Hub Admin Overview

The Hub Admin section covers running and operating a self-hosted Phlix Hub — the cloud directory + reverse-tunnel relay that lets your media servers be reached from anywhere.

This page is the entry point: it explains the admin dashboard (the web UI you manage the Hub from) and the operational CLI reference (the commands you run on the host). The rest of the section drills into install, capacity, tuning, monitoring, and policy.

The Hub dashboard

Once the Hub is running, the dashboard is the server-rendered web UI served by the HTTP worker (default port 8800). Sign in at /login; the first account created becomes an admin automatically (see Install).

Page	Path	What it does
Landing	/	Public landing / sign-in entry
My Servers	/my-servers	Lists your claimed servers and their live heartbeat status
Claim Server	/claim-server	Pairs a new media server using a claim code
Shared with me	/shared-with-me	Libraries other users have shared with you
Manage shares	/manage-shares	Libraries you share, with permission levels
Media requests	/requests	Submit movie/TV requests (user view)
Admin: requests	/admin/requests	Approve/deny the media-request queue (admin only)

Admin-only pages and APIs are gated by the admin middleware and require an account with the is_admin flag. The first registered user gets it automatically; there is no separate "create admin" step.

A machine-readable health probe is always available at /health:

curl http://localhost:8800/health
# => {"status":"ok", ...}

Admin & operations CLI reference

The Hub is operated from the project root with plain PHP entry points — there is no separate hub binary. The two commands you use day-to-day are the process controller (public/index.php) and the migration runner (scripts/run-migrations.php).

Process control — public/index.php

The HTTP, relay, and client-relay workers are managed by Workerman, which exposes the standard start/stop verbs:

php public/index.php start        # run in the foreground
php public/index.php start -d     # run as a daemon
php public/index.php stop         # stop all workers
php public/index.php restart      # stop, then start
php public/index.php reload       # graceful reload (zero-downtime code reload)
php public/index.php status       # show worker status
php public/index.php connections  # list active connections

Under systemd, use the foreground form (start) with Type=simple — see the install guide.

Database migrations — scripts/run-migrations.php

php scripts/run-migrations.php

Applies every SQL file in migrations/ in order. The runner records what it has applied in a migrations table, so it is idempotent — re-running after a successful apply is a no-op. There is no destructive --force flag; to start over, drop and recreate the database, then re-run.

JWT smoke test — scripts/smoke-jwt-roundtrip.php

php scripts/smoke-jwt-roundtrip.php

Mints an access token with the Hub's configured secret, validates it back, and prints the decoded claims. Exits non-zero on mismatch — handy for confirming HUB_JWT_SECRET is wired up after a deploy.

Creating and promoting admins

There is no user-management CLI. Admins are bootstrapped by signup:

• The first account registered at /signup is auto-promoted to admin.
• Additional admins are granted by setting is_admin = 1 on their row in the users table.

Configuration at a glance

The Hub is configured entirely through HUB_* environment variables (database, JWT, public domain, ports). The Install page documents every variable and a full Ubuntu / Docker walkthrough.

Where to next

• Install — deploy the Hub (Docker, source, reverse-proxy TLS)
• First Boot — create the first admin and pair a server
• Capacity Planning — size the host for your user base
• Relay Tuning — tune the reverse-tunnel relay
• Monitoring & Alerting — dashboards, metrics, alerts
• Scaling — run multiple Hub nodes
• Backup & Restore — protect Hub state
• TLS Certificates — certificates for server subdomains