Instance administration
Manage instance-wide users, settings, ownership, and servers.
Only instance admins see these pages, and instance admin is a flag on an account, not a team capability.
Users
Settings -> Users.
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Manage users | The full list, with Admin, Owner, and Suspended badges |
| Manage user | Open one account to suspend it, reset its password, or change what it may do |
| Register user | Opens a wizard that creates a single-use registration link. It works once and expires in 24 hours, and you share it yourself. A link can either let the person create their own team, or attach them to teams you already belong to, with the role baked in |
| Pending links | Reveal or Revoke a link before it is used. Revoke all revokes every pending link at once, whoever created it |
| Delete a user | Shows an impact preview first, since a person owns things |
Deplo sends no account email of its own, which is why registration is a link you hand over rather than an invitation it mails. It does send alert email, through a team's own SMTP server or Resend key; that is notifications, a different thing.
The Permissions section
Opening a user shows a Permissions section, and it holds the two grants that are not team capabilities:
- Instance admin, at the top of the section. It unlocks Servers, Users and the instance settings, across every team.
- Advanced grants, an accordion below it, holding exactly two switches: Publish ports and Bind server folders. Both are instance-wide properties of the account, not of a membership, which is why they are here and not on the Members page.
An instance admin holds both grants implicitly, so while that toggle is on the two switches show as on and cannot be changed. See Host access for what Bind server folders actually opens up.
Instance settings
Settings -> Deplo.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Panel address | Where the dashboard answers. See The panel's own address |
| Certificate account email | The address Let's Encrypt has for this instance |
| Anonymous usage statistics | Whether this instance sends Deplo one anonymous Usage report a day. On by default. See Anonymous usage statistics |
| Maximum range | On the Advanced tab. The ceiling on how far back log queries may reach. Default 7 days, 1 to 90 |
| Gravatar | Advanced tab. Whether a person with no picture of their own falls back to their Gravatar. Off by default, and off means everyone wears a face Deplo generates, or their initials if they pick those |
| Serve the panel over plain HTTP | Advanced tab, for an instance behind something else that terminates TLS |
| Updates | Its own tab: whether a newer Deplo release exists, with the changelog |
Panel address, certificate account email, usage statistics and ownership transfer are on General; the rest is split between Advanced and Updates.
The page also shows this instance's version and which host it runs on.
What turning Gravatar on sends
Deplo never dials gravatar.com itself - each person's browser does, with a hash of their email address in the URL. Their IP address and that hash reach a third party as a result, which is why it ships off. The switch only decides whether Gravatar is offered at all; each person still chooses their own picture in Settings > Account - a generated face, an upload, their Gravatar, or their initials.
Instance owner
The tier above instance admin, held by the account created at first-run setup.
- No other admin can demote, suspend, or reset the owner.
- The owner cannot drop their own admin flag either.
- Instance admin is separate from team capabilities and applies across the instance.
Transfer ownership is on the same page: only by the owner, only to an active instance admin, and only with the password re-entered.
Lost owner account
If the owner account is genuinely lost, the only way back is a command run on the host that runs the control plane. That is the one intended shell path in the entire product.
Instance-wide variables
An instance-wide value is a shared variable owned by the instance, offered to every team, folding at the lowest priority so any team can override it. Create it on Variables -> Shared; there is no separate All-teams tab. Good for an internal registry mirror or a proxy setting, wrong for anything one team should not see.
Servers
Servers are instance-wide, not team-owned, so the whole of Settings -> Servers is an instance-admin surface, including which teams may deploy to which machine. See Server settings.
Important details
- Instance admin is not team capabilities. An admin still needs a membership and a role to act inside a team.
- A registration link is single-use and hashed. Even two people clicking at once cannot both consume it.
- Deleting a user is not the same as removing them from a team. Read the impact preview.
- Raising Max log range does not make hosts keep more. Docker rotates container logs by size.
Troubleshooting
Settings -> Servers missing from the sidebar, can't edit another admin, or a registration link rejected: see Sign-in and access troubleshooting.
Next steps
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