Pterodactyl installation

Pterodactyl is an open-source Linux-based game server management panel.

It allows you to easily manage and run game servers through a web interface. It uses Docker containers to isolate servers and supports a wide range of games.

In this guide, I will show you how to install the Pterodactyl panel. The Pterodactyl panel is designed to run on your own web server. You need to have administrator rights to your server in order to install and use this panel.

At the beginning there is a download of requirements for Ubuntu Linux, but if you are on AlmaLinux or something similar you can scroll down a bit to find the correct commands.

1. First update your packages and repository.

sudo apt update

2. Next, we will install important requirements for the server:

Add the "add-apt-repository" command

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

Add additional PHP, Redis, and MariaDB repositories

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

Add the official Redis 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

Skip MariaDB repo installation script if using Ubuntu 22.04

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

Update

apt update

Install requirements

apt -y install php8.3 php8.3-{common,cli,gd,mysql,mbstring,bcmath,xml,fpm,curl,zip} mariadb-server nginx tar unzip git redis-server

Use these if you have CentOS, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux or Fedora Server

Update your server

sudo dnf update -y

Install EPEL and Remi repositories

sudo dnf install -y epel-release

Add PHP repositories (Enterprise Linux 8)

(if you have almalinux 9.3, change "remi-release-8.rpm" from 8 -> 9 to get the correct data)

sudo dnf install -y https://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-8.rpm

Enable PHP 8.3

sudo dnf module reset php
sudo dnf module enable php:remi-8.3 -y
sudo dnf install php-process -y
sudo dnf install php83-php-process -y

Install dependencies

sudo dnf install -y php php-{common,cli,gd,mysql,mbstring,bcmath,xml,fpm,curl,zip} mariadb mariadb-server nginx redis zip unzip tar

Start and enable services

sudo systemctl enable --now mariadb nginx redis

Install firewall

sudo dnf install firewalld -y
sudo systemctl enable --now firewalld

Configure firewall (This will open ports 80 and 443 so you can the Pterodactyl panel)

sudo firewall-cmd --add-service=http --permanent
sudo firewall-cmd --add-service=https --permanent 
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

Install Nano (Nano is a text file editing tool)

sudo dnf install nano -y

3. Installing Composer

Composer is a dependency management tool for PHP that allows us to easily deliver everything needed to use the panel.

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

4. Installing files

First we will create a new folder for Pterodactyl

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

Once you have created the directory and are inside it, we will download and extract the files using the curl tool.

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/

5. Creating a database

Now that all the important files have been downloaded, we need to configure some panel features. Let's first create a database for the panel:

mysql -u root -p

Remember to replace 'yourPassword' with your actual 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;
exit

To exit the MySQL interface, type "exit" and press ENTER. Then, we will copy the default environment configuration file, install important requirements, and generate a new application encryption key.

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

Run this command only when installing Pterodactyl for the first time and you don't have any databases created

php artisan key:generate --force

6. Environment configuration

The Pterodactyl environment can be easily configured using a few CLI commands:

php artisan p:environment:setup

In the first two fields you can enter your email and either your own site or VPS servers IP address. This will allow you to access the Pterodactyl panel later.
(You can press Enter in the other fields if you do not want to change the default settings)

php artisan p:environment:database

You can press Enter in all fields except for the Database Password field where you enter the password you set in Step 5.

7. Database configuration

Now we need to configure all the basic information of the panel in the database you previously created:

php artisan migrate --seed --force

This command will set up the database tables and then add all the Nests & Eggs that Pterodactyl uses.

8. Creating an admin user

Next, we need to create a user with administrator privileges. Set the user details using this command:

php artisan p:user:make

9. Giving privileges 

The final step of the installation is to set the correct permissions for the panel files so that the web server can access them properly.

This is for Ubuntu

If you are using Apache or Nginx:

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/pterodactyl/*

These two are for AlmaLinux and others like it

If you are using Nginx:

chown -R nginx:nginx /var/www/pterodactyl/*

If you are using Apache:

chown -R apache:apache /var/www/pterodactyl/*

10. Crontab settings

Crontab is only available on Ubuntu Linux, so you can skip this section if you are not on Ubuntu or something similar.

The first thing we need to do is create a new cron job that runs every minute to handle certain Pterodactyl tasks, such as session cleaning and dispatching scheduled tasks.

Open the cron editor using the command: "sudo crontab -e" and add the following line at the end:

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

11. Creating the Queue Worker file

Create a file named "pteroq.service" in the directory "/etc/systemd/system" with the following content:

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

If you are on almalinux then change After=redis-server.service -> After=redis.service

In this guide, if you are using almalinux or something similar, set user and group = nginx.

[Unit]
Description=Pterodactyl Queue Worker
After=redis-server.service

[Service]
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

If you are using Redis, run these commands to ensure that Redis starts automatically when the server boots and to enable Pterodactyl with the command below:

sudo systemctl enable --now redis-server

With Almalinux

 sudo systemctl enable --now redis

sudo systemctl enable --now pteroq.service

11.5. Almalinux 9 additional configuration

cd /etc/php-fpm.d
sudo nano www-pterodactyl.conf

copy the text below there, save it and then you can exit

[pterodactyl]
user = nginx
group = nginx

listen = /var/run/php-fpm/pterodactyl.sock
listen.owner = nginx
listen.group = nginx
listen.mode = 0750

pm = ondemand
pm.max_children = 9
pm.process_idle_timeout = 10s
pm.max_requests = 200

Then turn on php-fpm with this command:

sudo systemctl enable --now php-fpm

# Use this code to find what you need to put in part 12 on the line which has 
# fastcgi_pass unix:;
grep -R "listen =" /etc/php-fpm.d/*.conf

