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fix(web/plugins): a plugin's interface loads again, instead of an empty panel
Two separate things had to be wrong for this, and both were.

The frame's own policy locked it out. Plugin UIs moved to their own origin so a
plugin cannot act as the logged-in operator, and the plugin origin names the
console as the only page allowed to frame it. It built that name from the
incoming request — but Nitro hands the app a synthetic request with no TLS
socket, so an HTTPS console reads back as `http:`. The header said
`frame-ancestors http://host:47992` while the operator was on
`https://host:47992`, and the browser refused the frame outright
(ERR_BLOCKED_BY_RESPONSE). Nothing on screen said so; the reason was only in
devtools. The scheme now comes from the listener's own TLS state, stamped at
bind time, with x-forwarded-proto winning when something in front terminated
TLS for us — the one case where the browser's scheme is not ours.

And the port was shut. 47993 was added to the firewall definitions, but an
already-open firewall does not pick a new port up: ufw expands an app profile
into rules when you allow it and keeps those, so editing the profile on upgrade
changes nothing, and firewalld needs a reload. Every upgraded Linux host kept a
47992-only rule, silently. The packages now notice on upgrade and print the one
command that fixes it, without touching the running firewall. The NixOS module
and the container image never learned the port at all; both now open it.

Also: the console no longer mounts the frame while it is still checking whether
that origin is reachable. A firewalled port drops rather than refuses, so the
check hangs for the browser's whole connect timeout, and mounting meanwhile is
exactly the empty panel with no explanation. The card that follows now names
both causes it can be — an untrusted certificate for that port, or a closed one
— because from a browser the two are indistinguishable.

The rule is now a pure function with tests, since its failure mode is a
well-formed header that only a browser rejects.

Verified on glass against home-worker-5 (.21) and its ROM Manager plugin: the
frame was refused before, renders the plugin's UI after.
2026-08-06 22:33:57 +02:00

7.5 KiB

title, description
title description
The Web Console Enable the Punktfunk browser console, read or change its login password, arm PIN pairing, and what every page in it does.

The web console is the browser UI for a Punktfunk host — live status, pairing, display policy, the game library, logs, plugins and host updates. It ships as the punktfunk-web systemd user unit on Linux and runs under the Punktfunk Host service on Windows, and serves on https://<host-ip>:47992 (HTTPS with the host's own self-signed identity cert — your browser warns once; trust it and continue). It's the surface you expose on the LAN to administer the host; the host's own management API (47990) keeps every admin action loopback-only and off-loopback serves only read-only status + game-library browsing to paired clients.

New here? Read Security & Safe Use first — a streaming host is remote control of the machine, so keep it on a trusted LAN or VPN and require pairing.

Two ports, not one

The console also listens on TCP 47993, and plugin interfaces are served from there — same host, same certificate, different port.

That is a deliberate boundary rather than a second console. A plugin's interface is third-party code, and on the console's own port the browser would treat it as part of the console: it could act as you, with your logged-in session, against every admin action the console can reach. A different port is a different origin, so the browser itself keeps the two apart — while staying the same site, which is what lets your login still carry over so you don't sign in twice.

What this means in practice:

  • Open 47993 alongside 47992 on the host's firewall if you browse the console from another device. The packaged firewall profiles already list both.
  • Trust the certificate twice. Browsers store a self-signed certificate exception per port. The first time you open a plugin, the console will notice it can't reach 47993 yet and offer a link to open it in a tab — accept the warning there once, come back, and it works from then on.
  • If a plugin's page is an empty panel, see A plugin's interface doesn't load.

