Installing Wings

warning

This software will not work on Windows operating systems.

Supported Systems

The following is a list of supported operating systems. Please be aware that this is not an exhaustive list, there is a high probability that you can run the software on other Linux distributions without much effort. You are responsible for determining which packages may be necessary on those systems. There is also a very high probability that new releases of the supported OSes below will work just fine, you are not restricted to only the versions listed below.

Operating System	Version	Supported	Notes
Ubuntu	20.04	⚠️︎︎	Ubuntu 20.04 EoL is April 2025, not recommended
	22.04	✅︎
	24.04	✅︎	Documentation written assuming Ubuntu 24.04 as the base OS.
Rocky Linux	9	✅︎
Debian	11	✅︎
	12	✅︎

System Requirements

warning

Please be aware that some hosts install a modified kernel that does not support some docker features required for Wings to operate correctly. Please check your kernel by running uname -r. If your kernel ends in -xxxx-grs-ipv6-64 or -xxxx-mod-std-ipv6-64 you're probably using a non-supported kernel. You should contact your host, and request a non-modified kernel.

To run Wings, you will need a Linux system capable of running Docker containers. Most VPS and almost all dedicated servers should be capable of running Docker, but there are edge cases.

When your provider uses Virtuozzo, OpenVZ (or OVZ), or LXC virtualization, you will most likely be unable to run Wings. Some providers have made the necessary changes for nested virtualization to support Docker. Ask your provider's support team to make sure. KVM is guaranteed to work.

The easiest way to check is to type systemd-detect-virt. If the result doesn't contain OpenVZ orLXC, it should be fine. The result of none will appear when running dedicated hardware without any virtualization.

Should that not work for some reason, or you're still unsure, you can also run the command below.

sudo dmidecode -s system-manufacturer

Installing Docker

Wings requires Docker CE. For full instructions on installing and configuring Docker, see the installation guide.

For a quick install of Docker CE, you can use the command below:

curl -sSL https://get.docker.com/ | CHANNEL=stable sudo sh

Installing Wings

The first step for installing Wings is to ensure we have the required directory structure setup. To do so, run the commands below, which will create the base directory and download the wings executable.

sudo mkdir -p /etc/pelican /var/run/wings
sudo curl -L -o /usr/local/bin/wings "https://github.com/pelican-dev/wings/releases/latest/download/wings_linux_$([[ "$(uname -m)" == "x86_64" ]] && echo "amd64" || echo "arm64")"
sudo chmod u+x /usr/local/bin/wings

OVH/SYS Dedicated Servers

If you are using a server provided by OVH or SoYouStart please be aware that your main drive space is probably allocated to /home, and not / by default. Please consider using /home/daemon-data for server data. This can be set when creating the node.

Configure

Once you have installed Wings and the required components, the next step is to create a node on your installed Panel. Go to your Panel administrative view, select Nodes from the sidebar, and on the right side click Create New button.

After you have created a node, click on it and there will be a tab called Configuration. Copy the code block content, create a new file at /etc/pelican/config.yml, paste the content into it and save.

Alternatively, you can click on the Auto Deploy Command button, copy the sh command and paste it into your terminal.

Using ssl?

If your Panel is using SSL, then Wings must also use SSL.

See Creating SSL Certificates documentation page for how to create these certificates before continuing.

Starting Wings

To start Wings, simply run the command below, which will start it in a debug mode. Once you confirmed that it is running without errors, use CTRL+C to terminate the process and daemonize it by following the instructions below. Depending on your server's internet connection pulling and starting Wings for the first time may take a few minutes.

sudo wings --debug

You may optionally add the --debug flag to run Wings in debug mode.

Daemonizing (using systemd)

Running Wings in the background is a simple task, just make sure that it runs without errors before doing this. Place the contents below in a file called wings.service in the /etc/systemd/system directory.

/etc/systemd/system/wings.service

[Unit]
Description=Wings Daemon
After=docker.service
Requires=docker.service
PartOf=docker.service

[Service]
User=root
WorkingDirectory=/etc/pelican
LimitNOFILE=4096
PIDFile=/var/run/wings/daemon.pid
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/wings
Restart=on-failure
StartLimitInterval=180
StartLimitBurst=30
RestartSec=5s

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then, run the commands below to reload systemd and start Wings.

sudo systemctl enable --now wings