puter/doc/self-hosters/instructions.md

Self-Hosting Puter

Warning

The self-hosted version of Puter is currently in alpha stage and should not be used in production yet. It is under active development and may contain bugs, other issues. Please exercise caution and use it for testing and evaluation purposes only.

Self-Hosting Differences

Currently, the self-hosted version of Puter is different in a few ways from Puter.com:

• There is no built-in way to access apps from puter.com (see below)
• Several "core" apps are missing, such as Code or Draw
• Some assets are different

Work is ongoing to improve the App Center and make it available on self-hosted. Until then, it is still possible to add apps using the Dev Center app.

Configuration

Running the server will generate a configuration file in one of these locations:

• config/config.json when Using Docker
• volatile/config/config.json in Local Development
• /etc/puter/config.json on a server (or within a Docker container)

Domain Name

To access Puter on your device, you can simply go to the address printed in the server console (usually puter.localhost:4100).

To access Puter from another device, a domain name must be configured, as well as an api subdomain. For example, example.local might be the domain name pointing to the IP address of the server running puter, and api.example.com must point to this address as well. This domain must be specified in the configuration file (usually volatile/config/config.json) as well.

See domain configuration for more information.

Configure the Port

• You can specify a custom port by setting http_port to a desired value
• If you're using a reverse-proxy such as nginx or cloudflare, you should also set pub_port to the public (external) port (usually 443)
• If you have HTTPS enabled on your reverse-proxy, ensure that protocol in config.json is set accordingly

Default User

By default, Puter will create a user called default_user. This user will have a randomly generated password, which will be printed in the development console. A warning will persist in the dev console until this user's password is changed. Please login to this user and change the password as your first step.