Run, configure, back up and mod Valheim dedicated servers from a web browser, on Linux or Windows.
One static binary. Native SteamCMD installs. Supervised instances (systemd or a Windows service). Multi-user with SSO.
Running a Valheim server means juggling SteamCMD, a start script or batch file
full of quoted flags, adminlist.txt, world files that need backing up, BepInEx
plugins and their .cfg files, and a restart every time Iron Gate ships a patch.
This project puts all of that behind a clean web UI with proper forms, live logs
and an audit trail, on a Linux box or a Windows machine, without turning your
server into a Docker puzzle.
| Area | What you get |
|---|---|
| Instances | Several isolated servers per host, each with its own game install, world folder, ports and process (a systemd unit on Linux, a supervised child of the service on Windows). Start, stop, restart, autostart. |
| Configuration | Real form controls for every server option: name, world, password, port, public, crossplay, difficulty preset, every combat/death/resource/raid/portal modifier, world keys, save interval, Valheim's own rolling saves. Validation with the same rules Valheim enforces. |
| Live console | Streams the server log in real time with filter, follow, download, and highlighting for ready/join/leave/save events. |
| Players | Online players (via the query port and the log), a history of everyone who ever joined, and editors for the admin, banned and permitted lists. |
| Backups & worlds | One-click or scheduled world backups, retention policy, restore with an automatic safety backup (including Valheim's own rolling copies), world upload/download, switch the active world. |
| Mods | Install BepInEx, browse and install from Thunderstore with dependency resolution, upload zips or DLLs, enable/disable/update/uninstall, and edit plugin .cfg files with typed inputs. |
| Live world (agent) | Our own server plugin, installed with BepInEx: day, in-game clock, weather, world keys and players with positions straight from the running server, plus save-now, kick and an in-game broadcast to all players. Nothing to install for players. |
| Survival log | A per-world timeline of confirmed player deaths, boss progression and modifier changes. View the whole server or one character, explore deaths by day and biome, and inspect each moment. Requires the server agent; tracking starts when the updated agent runs. Exact death causes are unavailable without a client mod. |
| Gameplay helpers | Autofeed from sign-marked chests, per-raid switches — server-side, players install nothing. A second, separately bundled plugin: turn it off without touching the agent or the live map. |
| Live map | The world drawn like the in-game map from the server's own sampling: textured biomes, tree crowns, hill shading, coastlines, parchment fog with a cloudy edge, game-style icons, and tiles drawn on demand so it stays sharp at any zoom. Fog of war from where players have been and from cartography tables, shared pins, boss locations found at Vegvisir stones, players moving live, portals and their tags, ships, carts, tombstones and beds as layers; drifting clouds, water shimmer and pings as in the game. Custom texture packs. |
| Schedules | Cron-based restarts, backups and Steam update checks with a "only when nobody is online" switch. |
| Updates | Detects new Valheim builds on Steam and updates with an optional pre-update backup. |
| Self-upgrade | The manager polls GitHub releases, shows what's new, and upgrades itself from the UI with a verified download, atomic swap and rollback. On Linux game servers keep running while it restarts; on Windows they are stopped cleanly and autostarted again. |
| Users & SSO | First-run wizard creates the admin. Local accounts plus one OIDC provider (Authelia, Keycloak, Authentik, Google…) with group-to-role mapping. Roles: viewer, operator, admin. |
| Operations | Job queue with live logs for every long operation, an audit log that records exactly which fields each edit changed, live CPU and memory for the host and for each game server, disk usage and SteamCMD health on the dashboard. |
| Security | The manager runs unprivileged; on Linux its only path to root is a small sudo wrapper that validates its arguments, on Windows it is a service under its own virtual account. Argon2id passwords, hardened session cookies, CSRF guard, no default credentials. |
A dark-first, modern interface with Valheim accents; light mode is one click away in the header.
Instance overview |
Live console |
Server configuration |
Players and lists |
Mods and config editor |
Audit log with field-level diffs |
Backups |
Schedules |
Jobs |
Users |
Settings and SSO |
Login |
Both platforms get one installer command, a checksum-verified binary, SteamCMD,
and a service listening on 127.0.0.1:8080. Re-running the installer upgrades in
place and never touches your data. Budget about 2 GB of disk per instance plus
room for backups.
Requirements: Debian 12+ or Ubuntu 22.04+ on x86_64 with systemd and root access.
