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Requirements

Panel host

Section titled “Panel host”
  • OS: Ubuntu/Debian, RHEL/CentOS/Rocky/Alma, Fedora, Arch, Alpine, or openSUSE — the distributions the installer knows how to set Docker up on.
  • Architecture: linux/amd64 or linux/arm64. Panel images are multi-arch from release v1.71.0 onward; on an older release an arm64 host fails to pull with no matching manifest for linux/arm64/v8.
  • Docker with the Compose v2 plugin (or Podman with podman compose). The installer can install Docker for you when it is missing.
  • Resources: roughly 4 GB RAM and 20 GB free disk for the panel, PostgreSQL, and Redis. The bundled stack limits the backend to 2 GB, nginx to 512 MB, and Redis to 512 MB; PostgreSQL is unbounded. The installer warns when fewer than 5 GB are free under the install directory.
  • Dependencies: curl, tar, and openssl on the host — the installer stops if any is missing.
  • Network: a public IP or LAN address, plus a DNS name if you want TLS (recommended — see installation), and outbound HTTPS to pull container images. A host firewall must allow the panel port.

Node hosts

Section titled “Node hosts”

Each node runs game servers through the Catalyst agent (containerd-based):

  • OS: Linux with systemd (or OpenRC on Alpine).
  • Architecture: x86_64/amd64 or aarch64/arm64 — the agent installer stops on any other architecture.
  • Kernel and cgroups: cgroup v2 with the io controller available to the agent, and permission to mount loop devices. The agent uses both: the io controller for per-server IO weight, and loop-mounted disk images for per-server disk quotas.
  • Missing either one does not block the node. Without loop mounts (an unprivileged LXC container, for example) the agent falls back to plain data directories and disk quota is not enforced; without the io controller it skips the container’s IO weight. See node issues.
  • Resources: whatever your game servers need, plus headroom for the agent and the OS. CPU and memory are the usual bottlenecks; disk fills up with backups and images.
  • Network: stable connectivity back to the panel (the agent calls home — nodes do not need public IPs unless players connect directly to them).
  • Root access for the agent installer.

What you do not need yet

Section titled “What you do not need yet”

PostgreSQL, Redis, Caddy/Traefik — the Docker installer provisions all panel dependencies. You only configure them when you outgrow the defaults (configuration).

Section titled “Related”