Installing PufferPanel

System Requirements

  • A VPS or Dedicated server (32-bit IS NOT supported)

  • SSH access and administrative (root or sudo) privileges on the server

  • One of the following operating systems:

OS/Version

AMD64

ARM64

Ubuntu Focal (20.04)

No

No

Ubuntu Jammy (22.04)

Yes

Yes

Ubuntu Noble (24.04)

Yes

Yes

Debian Buster (10)

Yes

Yes

Debian Bullseye (11)

Yes

Yes

Raspbian Buster (10)

No

Yes

Raspbian Bullseye (11)

No

Yes

Ports

The following ports are used by PufferPanel. Please allow traffic to/from these ports to fully use your installation.

  • 8080: Web access

  • 5657: SFTP

Installing

For easiest installation, if you have one of the listed supported distributions, you can simply install our package and get going!.

sudo apt-get install curl gnupg apt-transport-https

curl -fsSL https://packagecloud.io/pufferpanel/pufferpanel/gpgkey | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/pufferpanel.gpg > /dev/null

echo "X-Repolib-Name: PufferPanel
Types: deb
URIs: https://packagecloud.io/pufferpanel/pufferpanel/any/
Suites: any
Components: main
Signed-By: /etc/apt/keyrings/pufferpanel.gpg" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pufferpanel.sources > /dev/null

sudo apt update

sudo apt-get install pufferpanel

  echo "[pufferpanel]
name=pufferpanel
baseurl=https://packagecloud.io/pufferpanel/pufferpanel/rpm_any/rpm_any/$basearch
repo_gpgcheck=1
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1
gpgkey=https://packagecloud.io/pufferpanel/pufferpanel/gpgkey
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
metadata_expire=300" | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/pufferpanel.repo > /dev/null

  sudo yum install pufferpanel

docker volume create pufferpanel-config

docker volume create pufferpanel-servers

docker create --name pufferpanel \
               -p 8080:8080 -p 5657:5657 \
               -v pufferpanel-config:/etc/pufferpanel \
               -v pufferpanel-servers:/var/lib/pufferpanel:z \
               -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
               --restart=on-failure \
               pufferpanel/pufferpanel:latest

Adding an admin

To create your first user, run the following command. Be sure to enter “Y” when it asks if this is an admin so you can fully use your panel.

sudo pufferpanel user add

docker start pufferpanel
docker exec -it pufferpanel /pufferpanel/bin/pufferpanel user add

Starting the panel

sudo systemctl enable --now pufferpanel

docker start pufferpanel

Managing the service

PufferPanel uses Systemd to manage the service, consult the man page man systemctl or a guide for instructions on how to use it.

Securing Servers

Servers can run in several different environments depending on the security required. It is HIGHLY recommended to configure and use Docker for your servers as this will result in better file and process protection.

Refer to Using Docker with PufferPanel to configure Docker so that PufferPanel can use it.

Using “standard” is NOT a secure environment, and WILL result in servers being able to access host files. This should ONLY be used for testing purposes and not for live servers.

Done!

And that’s it! Your panel is now available on port 8080 of your server.

Additional resources: