force

Now we will populate the environmental variables inside .env via the following commands.

php artisan p:environment:setup
php artisan p:environment:database

See reference .env.example.

php artisan p:environment:mail

Database Setup

It is time to set up the database contents. The command below will create the database tables and all the base Nests and Eggs that come with Pterodactyl.

php artisan migrate --seed --force

Add The First User

Someone has to manage the Panel. The command below will create the very first user. This user should be made an administrator of the Panel. See reference .env.example.

php artisan p:user:make

Set Permissions

The last step of the installation is to set the correct permissions on the Panel files.

The following commands will change the owner of all the files and directories inside the pterodactyl directory.

# If using NGINX or Apache (not on CentOS)
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/pterodactyl/*

# If using NGINX on CentOS
chown -R nginx:nginx /var/www/pterodactyl/*

# If using Apache on CentOS
chown -R apache:apache /var/www/pterodactyl/*

Queue Listeners

For a more detailed explanation of queue listeners and what they do, see the official Pterodactyl documentation (opens in a new tab).

Crontab Configuration

First, we need to edit crontab. For anyone who has never used crontab, crontab is a simple way to schedule tasks inside a Unix operating system. To edit crontab, run the following command.

NOTE: You may be prompted to choose a text editor. The simplest way to edit a file such as crontab would be nano or gedit. However, experienced users are welcome to use vi/vim.

sudo crontab -e

Once inside crontab, append the following line at the bottom of the file.

* * * * * php /var/www/pterodactyl/artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

Create Queue Worker

Next, we will create a new systemd worker to keep the previous process running continuously in the background. For more information, please visit the official Pterodactyl documentation (opens in a new tab).

First, create a file called pteroq.service under the directory /etc/systemd/system like so:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/pteroq.service

Next, copy and paste the following block into the newly created file.

# Pterodactyl Queue Worker File
# ----------------------------------
 
[Unit]
Description=Pterodactyl Queue Worker
After=redis-server.service
 
[Service]
# On some systems the user and group might be different.
# Some systems use `apache` or `nginx` as the user and group.
User=www-data
Group=www-data
Restart=always
ExecStart=/usr/bin/php /var/www/pterodactyl/artisan queue:work --queue=high,standard,low --sleep=3 --tries=3
StartLimitInterval=180
StartLimitBurst=30
RestartSec=5s
 
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Lastly, you need to enable and start the redis-server and the pteroq.service we just created.

sudo systemctl enable --now redis-server
sudo systemctl enable --now pteroq.service