Features

What Zelie does today, one area at a time. It is alpha: all of this works, and some of it runs on a real server, but where something has only been tried in tests or against a stand-in, it says so.

Apps#

An app comes from one of three places.

• GitHub. Connecting GitHub creates a GitHub App in your own account or organization, with access only to the repositories you pick. Private repositories work. Each push to the app's branch deploys it, if you leave that on. A push only deploys the apps set to that repository and that branch, so one GitHub App can serve many apps without them getting in each other's way.
• A container image. Any public image, such as nginx:1.27. Zelie checks the registry once a day and offers the new image when the tag has moved.
• Your own files. Pick a runtime, Node.js, Python, Bun, Deno or Java, and upload the files, or send them over SFTP. Restarting runs them again. This suits a Discord bot or a site that used to live on a game panel. There is no build step and no rollback here: the files are the app.

Every app has:

• Variables. Plain and secret ones, or a whole .env file pasted in. A secret is sealed as it is saved and only the privileged core can open it. Builds get variables as BuildKit secrets, which stay out of the image.
• Storage. Volumes that outlive deployments, each with a size limit you can raise.
• Limits. Memory and CPU, set against what the server has and what the other apps were given.
• Logs, live in the browser.

Builds and deployments#

• A repository with a Dockerfile is built with it. Without one, Railpack works out the build for Node, Python, Go, static sites and more. Zelie shows the build and start commands Railpack chose, and either can be replaced.
• When a Node project has a test script, it runs on each new build first, with the app's variables. A failing test keeps the old version. The command can be changed or left empty.
• A new version starts next to the old one. An app with a domain must answer on its health check path within a minute before traffic moves over. If the build or the start fails, the old version keeps serving and the log shows why.
• The last five versions that went live keep their image, so a rollback takes a second or two.
• An app that stops by itself, or a server that restarts, brings the live version back, waiting longer after each crash. After five crashes in ten minutes the app stays down and the panel says why.

Domains and HTTPS#

Give an app a domain and the proxy routes it. Installed with a domain, Zelie gets a certificate for it from Let's Encrypt; behind a Cloudflare Tunnel, Cloudflare handles HTTPS and you add the domain there. The tunnel runs on a real server. Getting certificates from Let's Encrypt has so far run against a stand-in only.

Metrics#

Every app gets a reading a minute, kept for a day: requests and server errors from the proxy, memory, CPU and network traffic. The app's page shows the last hour or the last day, with the error rate and the crashes of the last 24 hours. The header of every app page shows its memory and CPU as they are now.

Databases#

• PostgreSQL 18 and 17, MariaDB 11.8 and 10.11, and Redis 8, each in its own container with its own volume.
• No port opens to the internet. Link a database to an app and the app reaches it by name and gets DATABASE_URL or REDIS_URL, along with the engine's usual variables. The password is sealed; nobody reads it in the panel.
• Updates. When a new patch release of the image is out, the panel offers it, and backs up before it switches. Moving to a new major version, such as PostgreSQL 17 to 18, dumps the data, loads it into the new version on a new volume, and goes back to the old one if anything fails. The old volume stays until you delete it.
• Data tab. Tables, rows, filters by column, search, sorting and CSV export, and for Redis, keys and their values. Everything is read-only: the core builds each query itself and runs it in a read-only transaction with a time limit.
• From your computer. Tools like TablePlus or DBeaver can connect through an SSH tunnel to a port only the server itself can reach, as a user of their own whose password is shown once.

Game servers#

Game servers run from the eggs Pterodactyl and Pelican use, so the games their community supports run here too.

