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Installing on a generic x86 PC

On a generic x86 PC, any 64-bit Intel or AMD machine, panel starts from a USB stick and runs from memory, changing nothing on the machine. You can look at it first — do its network ports come up, what do they get — and then install it onto a disk from the browser.

The stick

  1. Download panel-…-live.iso from the download page, and check it against its .sha256.
  2. Write it to a USB stick with balenaEtcher, Raspberry Pi Imager, or sudo dd if=panel-….iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M on Linux.

It starts on old (BIOS) and new (UEFI) PCs, and carries the firmware most network cards need.

Starting from it

Choose the stick in the PC's boot menu. At start every wired port asks for an address. A port nothing answers on gets one of its own (169.254.…), so a laptop plugged straight into it can still reach the panel. The screen lists each port, its address, and the sign-in: admin, password panel.

A cable plugged in later: type ports on the console to try again.

Nothing you change is kept while it runs from the stick. Every page says so in a band at the top.

Installing onto a disk

The band at the top has Install onto this machine (administrators only). The page lists the disks by model, size and partitions. The stick it runs from is shown and never offered, nor a disk under 4 GB.

  1. Choose the disk. The page says what installing does: the disk is erased.
  2. Type the disk's model to confirm, and press Erase it and install. The installer's lines show as it goes.
  3. When it has finished, take the stick out, then press Restart.

If the stick can't be told apart from the other disks, the page offers nothing and points to the console instead, where sudo panelctl install lists the disks.

After the install the published password no longer works: the first sign-in asks for a new one, and root is locked.