v2.1.0#

We are finally happy to release v2.1.0, which signifies the moving of the v2 release into an open release. We thank everyone who partook in our alpha versions and helped provide feedback and bug reports. V2 has been a long time coming, and we finally happy to have it in the wild.

While v1.2.4 does not have a planned EOL timeline yet, we do recommend you start considering moving away from it. We do not plan on putting any dev time into v1.2 anymore except for critical bug fixes or exploits.

There is a lot to cover in what v2 even offers, so let’s get started.

Changelog#

This release signifies the full move to PackageCloud repos, so now our entire software suite is available via package managers. You will have to install our repo to get access to it, but now you can manage the versions of PufferPanel through your package manager instead of scripts and checking our site occasionally.

pufferd is no longer a separate software. We have merged the daemon into the main project, so now it’s one download for the panel and for a node. Toggles in the config decide what features are enabled, so you can configure it as a panel, as a node, or as both! Single-node usages should now be extremely simple, as there is no network usage for when you do work on the node that the panel is on. This also means we only use 2 ports now, instead of 3. 5656 is no longer a port we will use. By default, we now only use 8080 and 5657. 5657 is the SFTP port while all other traffic goes to 8080.

Templates are now fully editable via the UI. This also means templates are stored with the panel, and are no longer stored on the nodes. You can easily add templates through our UI, import templates from our repository, or even change templates to suit your needs.

The UI has been overhauled to be more flexible. While we are still making changes to the UI, this new UI is designed to flow a bit better. You will notice a smoother experience as you navigate around. This also means it has a dark mode! You will notice that you are now able to edit some things that previously required you to log into a node for. We will be expanding this in the future.

No dependencies. You can install the panel and get a working installation, no web server configurations or database required. You still have to install the server dependencies for the games you wish to run, but those are not a part of our panel.

Panel API. We now have a fully API-driven panel. All actions you do in the panel are actually API calls, so you can easily create 3rd party addons that consume this API to create new servers, new users, or even manage your server.

Our database support has changed compared to what v1 offered. By default, we will use SQLite as our primary database. This means you can get up and running with 0 effort. However, we do support the following database engines: SQLite, MySQL, MariaDB, PostgresSQL, Microsoft SQL Server. We do not have a migration tool at this time to move your database from one engine to another.

Migrating from v1 to v2#

We currently do not have a way to migrate from v1 to v2 at this time. Due to the amount of changes that occurred, it’s not a simple migration at this time. We are still looking at how to make upgrading easier.

v2 Alpha Changelog#

For those that came from the alpha builds, this is what we’ve changed since our alpha 3 release.

  • Public key for authentication is now served by the panel. This means deployments are a bit smoother now.

  • Fixed a bug where servers were not being properly displayed after creating them.

  • Templates can be imported from our repo. This also means the template commands are removed.

  • User editing can only be done by a root user when using the commandline.

  • Add a fabric download command for templates to now use.

  • Add editing of server-level variables and flags such as auto-restart, auto-recover, and auto-start.

  • Fix SFTP on remote nodes

  • Fix auth for remote nodes

  • Fix bug where docker servers were not being created with the proper image

  • Server list had a UI revamp

  • File manager had a UI revamp

Known Issues/Limitations#

The following is a list of issues and/or limitations of v2.1.0

  • Email support does not work. While there is some built-in work to get this working, it is currently not enabled.

Website/Documentation#

As you can tell, we have changed our documentation and website. We were not happy with our previous documentation software, as it failed to indicate when requests for changes were made, and was not very intuitive. We have changed to ReadTheDocs as our documentation provider, and you can contribute to our documentation here

Our website is also in the process of being changed, and so it has a temporary page for now. We know it’s not the best thing to look at, but it’s a start.

Donations#

We have finally opened up a donation page through a combination of Github Sponsors and OpenCollective. You can view our current sponsors here along with seeing our full expenses here. We strive to be as open as possible, so you can see where any of the money you donate goes.