Getting Started

Installing Evodactyl is three steps:

1. Run the installer (one line of curl). It clones the repo, builds the panel image from source, and brings up the stack with an admin user.
2. Put a reverse proxy in front of :8080 and terminate TLS. See Reverse proxy + TLS.
3. Install Wings on a node host so there’s somewhere for game servers to run. See Next: Wings.

Prerequisites

A Linux host with:

• Docker 20.10+ and docker compose v2
• git and openssl
• Root / sudo access
• A public DNS name pointed at the host

That’s it. The installer preflight-checks all of these and tells you what’s missing.

Install

Download the script, then run it:

curl -fsSL -o install.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Evodactyl/evodactyl-panel/main/scripts/install.sh
sudo bash install.sh

Or pipe directly if you prefer a one-liner:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Evodactyl/evodactyl-panel/main/scripts/install.sh | sudo bash

The two-step form is the reliable default. The pipe form works on most hosts but can fail if sudo or your shell environment blocks /dev/tty access — if that happens, the script prints a clear error pointing you at the two-step form.

The script asks for a panel URL, an admin account, and (optionally) SMTP. It then clones the Evodactyl source into /srv/evodactyl, generates APP_KEY + database passwords, builds the panel image from source (a few minutes on first run), brings the stack up, runs migrations, seeds default eggs, and creates your first admin user.

Want to read the script before running it? Open the same URL in a browser, or:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Evodactyl/evodactyl-panel/main/scripts/install.sh | less

What it creates

Path	Contents
/srv/evodactyl/	Git checkout of the Evodactyl source
/srv/evodactyl/docker-compose.yml	Generated by the installer
/srv/evodactyl/.evodactyl/database/	MariaDB data volume
/srv/evodactyl/.evodactyl/secrets	APP_KEY + DB passwords — back this up off the host

Overrides (set before pasting): EVODACTYL_INSTALL_DIR, EVODACTYL_REPO, EVODACTYL_BRANCH.

Danger

APP_KEY is the encryption key for every encrypted column in the database — SMTP credentials, Wings daemon tokens, 2FA secrets. Copy /srv/evodactyl/.evodactyl/secrets to an off-host backup immediately. Losing it is unrecoverable.

Updating later

cd /srv/evodactyl
sudo git pull
sudo docker compose up -d --build

Evodactyl does not publish pre-built images — you always build from source. First build takes a few minutes; subsequent builds are cached.

Next →

Reverse proxy + TLS

Put nginx, Caddy, or Apache in front of :8080 and terminate HTTPS.