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Version: 0.9.1

Getting started

info

It is recommended that you have some sort of Linux and MariaDB experience before installing this.

danger

Warning, The dashboard is currently in pre-release and may contain some bugs. Use This dashboard at your own risk.

Dependencies​

  • PHP 8.1 with the following extensions: cli, openssl, gd, mysql, PDO, mbstring, tokenizer, bcmath, xml or dom, curl, zip, and fpm if you are planning to use NGINX.
  • MySQL 5.7.22 or higher (MySQL 8 recommended) or MariaDB 10.2 or higher.
  • Redis (redis-server)
  • A web server (Apache, NGINX, Caddy, etc.)
  • curl
  • tar
  • unzip
  • git
  • composer v2

Example Dependency Installation​

If you already have Pterodactyl installed, please check that you also install PHP 8.1!

The commands below are simply an example of how you might install these dependencies. Please consult with your operating system's package manager to determine the correct packages to install.

# Add "add-apt-repository" command
apt -y install software-properties-common curl apt-transport-https ca-certificates gnupg

# Add additional repositories for PHP, Redis, and MariaDB (for Debian 11 and Ubuntu 22.04)
LC_ALL=C.UTF-8 add-apt-repository -y ppa:ondrej/php
curl -sS https://downloads.mariadb.com/MariaDB/mariadb_repo_setup | sudo bash

# Update repositories list
apt update

# Add universe repository if you are on Ubuntu 18.04
apt-add-repository universe

# Install Dependencies 
apt -y install php8.1 php8.1-{cli,gd,mysql,pdo,mbstring,tokenizer,bcmath,xml,fpm,curl,zip} mariadb-server nginx tar unzip git redis-server
danger

Due to the fact that the MariaDB 11.3.2 update has broken most PHP and NodeJS applications, you should make some configuration changes to avoid the error "Server set charset (0) unknown to the client.".

Edit the /etc/mysql/mariadb.conf.d/50-server.cnf file, and change character-set-collations = utf8mb4=uca1400_ai_ci to character-set-collations = utf8mb4=general_ci.

After you change and save the configuration file, restart your MariaDB server.

systemctl restart mariadb

If you already have the correct value, then everything is fine. Just ignore this alert.

Extra Dependency Used on this Dashboard​

You need to install this, use the appropriate PHP version (php -v) Extra dependency used for handling currency's

apt -y install php8.1-intl

Installing Composer​

If you already have Pterodactyl installed, you can skip this step!

Composer is a dependency manager for PHP that allows us to ship everything you'll need code wise to operate the Panel. You'll need composer installed before continuing in this process.

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

Download Files​

The first step in this process is to create the folder where the panel will live and then move ourselves into that newly created folder. Below is an example of how to perform this operation.

mkdir -p /var/www/controlpanel && cd /var/www/controlpanel
git clone https://github.com/Ctrlpanel-gg/panel.git ./

Basic Setup​

Now that all the files have been downloaded we need to configure some core aspects of the Panel.

You will need a database setup and a database user with the correct permissions created for that database before continuing any further.

Database Setup​

To make a database and database user, you can follow this guide. This is for MariaDB. Please change the USE_YOUR_OWN_PASSWORD part to your password. Also, 127.0.0.1 is for localhost. Please have basic knowledge of Linux before attempting this. Use at your own responsibility.

mysql -u root -p
CREATE DATABASE controlpanel;
CREATE USER 'controlpaneluser'@'127.0.0.1' IDENTIFIED BY 'USE_YOUR_OWN_PASSWORD';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON controlpanel.* TO 'controlpaneluser'@'127.0.0.1';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Web server Configuration​

You should paste the contents of the file below, replacing <domain> with your domain name being used in a file called ctrlpanel.conf and place it in /etc/nginx/sites-available/, or — if on CentOS, /etc/nginx/conf.d/.

How to add this config​

cd /etc/nginx/sites-available/
nano ctrlpanel.conf

Example Nginx Config​

server {
        listen 80;
        root /var/www/controlpanel/public;
        index index.php index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;
        server_name YOUR.DOMAIN.COM;

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

        location ~ \.php$ {
                include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
                fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php8.1-fpm.sock;
        }

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

Enable Configuration​

The final step is to enable your NGINX configuration and restart it.

# You do not need to symlink this file if you are using CentOS.
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/ctrlpanel.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ctrlpanel.conf

# Check for nginx errors
sudo nginx -t

# You need to restart nginx regardless of OS. only do this you haven't received any errors
systemctl restart nginx

Adding SSL​

There are many ways to add SSL to your site. A simple solution is to use Cert bot from Let’s Encrypt. Cert bot will automatically install the certificates for you and keep your SSL certifications up to date!

sudo apt update
#install certbot for nginx
sudo apt install -y certbot
sudo apt install -y python3-certbot-nginx
#install certificates
sudo certbot --nginx -d yourdomain.com

Panel Installation​

First, we will have to install all composer packages. For this, navigate into your /var/www/controlpanel again and run the following command

composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader

Set Permissions​

The last step in the installation process is to set the correct permissions on the Panel files so that the web server can use them correctly.

# If using NGINX or Apache (not on CentOS):
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/controlpanel/
chmod -R 755 storage/* bootstrap/cache/

# If using NGINX on CentOS:
chown -R nginx:nginx /var/www/controlpanel/
chmod -R 755 storage/* bootstrap/cache/

# If using Apache on CentOS
chown -R apache:apache /var/www/controlpanel/
chmod -R 755 storage/* bootstrap/cache/

****

Once this is done, you should be able to access the dashboard via your web browser.

Running the installer​

If you encounter problems with the email setup, you can use the skip button and set it up later.

Once the Web-Installer has been completed, you will be navigated to the login-page of your installation.

Don't forget to complete the steps listed below here.​

Queue Listeners​

Crontab Configuration​

The first thing we need to do is create a new cron job that runs every minute to process specific Dashboard tasks such as billing users hourly and suspending unpaid servers. To open the crontab run: crontab -e and paste the following configuration into crontab.

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

Create Queue Worker​

Next, you need to create a new systemd worker to keep our queue process running in the background. This queue is responsible for sending emails and handling many other background tasks for the Dashboard.

Create a file called ctrlpanel.service in /etc/systemd/system with the contents below.

# Ctrlpanel Queue Worker File
# ----------------------------------

[Unit]
Description=Ctrlpanel Queue Worker

[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/controlpanel/artisan queue:work --sleep=3 --tries=3

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Finally, enable the service and set it to boot on machine start.

sudo systemctl enable --now ctrlpanel.service