Pterodactyl Game Server Management Platform

Pterodactyl is a game server management platform designed with a focus on security, modern tooling, and containerization. Key features include:

• Security First: Implements bcrypt hashing, AES-256-CBC encryption, and out-of-the-box HTTPS support.
• Modern Tooling: Built on a modern stack designed for ease of modification and development.
• Docker-centric Architecture: All game servers run in isolated Docker containers, which provides strict resource limits, reduces attack vectors, and allows for game-specific environments.

Pterodactyl Panel requires root access and a Linux environment. It is not compatible with most OpenVZ systems due to Docker incompatibilities.

Supported Operating Systems

• Ubuntu: 22.04 (requires additional PHP repositories), 24.04 (MariaDB can be installed without repo setup scripts).
• RHEL / Rocky Linux / AlmaLinux: Versions 8 and 9 (requires extra repositories).
• Debian: Versions 11, 12, and 13.

Core Dependencies

• PHP: 8.2 or 8.3 (recommended) with extensions: cli, openssl, gd, mysql, PDO, mbstring, tokenizer, bcmath, xml or dom, curl, zip, and fpm (if using NGINX).
• Database: MySQL 5.7.22+ (MySQL 8 recommended) or MariaDB 10.2+.
• Redis: redis-server.
• Webserver: Apache, NGINX, Caddy, etc.
• Other Tools: curl, tar, unzip, git, and composer v2.

The telemetry system generates a unique UUIDv4 identifier for the Panel installation, which is stored in the database to maintain identity across load-balanced instances.

Every 24 hours, the TelemetryCollectionService collects aggregate data (such as Panel version, PHP version, database driver, and resource counts like allocations, backups, and servers) and sends it to a remote server. The data is collected immediately before transmission and is not stored locally for long periods. The collected data is currently processed and stored using Cloudflare Workers and Cloudflare D1.

Pterodactyl is open-source and encourages independent security audits. If you discover a security vulnerability, please report it directly to support@pterodactyl.io.

Important: Do not report security concerns on the public-facing bug tracker. Please practice responsible disclosure when communicating findings.

The Pterodactyl Daemon passes a STARTUP environment variable to the container. This variable often contains placeholders in the format {{VARIABLE_NAME}}, which correspond to other environment variables defined in the Egg configuration.

To execute the command correctly, the entrypoint.sh script must parse the STARTUP string and replace these placeholders with their actual values.

Example Workflow:

1. Input STARTUP: java -Xms128M -Xmx{{SERVER_MEMORY}}M -jar {{SERVER_JARFILE}}
2. Environment Variables: SERVER_MEMORY=1024, SERVER_JARFILE=server.jar
3. Parsing Logic: The script uses sed to convert {{VAR}} to {VAR} so that eval echo can expand them.
4. Resulting Command: java -Xms128M -Xmx1024M -jar server.jar

Parsing Command:

MODIFIED_STARTUP=`eval echo $(echo ${STARTUP} | sed -e 's/{{/${/g' -e 's/}}/}/g')`

Pterodactyl Panel 1.0 is incompatible with the old Node.js daemon. You must migrate to Wings, the new Go-based server control plane. Wings is faster, smaller, and easier to install.

Refer to the Migrating to Wings guide for specific instructions.

Because Pterodactyl runs servers in isolated Docker containers, localhost or 127.0.0.1 inside a container refers to the container itself, not the host node.

To allow a proxy server (like BungeeCord or Waterfall) to communicate with game servers on the same node, you must use the node's internal IP address within the Pterodactyl network. By default, this address is 172.18.0.1. Use this IP in your proxy server's configuration files to point to the backend game servers.

In version 0.6.X, the Daemon switched from custom logging to using Docker logging functionality.

Benefits:

• Better captures events that occur before a container is fully attached.
• Centralizes logging logic.
• Allows Docker to manage logs directly.
• Provides full container output leading up to a crash, rather than generic "Server has crashed" messages.

To build the Panel frontend, you must install NodeJS and Yarn. The build tools require NodeJS (version 22.x is recommended based on the setup scripts) and Yarn as the package manager.

Warning: Do not run these build steps on your production nodes.

# Ubuntu/Debian
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_22.x | sudo -E bash - 
sudo apt install -y nodejs

# CentOS
curl -sL https://rpm.nodesource.com/setup_22.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo yum install -y nodejs yarn # CentOS 7
sudo dnf install -y nodejs yarn # CentOS 8, Rocky Linux 8, AlmaLinux 8