# You should see something like this where you take /var/run/php-fpm/pterodactyl.sock
/etc/php-fpm.d/www-pterodactyl.conf:listen = /var/run/php-fpm/pterodactyl.sock

# Which you put in like this
# fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php-fpm/pterodactyl.sock;

12. Web server configuration

First delete the default Nginx configuration

rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

Now paste the contents of the file below and replace <domain> with your domain name used in the file called pterodactyl.conf and place the file in the folder

cd /etc/nginx/sites-available
sudo nano pterodactyl.conf

With Almalinux you can find the right folder with

cd /etc/nginx/conf.d
sudo nano pterodactyl.conf

server {
    # Replace <domain> with your actual domain or IP address
    listen 80;
    server_name <domain>;

    root /var/www/pterodactyl/public;
    index index.html index.htm index.php;
    charset utf-8;

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

    location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
    location = /robots.txt  { access_log off; log_not_found off; }

    access_log off;
    error_log  /var/log/nginx/pterodactyl.app-error.log error;

    # allow larger file uploads and longer script runtimes
    client_max_body_size 100m;
    client_body_timeout 120s;

    sendfile off;

    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.1-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_param PHP_VALUE "upload_max_filesize = 100M \n post_max_size=100M";
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_param HTTP_PROXY "";
        fastcgi_intercept_errors off;
        fastcgi_buffer_size 16k;
        fastcgi_buffers 4 16k;
        fastcgi_connect_timeout 300;
        fastcgi_send_timeout 300;
        fastcgi_read_timeout 300;
    }

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

Enable the configuration using this command:

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/pterodactyl.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/pterodactyl.conf

After that restart Nginx:

sudo systemctl restart nginx

To get Almalinux 9 configurations working, enter these commands:

sudo -u nginx php /var/www/pterodactyl/artisan config:clear
sudo -u nginx php /var/www/pterodactyl/artisan config:cache
sudo systemctl restart php-fpm

13. Getting into the panel

You can access the panel by entering the domain or IP address you entered in step 6 into your browser.

There you will enter the username and password you created in step 8.

14. Wings requirements installation

Installing Docker

curl -sSL https://get.docker.com/ | CHANNEL=stable bash

This will start Docker on startup

sudo systemctl enable --now docker

Use these if you have CentOS, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux or Fedora Server

Install the required packages

sudo dnf install -y dnf-utils device-mapper-persistent-data lvm2

Add a Docker repository

sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo=https://download.docker.com/linux/centos/docker-ce.repo

Install Docker

sudo dnf install -y docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io

This will start Docker on startup

sudo systemctl enable --now docker

firewall-cmd --add-port 8080/tcp --permanent
firewall-cmd --add-port 2022/tcp --permanent
firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=trusted --change-interface=pterodactyl0
firewall-cmd --zone=trusted --add-masquerade --permanent
firewall-cmd --reload

After you've done either of those you need to enable swap

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

Add swapaccount=1 to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX or something similar shown in the image, as shown in the image.

After that, do

sudo update-grub
sudo reboot

If you are on Almalinux you should use

sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

15. Install Wings

Use these commands to install Wings.

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

16. Configuration

Go to the admin area in the panel

There, go to the locations section in the sidebar on the left.

There, click the create new button in the upper right corner.

There you add your region to the short code section according to the template shown there.

Then go to Nodes

From there, click the Create New button.

Then you will see a page like this where you need to put your site/ip address and configure how much space you want to put on the node and other things like that.

Then you can open the node by clicking on its name

There, go to the Configuration page and copy the code snippet there.

Then use these commands to go to the config.yml file and add the snippet copied from the page there.

cd /etc/pterodactyl
sudo nano config.yml

17. Start Wings

You can start Wings with this command

sudo wings --debug

With Almalinux you have to do a little more to get it working

Download the necessary things

sudo dnf install -y curl tar unzip socat

Make a folder for Wings and go there

sudo mkdir -p /etc/pterodactyl
cd /etc/pterodactyl

Make sure Wings is downloaded

curl -L https://github.com/pterodactyl/wings/releases/latest/download/wings_linux_amd64 -o wings

Do this to make sure it can boot.

chmod +x wings

And then try to launch Wings

sudo ./wings --debug

If you get any error like this, you can try turning off your firewall for a while.

sudo systemctl stop firewalld
sudo systemctl disable firewalld

then you can try to start Wings again and if you can open this without errors then you can close it.

18. Make Wings run in the background

Go to that folder and open the file

cd /etc/systemd/system
sudo nano wings.service

Copy the following into that file and save it.

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

[Service]
User=root
WorkingDirectory=/etc/pterodactyl
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

And then you can start Wings with this command

sudo systemctl enable --now wings

If you previously turned off the firewall, you can turn it back on now.

sudo systemctl enable --now firewalld

19. Node allocation

Go to the Allocation section of the node

In the space on the right, put the server IP and the ports shown in the picture.

Then once you have added them go to the Servers section on the left

There, press the Create New button.

There you can give the server a name.

Also decide how much space and other things you want to give it

And then you can choose which game you want to make a server for (we're making a Minecraft server here)

Then you can select the version and then press the Create Server button

Then you have to wait a moment for the server to start up.

You can try refreshing the page until you see a view like this, from where you can press the button on the right side.

This will take you to a page like this where you can press the start button. You will need the Address below the Start button to access the server in the game.

When you start your server for the first time, you will see something like this, where you can press I ACCEPT and then you can go to Minecraft.

In Minecraft you can add your server by pressing the Add Server button.

And by entering the address shown in the panel in the server address field and then pressing Done.

I hope this guide was helpful. If there is any problems please contact us.