Installing Pelican Panel on Ubuntu

Introduction

⚠️ Note: This tutorial only installs the web interface of Pelican Panel. To provision and manage actual game servers, you must also install Wings on your target machines.

Pelican Panel is a modern, open-source game server management panel designed for containerized environments. Built with Laravel and Docker, it provides a powerful web interface for deploying and managing game servers.

This guide explains how to install and configure Pelican Panel on a server running Ubuntu 24.04.

Prerequisites

A server with Ubuntu 24.04
Root or sudo privileges
A registered domain name pointing to the server’s IP address
Basic familiarity with Linux command-line operations

Example terminology

Username: holu
Domain: example.com

Step 1 - Update the System

Start by updating your package index and upgrading any existing packages:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

This ensures compatibility and applies security patches.

Step 2 - Install Required Software

Add the PHP Repository

Add the ondrej/php PPA to access PHP 8.2 and related extensions:
```
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php -y
sudo apt update
```

Install Required Packages

Install NGINX, MySQL, PHP 8.2, and supporting modules required by Laravel:

sudo apt install -y \
  nginx mysql-server sqlite3 \
  php8.2 php8.2-cli php8.2-common php8.2-mysql php8.2-sqlite3 php8.2-fpm \
  php8.2-mbstring php8.2-xml php8.2-bcmath php8.2-curl php8.2-zip php8.2-gd php8.2-intl \
  curl git unzip software-properties-common

Step 3 - Configure MySQL

Secure the database server:

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Then create a database and user for Pelican:

sudo mysql -u root -p

Inside the MySQL shell:

Replace YourSecurePassword with a strong, unique password. You can generate one using openssl rand -base64 20.

CREATE DATABASE pelican;
CREATE USER 'pelicanuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'YourSecurePassword';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON pelican.* TO 'pelicanuser'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Step 4 - Install Docker

Pelican uses Docker to isolate game environments. Install Docker Engine and its dependencies as explained in the official Docker documentation:

Install Docker Engine on Ubuntu

Enable and start the Docker service:

sudo systemctl enable docker
sudo systemctl start docker

Optionally, add your user to the Docker group:

Replace holu with your actual username.

sudo usermod -aG docker holu

You may need to log out and back in for changes to take effect.

Step 5 - Install Composer

Composer is used to manage PHP dependencies. Install it globally:

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

Step 6 - Download and Install Pelican Panel

Create a directory and extract the panel files:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/pelican
cd /var/www/pelican
curl -L https://github.com/pelican-dev/panel/releases/latest/download/panel.tar.gz | sudo tar -xzv

Install PHP dependencies:

sudo chown -R $USER:www-data /var/www/pelican
sudo chmod -R 775 /var/www/pelican
composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader

Step 7 - Configure the Application

Pelican provides an setup command:

php artisan p:environment:setup

Step 8 - Set Permissions

Ensure proper ownership and access permissions for Laravel to function correctly:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/pelican
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/pelican/storage /var/www/pelican/bootstrap/cache

Secure the environment file:

sudo chmod 640 /var/www/pelican/.env

Step 9 - Configure SSL with Certbot

Install Certbot via Snap to enable HTTPS:

sudo apt install snapd -y
sudo snap install core
sudo snap refresh core
sudo snap install --classic certbot
sudo ln -s /snap/bin/certbot /usr/bin/certbot

Obtain an SSL certificate for your domain:

sudo certbot --nginx -d example.com

Enable automatic certificate renewal:

sudo systemctl enable snap.certbot.renew.timer
sudo certbot renew --dry-run

Step 10 - Configure NGINX

Remove the default configuration:

sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

Create a new configuration file:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/pelican.conf

Paste the following, replacing example.com accordingly:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name example.com;
    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

server {
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name example.com;

    root /var/www/pelican/public;
    index index.php;

    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.2-fpm.sock;
    }

    location ~ /\.ht {
        deny all;
    }
}

Enable the site and restart NGINX:

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/pelican.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl restart nginx

Step 11 - Complete the Web Installer

Navigate to your domain in a browser:

https://example.com/installer

Follow the on-screen prompts to create an administrator account and complete the setup.

When it asks about the database information, use the information from step 3. In this example, we used:

Database Driver: MySQL
Database Name: pelican
Database Username: pelicanuser
Database Password: YourSecurePassword'

Conclusion

Ensure the following services are active and enabled:

sudo systemctl status nginx
sudo systemctl status php8.2-fpm
sudo systemctl status docker

Consider securing your server with UFW:

sudo apt install ufw
sudo ufw allow OpenSSH
sudo ufw allow 'Nginx Full'
sudo ufw enable

Keep your system and Pelican Panel updated to receive security patches and new features.

Installing Pelican Panel on Ubuntu

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