How to Install Pelican Panel and Wings on a VPS

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What is Pelican Panel?

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Before you start

• Use Ubuntu 24.04 on a fresh server. Nginx takes ports 80 and 443. Commands use sudo; root users can leave it out. Prefer Pterodactyl? See install Pterodactyl Panel.
• Point a domain such as panel.example.com at the server with an A record. See point a domain to your server. Pelican’s docs note that IP addresses can’t be used with SSL.
• Check the virtualisation type. Run systemd-detect-virt. kvm or none (bare metal) works. Pelican’s docs say OpenVZ and LXC usually can’t run Wings.
• Take a snapshot or backup if the server already holds data. See schedule and restore backups.

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Step 1: Install PHP, Nginx and Composer

sudo apt update
sudo apt -y install software-properties-common curl tar unzip nginx
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt update
sudo apt -y install php8.5 php8.5-{gd,mysql,mbstring,bcmath,xml,curl,zip,intl,sqlite3,fpm}
curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | sudo php -- --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer

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Step 2: Download the panel

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/pelican
cd /var/www/pelican
curl -L https://github.com/pelican/panel/releases/latest/download/panel.tar.gz | sudo tar -xzv
sudo COMPOSER_ALLOW_SUPERUSER=1 composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader

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Step 3: Create the environment and set permissions

sudo php artisan p:environment:setup

sudo grep APP_KEY /var/www/pelican/.env

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

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Step 4: Set up Nginx with HTTPS

sudo apt -y install python3-certbot-nginx
sudo certbot certonly --nginx -d panel.example.com

listen 443 ssl http2;

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

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Step 5: Run the web installer

• Environment: the panel name, the URL (https://panel.example.com) and your admin user.
• Database: SQLite is the installer’s recommendation. For MySQL or MariaDB, read Pelican’s MySQL guide first.
• Eggs: the game templates to install.
• Cache, Queue and Session drivers: the installer recommends Filesystem, Database and Filesystem or Database, none of which need Redis.

(sudo crontab -l -u www-data 2>/dev/null; echo "* * * * * php /var/www/pelican/artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1") | sudo crontab -u www-data -
sudo php /var/www/pelican/artisan p:environment:queue-service

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Step 6: Install Docker and Wings

sudo mkdir -p /etc/pelican /var/run/wings
sudo curl -L -o /usr/local/bin/wings "https://github.com/pelican/wings/releases/latest/download/wings_linux_$([[ "$(uname -m)" == "x86_64" ]] && echo "amd64" || echo "arm64")"
sudo chmod u+x /usr/local/bin/wings

sudo wings --debug

[Unit]
Description=Wings Daemon
After=docker.service
Requires=docker.service
PartOf=docker.service

[Service]
User=root
WorkingDirectory=/etc/pelican
LimitNOFILE=4096
PIDFile=/var/run/wings/daemon.pid
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/wings
Restart=on-failure
StartLimitInterval=180
StartLimitBurst=30
RestartSec=5s

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

sudo systemctl enable --now wings

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Which ports to open

sudo ufw allow OpenSSH
sudo ufw allow 80,443/tcp
sudo ufw allow 8080/tcp
sudo ufw allow 2022/tcp
sudo ufw allow 25565:25570/tcp
sudo ufw enable

0 23 * * * certbot renew --quiet --deploy-hook "systemctl restart nginx wings"

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How to check it worked

systemctl status pelican-queue wings --no-pager

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Frequently asked questions

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Why does my node show as unreachable?

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Why are schedules stuck on Processing?

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Can Wings run on a different server from the panel?

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