Enable the console

  • Linux packages (apt / RPM / Bazzite): on Ubuntu the host package is punktfunk-host and on Fedora/Bazzite it's punktfunk; either way it recommends punktfunk-web, so your package manager pulls the console in with the host (the Bazzite sysext image already contains it). Enable and start it as your desktop user, then open the URL:

    systemctl --user enable --now punktfunk-web
    # then browse to https://<host-ip>:47992
    
  • Arch / CachyOS (pacman): the console is an optional package here, and pacman never installs optional dependencies — so install it yourself from the same repo the host came from (see Arch Linux), then enable it exactly as above. Take it as a full -Syu, never a bare pacman -S, so you don't end up on a partial upgrade:

    sudo pacman -Syu punktfunk-web
    systemctl --user enable --now punktfunk-web
    
  • Windows host: the installer sets up the console and its runtime; the Punktfunk Host service runs it and automatically brings it back if it ever stops. There is nothing to enable — open https://<this-PC>:47992.

  • SteamOS host: the install script builds and starts the console as a user service for you. It prints the URL when it finishes.

Login password

The console is password-protected. Where that password lives and how you change it depends on the host platform.

Linux packages (apt / RPM / Bazzite). On first start punktfunk-web-init generates a random password and saves it to ~/.config/punktfunk/web-password (as PUNKTFUNK_UI_PASSWORD=…). Read it back from the init service's journal or straight from the file:

journalctl --user -u punktfunk-web-init | sed -n 's/.*password generated: //p'
sed -n 's/^PUNKTFUNK_UI_PASSWORD=//p' ~/.config/punktfunk/web-password

To set your own, edit that file (PUNKTFUNK_UI_PASSWORD=<your-password>) and restart the console: systemctl --user restart punktfunk-web.

SteamOS host. Same idea, but the install script writes the generated password to ~/.config/punktfunk/web.env and prints it at the end of the install run:

sed -n 's/^PUNKTFUNK_UI_PASSWORD=//p' ~/.config/punktfunk/web.env

Edit that file and systemctl --user restart punktfunk-web to change it.

Windows host. You choose the password during install — a secure random default is pre-filled and shown again on the installer's final page. It's stored in %ProgramData%\punktfunk\web-password (as PUNKTFUNK_UI_PASSWORD=…), readable only by Administrators and SYSTEM. To change it, edit the file and restart the Punktfunk Host service (which runs the console) in an elevated PowerShell:

notepad "$env:ProgramData\punktfunk\web-password"   # set PUNKTFUNK_UI_PASSWORD=<your-password>
punktfunk-host service restart

Forgot it? See Forgot your Password?.

Arm pairing

The host requires PIN pairing by default (secure on a LAN). To connect the first time, open the console, log in, then open Pairing in the sidebar and click Pair a device. The host shows a one-time 4-digit PIN — enter it on your client to pair. If the device already tried to connect it appears under Waiting for approval instead; approving it pairs it immediately, no PIN needed. See Pairing & Trust for the full trust model and how to approve or remove devices later.

What's in it

Nine destinations in the sidebar (a More tab on a phone holds the last five):

  • Dashboard — live status: whether video and audio are streaming, the active sessions with their codec, resolution, frame rate and bitrate, which games are running, and how many clients are paired. Buttons here stop a session or ask the encoder for a fresh keyframe.
  • Host — this host's identity (hostname, OS, local IP, version, unique id), the codecs it advertises, its ports, the Updates card (see Updating the Host), the GPUs card — Automatic, or prefer one GPU for capture and encode, applied to the next session — and the compositor backends it found.
  • Virtual displays — the policy for the display each session gets, and the Streamed screen picker. See Virtual displays.
  • Library — the games every client sees: turn a launcher source on or off, add or edit a custom title with its own art and launch command. See Your game library.
  • Performance — arm a capture, run a session, stop it, and read the recording back as per-stage latency, throughput and health graphs.
  • Logs — the host's recent log stream and your plugins': follow it live, filter by level or producer, search it, and download or share it for a bug report. Plugin lines are tagged plugin:<name> and the Host / Plugins switch isolates either side.
  • Pairing — arm a PIN, approve or deny devices waiting for approval, and unpair a device. A second PIN box for Moonlight/GameStream clients appears only when this host runs the GameStream plane.
  • Plugins — the plugin store's Browse, Installed and Sources tabs plus the plugin runner switch; an installed plugin with a UI gets its own entry below. See Plugins.
  • Settings — the console's language, and Sign out.