First Login

Create the first admin account during the setup window, then use the management console to configure the proxy.

Use This When

Use this on a new installation, after restoring an empty database, or when you need to recover a forgotten management password.

Prerequisites

• The server is running.
• No management users exist yet for first setup.
• You can reach the management URL, usually https://your-server:8081.
• You have the setup token from MANAGEMENT_SETUP_TOKEN or from the server startup log.

Steps

5-minute setup window

The Setup Admin form is only available for 5 minutes after server start when no users exist. If you miss the window, restart the server to reopen it:

docker compose restart p2pstream

1. Open the management URL in a browser.
2. Include the setup token in the URL, for example https://your-server:8081/?setup_token=<token>.
3. On Setup Admin, create the primary administrator account.
4. Use a username with 3 to 64 lowercase letters, numbers, underscores, or hyphens.
5. Use a password with at least 12 characters.
6. Log in and open Overview, then Proxy when you are ready to create listeners, routes, and route targets.

Runtime Rules

Area	Behavior
Usernames	Normalized to lowercase and limited to lowercase letters, numbers, underscores, and hyphens.
Passwords	Minimum length is 12 characters.
Setup token	Required only before the first admin exists. If MANAGEMENT_SETUP_TOKEN is unset, a generated token is printed once at startup.
Sessions	Stored in SQLite and expire after 7 days.
Cookie security	Session cookie is HTTP-only, SameSite Lax, and Secure when management TLS is enabled, ENV=production, or MANAGEMENT_COOKIE_SECURE=true.

Verification

After login, the Overview dashboard should load with live proxy status, request totals, traffic trends, and the main navigation for Overview, Traffic, Proxy, Agents, Traffic Policy, Templates, TLS, and Settings.

The setup form creates the first administrator during the setup window. After the first user exists, the server switches to the normal login page.

The login page is the expected state after setup. Use the admin account created during first-run setup.

The Overview page is the first post-login health check. It confirms the selected environment, public proxy state, recent traffic, problem signals, and quick access to the configuration areas.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Fix
Setup window expired and no users exist	Restart the server and create the first admin within 5 minutes.
Setup says token is required	Use the URL from the server log, or set MANAGEMENT_SETUP_TOKEN and restart before first setup.
Forgot an existing password	Reset the user against the same SQLite database.
Reset command uses the wrong database	Run it in the container or pass the same CONFIG_DIR or --database-url used by the server.

Docker Compose recovery:

docker compose exec p2pstream p2pstream users reset-password admin

Binary/systemd recovery:

CONFIG_DIR=/var/lib/p2pstream p2pstream users reset-password admin

The reset command updates the user password and revokes active sessions for that user.

Next Steps

• Publish a service
• Security hardening
• Environments reference
• CLI reference