Install the management server

The management server runs the VirtConsole panel, its database and the APIs. Install it once, on a clean server you own.

Before you begin

A server that meets the management server requirements.
Root access over SSH.
A DNS A record pointing at the server (needed for TLS).

Install

Run the command as root. Debian images log you in as root and do not ship sudo. On a host where you are not root and sudo is available, pipe to sudo bash instead of bash.

curl -fsSL https://packages.virtconsole.com/master/install.sh | bash

The installer detects your OS automatically. It supports:

Debian 11, 12, 13
Ubuntu 22.04, 24.04, 26.04 LTS
RHEL-family 9 and 10 (CentOS Stream, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux)

On anything else it exits with an “Unsupported distro” message.

The installer installs nginx, PHP-FPM, MariaDB, Redis, supervisor and cron, downloads and verifies the signed release archive, then serves the panel on port 443 with a self-signed certificate.

Set PHP_VERSION (8.3 or 8.4, default 8.4), APP_ROOT or MIRROR_HOST before the command to override the defaults. For example, to install PHP 8.3 instead of the default:

PHP_VERSION=8.3 bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://packages.virtconsole.com/master/install.sh)"

The old per-OS scripts (install.debian.sh, install.ubuntu.sh, install.rhel.sh) still exist and run install.sh under the hood, so earlier bookmarks and scripts keep working.

Create the first admin user

vcli admin:create-user

The command asks for a name, email and password, then prints the credentials. Use them to log in to the panel.

Set up TLS

The installer serves the panel on port 443 with a self-signed certificate. Replace it with a trusted one using acme.sh:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/acmesh-official/acme.sh/refs/heads/master/acme.sh -O /opt/virtconsole/storage/acme.sh
chmod +x /opt/virtconsole/storage/acme.sh
cd /opt/virtconsole/storage
./acme.sh --register-account -m "you@example.com" --home /etc/nginx/ssl
./acme.sh --issue -d panel.example.com -w /opt/virtconsole/public --home /etc/nginx/ssl
./acme.sh --installcert -d panel.example.com --home /etc/nginx/ssl \
        --keypath /opt/virtconsole/storage/ssl/hypervisor.key \
        --fullchainpath /opt/virtconsole/storage/ssl/hypervisor.crt \
        --reloadcmd "systemctl restart nginx"

Add a daily renewal cron:

echo "root 0 0 * * * /opt/virtconsole/storage/acme.sh --cron --home /etc/nginx/ssl\n\n" > /etc/cron.d/acme.cron

Verify

Open https://panel.example.com in a browser. The VirtConsole login page loads without certificate warnings.
On the server, run systemctl status nginx. The service is active (running).
Log in with the admin account you created. The dashboard opens.

What happens next

Activate your license and connect your first hypervisor: follow the quick setup.

Common problems

The installer stops on a package error. Make sure the server is clean. Existing PHP, nginx or Redis installs conflict with the installer.
The login page loads but login fails. Confirm you created the admin user on the right server and that the queue worker is running (systemctl status shows the VirtConsole services).