Portiger Docs
Getting started

Install

There is one command. It runs as root, asks nothing, and ends by printing the address of your panel. Everything a person has to decide is asked afterwards, in the browser, by the setup wizard.

Early access. There is no public download yet. This page describes the installation as it works, so you know exactly what lands on your machine.

What you need

The command

curl -fsSL get.portiger.com | sh -s -- <licence key>

The script is a thin wrapper: it fetches the signed package and runs portiger install <licence key>. The logic is in the binary, which is why the same steps happen whichever way the package arrives. Packages come from the signed apt repository at apt.portiger.com and from GitHub Releases.

What the installer does

  1. Checks the key

    The key is verified and activated against the licence server before anything is written. A key that is already fully used says so here, not halfway through.

  2. Installs Docker and starts the workload pool

    Docker is installed if it is not there, and the pool is initialised with this machine as its only node. From here on a stack is deployed as a service, which is what gives it replicas, rolling updates and rollback.

  3. Opens the ports it needs

    The firewall step opens 80 and 443 for the sites you will publish, and 2377/tcp, 7946/tcp, 7946/udp and 4789/udp so other nodes of this installation can join and carry traffic. Nothing else is opened.

  4. Installs the mail packages, switched off

    The mail server's packages are put on disk and left masked. Nothing listens for mail, and nothing is configured, until you turn mail on in the wizard or later under Mail.

  5. Installs the service and prints the address

    Portiger runs under systemd as its own unprivileged portiger user; the few jobs that genuinely need root go through a separate privileged helper unit. The last line of the installer is the panel address.

Reaching the panel

The panel is at https://<ip>:8443, and at https://app.<domain>:8443 once you give the wizard a domain. It serves its own certificate on its own port rather than going through the reverse proxy, so it stays reachable when publishing is being changed.

The first visit warns you. Until a real certificate is issued the panel serves a self-signed one. That is expected; the wizard's certificate step is where it is replaced.

Publishing - the part that puts a domain in front of a stack - is not installed by the installer. The panel sets it up itself, the first time it is needed. You can see its state, and every other part of the installation, on System components.

Re-running install, and adding machines

Running install again on a finished host does not restart the setup: it prints where the panel is running. To add a second or third machine you do not run anything on it - the panel installs Portiger there over SSH. See Add a node.

Next: the setup wizard and first sign-in. For updating and removing, see backup, update, uninstall.

dev