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Installing on a Raspberry Pi 4

panel runs from an SD card in a Raspberry Pi 4. The card holds Debian's own system for the Pi with panel installed.

What you need

  • A Raspberry Pi 4 and its power supply.
  • An SD card of 8 GB or more. A good one: a card that fails takes the machine with it, and panel says so when the card starts to fail.
  • A network cable to your current router, for the first sign-in.
  • For a router, a second network port: a USB network adapter, or the Pi's own Wi-Fi as your home network (see Wi-Fi).

Write the card

  1. Download panel-<version>-rpi4-trixie.img.xz from the download page, and check it against its .sha256.
  2. Write it with Raspberry Pi Imager: Choose OS, Use custom, and pick the file. Imager unpacks it itself.

Don't use Imager's own settings (user, Wi-Fi, SSH): panel sets those up itself.

The first start

Put the card in the Pi, plug in the network cable and then the power. The first start takes a minute or two longer than the next ones. It:

  • grows the system to fill the card;
  • names the machine panel- and the end of its hardware address;
  • makes its SSH keys and its certificate;
  • asks your network for an address on every wired port.

A screen on the Pi shows the address. Without one, look for panel-… in your current router's list of devices.

Then open https://<address> and sign in as admin with the password panel. See The first sign-in.

Good to know

  • There is no console login: root is locked. An administrator's SSH login is made from the Accounts page.
  • The Pi is slowed down when it gets too hot or its power supply is too weak. Status and Home say so when it happens.
  • Updates of Debian itself are installed each night; see Maintenance.