Kubedactyl

The missing game server web management interface for Kubernetes.

Kubedactyl runs game servers the way Kubernetes is meant to run things: every server is a pod with its own volume and load balancer address, all state lives in custom resources instead of a SQL database, and the whole panel is a single container. It reads the Pterodactyl and Pelican egg format, so hundreds of existing game templates work out of the box.

Features

Eggs, the way you know them

• Your eggs just work. Import Pterodactyl (PTDL_v1, PTDL_v2) and Pelican (PLCN_v1 to v3) eggs as JSON or YAML, from a file or a URL. All 502 eggs of the pelican-eggs repositories parse. Export back to either format.
• Built-in egg library. Browse git egg repositories (GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, Forgejo, Bitbucket) right in the panel and install an egg with one click. Eggs can update themselves from their source every hour.
• Egg editor. Create eggs in a step-by-step wizard, edit, duplicate and validate them with the same rules Pterodactyl and Pelican use, so exports stay importable there.
• Smart console helpers. The egg features eula, java_version, pid_limit, steam_disk_space, gsl_token and hytale_oauth turn known console errors into a dialog: accept the EULA, switch the Java version or enter a new token with one click.

For server owners

• Live console with history and command recall, next to live CPU and memory graphs, disk usage and uptime.
• File manager with a code editor, drag and drop, upload, archives and downloads from a URL. The file container starts on demand and stops by itself when nobody uses it.
• Backups with one-click restore, schedules (cron) and tasks that run console commands when a server has started or before it stops, so players get a warning first.
• Diagnostics that answer "why can't my friends connect?": installation, crashes, memory, disk, DNS records as the internet sees them and the router forwarding of every port.
• Crash detection with automatic restart and a "restart required" banner when settings changed while running.
• API tokens and a Swagger UI for everything the web interface can do.

For administrators

• Invites instead of passwords by mail. Send a one-time link or show a QR code; the new user picks a name and a password. Or create users with a start password they must change. Forgotten passwords get a reset link.
• Move servers between users. A transfer keeps the files, the backups and the address.
• Move servers to another storage class. The files are copied and checked before the old volume goes.
• Suspend a server: it stops and is locked for its owner, nothing is deleted.
• One namespace per user: the servers of different users are separated by namespace and NetworkPolicy.
• Cluster page with nodes, hardware, live usage, the panel's identity and every permission it needs.
• Cluster health at a glance. A card in the sidebar checks the CRDs, the panel's permissions, nodes, metrics-server, Cilium, storage and the admission policy, and says what is missing.
• Branding: your name, tagline, logo and favicon, plus legal notice and privacy policy pages.
• One-click upgrades. The panel finds new versions by itself and upgrades from the settings page.

Under the hood

• No SQL database. Servers, eggs, users, invites and settings are Kubernetes custom resources stored in the cluster's datastore (etcd), so your usual cluster backups (etcd snapshots, Velero) cover them too. There is no MySQL, PostgreSQL or Redis to run, migrate or back up, and kubectl get gameservers.kubedactyl.io -A shows the same state as the panel.
• One container. A single Go binary with the web UI embedded. No queue worker, no cron container and no daemon on the nodes: the panel talks to the Kubernetes API directly.
• Native Cilium support. Server addresses come from Cilium LB IPAM pools, optionally as a fixed IP that is checked against the pool. Every port is opened as TCP and UDP. Users can move servers between pools and see a domain instead of the IP.
• High performance. The production panel idles at about 35 MiB of memory and a few millicores of CPU. Reads come from informer caches, values every viewer polls are fetched once and shared, and the web UI is served precompressed and cached. The image is about 36 MiB.
• Rate limits that protect your cluster. One limit for all Kubernetes API calls of the panel and one per user, both adjustable live in the settings. A request over the limit is refused before it starts, never halfway, and the footer shows the current rates.
• Built with security in mind. Non-root, read-only containers, no service account tokens in game pods, Pod Security baseline and a NetworkPolicy per user namespace, an admission policy that limits what the panel itself may change, Argon2id passwords, a strict CSP, CSRF checks, login throttling, rate limits and an audit log.
• Modern and offline. React 19, shadcn/ui and Tailwind CSS, dark and light theme, usable on phones. Fonts, styles and scripts are bundled, nothing is loaded from a CDN.

Note

Kubedactyl is young and under active development. The image is built for linux/amd64.

Getting started

Requirements: Kubernetes 1.30 or newer, Cilium with LB IPAM and at least one CiliumLoadBalancerIPPool, a StorageClass for the server volumes and, for CPU and memory graphs, metrics-server.

helm install kubedactyl oci://ghcr.io/syntax3rror404/charts/kubedactyl --version 0.2.83 \
  -n kubedactyl --create-namespace \
  --set panel.storageClass=<storage-class> --set panel.loadBalancerPool=<pool>
kubectl -n kubedactyl logs deploy/kubedactyl | grep setup   # one-time link for the first administrator

Open the link, create the administrator, import an egg (or install one from the library) and create a server. Expose the panel through an Ingress or a Gateway API HTTPRoute (see the chart) and run it behind TLS when it is reachable from the internet.

Documentation

• Features: every feature in detail, eggs, how a server maps to Kubernetes objects, schedules and backups.
• Administration: users, invites and permissions, panel settings, the cluster page.
• Installation and operation: Helm chart, self-upgrades, permissions, configuration, cleanup and known limitations.
• OpenID Connect: sign-in through an OpenID Connect identity provider such as Keycloak.
• Security: what the panel does to be safe on the internet.
• Development: local setup, commands, project layout and the API.
• ARCHITECTURE.md: the big picture and where to change what. Start here when you work on the code.
• Chart values and the Swagger UI at /swagger/ of a running panel.

License

Kubedactyl is released under the MIT License. Third-party material it contains or bundles (shadcn/ui and Magic UI components under MIT, the config file parsers ported from Pterodactyl Wings under MIT, the Geist and JetBrains Mono fonts under OFL-1.1) and every Go module and npm package (name, version, license) are listed in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md. The build adds their license texts to third-party-licenses.md (the page "Licenses" in the panel footer, also stored in the image).

Kubedactyl is an independent project. It is not affiliated with Pterodactyl or Pelican; it only reads and writes their egg format. Pterodactyl® is a registered trademark of Dane Everitt and contributors.