Source install

What the FeatherPanel source install does, which packages and services it sets up, where its files live, and what it cannot do that the Docker install can.

The source install puts the panel’s code in /var/www/featherpanel and runs every part as a native service. It exists for people who want to change the code. For anything else, use the Docker install.

Run the installer

curl -sSL https://get.featherpanel.com/installer.sh | bash

Choose Panel → Install, then [2] Source Mode. Set FP_PANEL_MODE=source to skip the question. The installer downloads its source sub-scripts from the main branch on GitHub (or develop when you use the dev channel) and runs them in this order.

1. Prerequisites (debian.bash or ubuntu.bash)

• Adds the sury.org PHP repository (Debian) or the matching PPA (Ubuntu), the Redis repository and the MariaDB repository.
• Installs PHP 8.5 (override with PHP_VERSION) with the cli, gd, mysql, mbstring, bcmath, xml, curl, zip, redis, mongodb, pgsql, sqlite3, ldap, bz2, gmp, imagick and yaml extensions.
• Installs mariadb-server, nginx, redis-server, git, make and Composer.

2. Toolchains (universal.bash)

Installs nvm v0.40.4 with the current Node.js LTS and pnpm, and the Rust toolchain for the async runner.

3. Panel (init/panel.bash)

1. Clones the repository to /var/www/featherpanel. Stable installs check out the latest release tag; the dev channel uses the develop branch.
2. Runs composer install in backend and pnpm install in frontendv2.
3. Creates the featherpanel database and user. The password is reused from an existing .env or generated with openssl rand -hex 24.
4. Writes backend/storage/config/.env with the database settings, DATABASE_ENCRYPTION=xchacha20, a new DATABASE_ENCRYPTION_KEY (kept if one already exists) and the Redis settings.
5. Runs the database migrations with php app migrate.
6. Installs FrankenPHP as featherpanel-backend.service on 127.0.0.1:8721 in worker mode with the Mercure hub.
7. Builds the Rust async runner and installs featherpanel-async-runner.service.
8. Writes the nginx site /etc/nginx/sites-available/FeatherPanel.conf, or sets up a Cloudflare Tunnel.
9. Writes /etc/cron.d/featherpanel, which runs runner.bash and runner.php every minute as www-data.
10. Builds the frontend with pnpm build and installs featherpanel-next.service on port 3000.

Layout

Check them with:

systemctl status featherpanel-backend featherpanel-next featherpanel-async-runner

Installer variables

init/panel.bash reads these variables, so you can set them before running it:

Updating and removing

Run the installer again and choose Update. In source mode it runs init/update.bash, which discards local changes in the checkout, so keep your modifications in a fork or a plugin. See Updating and Uninstall.

Next steps

• Set up SSL
• Cron and workers
• Install FeatherWings