pterodactyl-ops

name: pterodactyl-ops description: >- Operates Minecraft servers on the Pterodactyl Panel and its fork Pelican Panel. Use whenever the user mentions Pterodactyl, Pelican, "the panel", Wings, a game panel, eggs, allocations, "secondary port", RCON on a panel, SFTP to my server, "/home/container", egg variables, startup command, panel backups, "container out of memory", "Cannot allocate memory", or running Minecraft in Docker on a host panel. Covers RCON setup (secondary allocation), egg variables & the startup command, the AlwaysPreTouch/Xmx container-OOM footgun, panel backups (non-atomic), the client API (files/command/power), and Pelican-vs-Pterodactyl differences. Confirm before exposing RCON or deleting server files. argument-hint: "[task or symptom]" allowed-tools: Read, Bash, Glob, Grep, Skill license: MIT

Pterodactyl / Pelican Ops

Run and configure Minecraft servers on Pterodactyl Panel and Pelican Panel (a fork by the former Pterodactyl team, mid-2024; still beta as of 2026-06, relicensed AGPLv3). Pelican imports Pterodactyl eggs unmodified and keeps the API backward-compatible, so this skill applies to both — note the few differences in references/panel-footguns.md.

Architecture (one-screen model)

• Panel (web UI) + Wings (daemon, one per node). Each server is an isolated Docker container; files live at /home/container (host bind-mount under /var/lib/pterodactyl/volumes/<uuid>).
• The STARTUP command substitutes egg variables ({{SERVER_JARFILE}}, {{SERVER_MEMORY}}, …) from environment variables at boot. Console/stats stream to the panel.
• Allocations: the primary allocation is the game port. Anything else (RCON, query, Geyser, Dynmap) needs a secondary allocation added in the Network tab.

Tasks

• RCON → references/rcon-setup.md. Key point: add a secondary allocation first, then set enable-rcon=true / rcon.port=<that port> / a strong rcon.password in server.properties. Confirm with the user before enabling RCON, and never expose the port publicly.
• Memory / OOM → if the container dies with "Cannot allocate memory" or the cgroup OOM-kills it: the JVM heap + -XX:+AlwaysPreTouch is claiming the full container limit at boot. Set Xmx below the panel's allocated memory (leave ~1–1.5 GB / 10–15% headroom for JVM native memory) and/or drop AlwaysPreTouch. The panel {{SERVER_MEMORY}} value is the container limit, not a safe heap size. (See performance-tuning for the full flag discussion.)
• Backups → references/backup-strategies.md. Panel/Wings backups archive the live filesystem and are NOT atomic — quiesce writes (/save-off then /save-all flush via console or the /command API) before taking one, or stop the server.
• Editing config → edit while stopped (a running server can overwrite files on shutdown), then start. Use SFTP for large/bulk file transfers the web file manager handles poorly.
• Automation → the client API (below) for scripted file edits, commands, and power actions.

Client API (Pterodactyl + Pelican, backward-compatible)

Auth: Authorization: Bearer ptlc_<key> (Account → API Credentials), Accept: application/json. Rate limit ~240 req/min per key.

Output

Give exact panel steps (which tab, which field) and exact file/server.properties edits. For any destructive action (deleting server files, wiping a world, exposing RCON), state the risk and confirm first.