One command, nothing else to download by hand:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jonasthim/valheim-server-ui/main/deploy/install.sh | sudo bashThe installer creates the valheim system user and /var/lib/valheim, installs
the binary (to /var/lib/valheim/bin, symlinked from /usr/local/bin/valheim-ui),
the sudo wrapper, the systemd units and SteamCMD, verifies the release's
checksum, then starts valheim-ui.service.
Local build instead of a release (installer script and repo checked out already):
make build && sudo ./deploy/install.sh --binary bin/valheim-uiBefore installing or upgrading, see what would change without touching anything:
sudo ./deploy/install.sh --checkPut a TLS reverse proxy in front for remote access and set base_url in
/etc/valheim-ui/config.yaml (Caddy and nginx snippets are in the
runbook). For a trusted LAN only,
sudo ./deploy/install.sh --listen 0.0.0.0:8080 works too.
Requirements: Windows Server 2019+ or Windows 10/11 (x64) and an administrator PowerShell.
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jonasthim/valheim-server-ui/main/deploy/install.ps1 -OutFile install.ps1
.\install.ps1The installer registers the Windows service valheim-ui (running as the
virtual account NT SERVICE\valheim-ui), puts the binary in
%ProgramFiles%\valheim-ui, data and config.yaml in %ProgramData%\valheim-ui,
downloads SteamCMD, verifies the release checksum and starts the service.
.\install.ps1 -Check reports without changing anything; -Uninstall removes
the service and binary and keeps the data. Game servers run as child processes
of the service and are stopped with a console Ctrl+C, so worlds are saved on
stop exactly as on Linux. Open UDP port and port+1 per instance in Windows
Firewall. The runbook lists what differs from
Linux.
For remote access on either platform, put a TLS reverse proxy in front and set
base_url in the config file.
- Open the UI. Because no users exist yet, it shows the setup wizard; create the administrator account. There are no default credentials, and the wizard disappears once the first account exists.
- Click New instance. Give it a display name, a server name, a world name, a password (5 to 32 characters, not contained in the server name) and a port. Leave Download game files now on.
- Watch the SteamCMD install under Jobs (a couple of minutes on a fast link).
- Open the instance and press Start. The overview turns green when the world has loaded; with crossplay on, the join code appears next to the player count.
- Open UDP ports
port,port+1andport+2on your firewall and router.
Change server settings. Instance → Config. Every option is a switch, dropdown, checkbox or number field with inline help. Saving while the server runs shows a "restart required" banner; press Restart when convenient.
Make someone an admin, ban a player. Instance → Players. Pick a known player from the history (the UI records everyone who ever joined) or paste a platform id. Valheim reloads these files live; no restart needed.
Back up and restore. Instance → Backups. "Back up now" zips the world and the player lists. Restore stops the server if you ask it to, takes a safety backup first, restores, and starts it again. Manual and uploaded backups are never auto-deleted; scheduled ones follow the retention policy in Config.
Manage worlds. Instance → Worlds. Switch the active world, start a new one (Config → World name → restart; the old one stays on disk), regenerate the active world with a new seed (backup first, typed confirmation), delete inactive ones, upload or download saves. Worlds are files inside an instance; none of this touches the instance itself. Details: docs/WORLDS.md.
Install mods. Instance → Mods → Install BepInEx (the server must be stopped;
the UI can stop and restart it for you). Then Browse Thunderstore, pick a mod and
its version; dependencies are resolved and installed automatically and the plan
is printed in the job log. Plugin .cfg files show up below as typed forms.
See and steer the live world. Installing BepInEx also installs the Valheim UI Agent, the manager's own server plugin. The Overview then shows a World card (day, clock, weather, players, world keys) with Save world and Broadcast, the Players tab gets a Kick button, and the Map tab shows the world drawn like the in-game map (textured biomes, hill shading, parchment fog, game-style icons, sharp at any zoom) with players moving live and portals, ships, tombstones and boss locations as layers. The fog comes from where players go and from cartography tables, so what players wrote to a table before the agent existed shows up too, along with the pins they shared there and the boss locations they found. Everything runs over loopback with a per-instance token; players need nothing. Details: docs/ARCHITECTURE.md §20.
Keep the server up to date. The overview shows when Steam has a newer build. "Update now" stops, backs up, updates and restarts. For hands-off operation add a schedule of kind update with "only when empty" on.
Upgrade Valheim Server UI itself. The dashboard and Settings → Application
show when a new release is out, with its release notes. Press Upgrade: the
manager downloads the release, verifies its checksum, sanity-runs the new
binary, swaps it in atomically and restarts within seconds; the page reconnects
on the new version. On Linux your game servers are separate systemd units and
keep running throughout; on Windows they belong to the service, so they are
saved and stopped first and autostarted again afterwards. Turn on auto-upgrade
to have this happen automatically when nobody is online. Rollback on the host:
valheim-ui self-upgrade --rollback, then restart the service.