• Games. Minecraft (Vanilla, Paper, Purpur, Fabric, Forge, NeoForge, Velocity and Bedrock), Rust, Valheim, Palworld, 7 Days to Die, ARK: Survival Ascended, Counter-Strike 2, Enshrouded, Garry's Mod, Project Zomboid, Satisfactory, Sons of the Forest, Squad and V Rising are in the list, from Pelican's egg repositories at a commit each Zelie release names. Every entry is downloaded and checked in CI. Any other egg can be imported by its link, in either the Pterodactyl or the Pelican format.
• Passwords. An RCON or admin password the egg leaves empty, or sets to a placeholder such as changeme, gets a random value when the server is made. The password players join with is left as the egg has it, unless the egg requires one and has none.
• Creating one. Pick the game, then memory, CPU, disk and the image, such as the Java version, then ports. Memory, CPU and disk can be changed later on the Settings tab. The egg's install script runs once in its own container. For Minecraft, the panel asks you to accept Mojang's EULA first.
• Ports. Game servers take their ports from a pool you set up once, on one IP or several. Each port has its use, such as the game, query, RCON or Rust+ port, and you choose which port of the pool each one gets, when you create the server and later on the Network tab. Zelie forwards them to the container with nftables, allows them in ufw when it is on, and closes them when the server is deleted. Players connect straight to the server; game traffic never goes through a tunnel.
• Console. Live output with colours, the last 500 lines on opening, and a command line with history. Start, stop, restart and kill. Stopping sends the egg's stop command and kills the server if it has not stopped after a minute.
• Files. A file manager with an editor, upload by dragging, download, rename and move. It packs files into a .tar.gz and unpacks .zip and .tar archives. The same files are reachable over SFTP.
• Startup. The startup command, the image and the egg's variables, checked against the egg's rules and used on the next start. Some eggs lock variables; the lock holds for users who are not administrators.
• Schedules. Cron times, or ready-made ones, each running a list of tasks in order: a console command, a power action or a backup, with a wait before each. A schedule can skip its run when the server is stopped.
• Backups. The server's files on a schedule, like any volume. For Minecraft, Zelie saves the world and pauses saving while the backup runs.
• Steam updates. For Steam games, Zelie asks Steam once an hour which build is the latest and shows when the server is behind. It can update by itself when nobody is playing. A reinstall or an update takes a backup first.
• Crashes are handled as for apps. The header shows the server's limits, and its memory and CPU use while it runs.

Minecraft runs end to end in Zelie's tests on every change, including a console command and a player's ping. Rust and the Steam update check have run against stand-ins only.

SFTP#

• One SFTP server for all game servers and files apps, on port 2222 unless you choose another. The login name is the server's name.
• Log in with an SSH key added on the Account page, or with a password made for that one server, shown once. An account's own password never works over SFTP, so SFTP is no way around the second login step.
• A login reaches that server's files and nothing else on the machine. The SFTP server runs as its own user with no rights of its own; it asks the core for every file, and the core only lets it near the volumes of game servers and files apps, never a database's.
• Wrong passwords are limited per address and per server.
• The server starts when someone connects and stops after five idle minutes.

Backups#

• Databases are backed up every night at 3:00 and kept for seven days, unless you change it. Apps and game servers can be backed up on a schedule too, running or stopped for a consistent copy.
• Backups are compressed and encrypted on the server. The key stays with the core, and a recovery file lets another server open them.
• Copies can go to any S3-compatible storage, kept for 30 days by default. A new server can find them there and restore them.
• A dump from elsewhere (.sql, .sql.gz, a Redis .rdb) can be uploaded to restore a database. Statements that only fit the old server are left out and counted.
• A restore first backs up what is there. If the restore fails, that backup goes back.

Logins#

• Every administrator needs a passkey or an authenticator app as well as a password, with ten recovery codes as a fallback.
• Changing any of these, restoring a backup or exporting data asks for a fresh second step.
• Too many wrong passwords from one address or for one account lock logins for a while. After a few, each attempt also needs a small proof of work the browser solves, which slows a script down and sends nothing to a third party.
• The Account page lists every browser that is logged in and can log any of them out.
• Locked out for good, zelie reset-login on the server prints a link to start again.

Housekeeping#

• The build cache is kept to a tenth of the disk, at most 20 GB.
• Images nothing has used for a week are deleted. Images the last five deployments need for a rollback stay.

Install and updates#

install.md has the details.

• One command installs Zelie and asks how the panel is reached. The release's signature is checked first. Running it again finishes an install that stopped halfway, and updates an older one.
• The Server page shows when a new release is out and what changed. Updating restarts only Zelie's own services; apps, databases and game servers keep running. If the new version does not come up within a minute and a half, the old one is put back.

Interface#

Light and dark themes, usable on a phone, and built into the binary: no separate web server, no CDN, no tracking. Every sentence it shows is kept apart from the code, ready to be translated; English is the only language so far.

Not yet#

• Users other than administrators, and permissions per game server.
• Several servers managed from one panel.