Schedule restarts. Instance → Schedules → New schedule, kind restart, pick a preset such as "Daily at 04:00". Valheim has no way to warn players, so keep "only when empty" on unless your players know the routine.
Add users or SSO. Users → Create user (viewer, operator or admin). For single sign-on, Settings → Authentication → OIDC: issuer URL, client id and secret, map your groups to roles, press "Test connection", save. The redirect URI to register at the provider is shown in the form. Keep one local admin until SSO is proven. Provider recipes and troubleshooting: docs/OIDC.md.
Run several servers. Create another instance with a different port range (each uses three consecutive UDP ports). Each instance has its own game install, so mod sets can differ.
More operational detail, including upgrades, host-level backups and troubleshooting, is in docs/RUNBOOK.md; single sign-on setup for Authelia, Keycloak, Authentik, Pocket ID, Google and Entra ID is in docs/OIDC.md.
| Role | Can |
|---|---|
| viewer | See everything except secrets (passwords are masked). |
| operator | Start/stop/configure instances, players, backups, worlds, mods, schedules. |
| admin | Everything, plus create/delete instances, manage users and settings, read the audit log. |
Linux:
Browser ──HTTPS (your proxy)──► valheim-ui (Go, unprivileged)
│ sudo unitctl start|stop|restart <id> (only root path)
▼
systemd valheim@<id>.service
│ ExecStart: valheim-ui launch --instance <id>
▼
valheim_server.x86_64 ── stdout ──► console.log ──► live UI
Windows:
Browser ──HTTPS (your proxy)──► valheim-ui service (NT SERVICE\valheim-ui)
│ spawns valheim-ui launch --instance <id> (hidden console, job object)
▼
launch proxy ── "stop" on stdin ──► console Ctrl+C
│
▼
valheim_server.exe ── stdout ──► console.log ──► live UI
The manager renders each instance's command line into launch.json; the
launch subcommand starts the real server binary with the right environment
(on Linux it execs it, with the BepInEx doorstop variables read from the pack's
own start script; on Windows it stays in front of the game as a proxy and
drives Doorstop through its command-line flags). The manager tails the console
log for readiness, join codes and players, and polls the Steam query port for
the authoritative player count. Everything else (SteamCMD, Thunderstore
downloads, backups) runs as tracked jobs with streamed logs. Full design:
docs/ARCHITECTURE.md.
make deps # go mod download + npm ci
make build # frontend build + Go build → bin/valheim-ui
make check # vet, golangci-lint, go test -race, typecheck, lint
make e2e # Playwright suite against a fake game server
make dev-backend # backend on :8080 (direct supervisor + fake server, no systemd needed)
make dev-web # Vite dev server on :5173 with API proxy
make build-go-windows # cross-compile bin/valheim-ui.exeRequirements: Go 1.26, Node 22. The API contract is docs/openapi.yaml; frontend
types are generated from it (make gen). Dependencies stay on their latest
majors with zero known vulnerabilities; CI runs govulncheck and npm audit.
Platform-specific code lives in _unix.go / _windows.go files; CI vets the
Windows build on Linux and runs the launcher, supervisor, metrics and log
packages natively on a Windows runner against tools/fake-server.
Releases are cut by bumping the VERSION file on main: CI builds, tests and
publishes the GitHub release v<VERSION> with the Linux and Windows binaries,
install.sh, install.ps1 and checksums, and running installs pick it up
through the in-app upgrade (see docs/RUNBOOK.md §12).
The threat model, hardening measures and the findings of the latest security review (with what was fixed and what is accepted) are in docs/SECURITY.md. In short: unprivileged service user, sandboxed game units, a one-command sudo wrapper, root-owned binary with checksum-verified upgrades, argon2id passwords, hashed sessions, CSRF and security headers, and every input validated before it touches the filesystem. On Windows the game servers share the service's account, so the process isolation is weaker there; SECURITY.md spells out the difference.
Targets a single host: Linux with systemd, or Windows (since v1.4.0; the
launcher and stop path are exercised in CI against the fake game server, so
please report anything the real valheim_server.exe does differently). Not in
scope: Docker-based game runtime, arm64, macOS, Valheim Plus, generic RCON
(the built-in agent covers admin commands), multi-host management, TLS
termination (use a reverse proxy).
MIT