Troubleshooting Caddy Webserver

OpenPanel uses Caddy webserver to handle SSL and reverse proxy to per-user webservers.

If Caddy is disbled, all websites hosted on the server are down.

To troubleshoot Caddy-related issues:

1. Check if Caddy is running​

Run:

curl -I localhost

You should see Server: Caddy in the response, for example:

root@demo:~# curl -I localhost
HTTP/1.1 308 Permanent Redirect
Connection: close
Location: https://localhost/
Server: Caddy
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2025 13:11:03 GMT

If it appears, Caddy is running properly. If a specific website or domain isn’t working, troubleshoot that domain individually.

2. Check Caddy status​

Check if Caddy is 'active' or 'running':

docker ps -a

If the status is exited, restarting, or starting, it indicates an issue with the container.

3. Validate the configuration​

If Caddy has a syntax error in the main configuration file or any domain configuration, it may exit on startup and restart repeatedly.

To validate the configuration:

docker exec caddy caddy validate --config /etc/caddy/Caddyfile

• warn or info messages are fine.
• Any error messages must be resolved before Caddy will start correctly.

Main configuration file for Caddy is: /etc/openpanel/caddy/Caddyfile and per-domain files are stored in: /etc/openpanel/caddy/domains/*.conf

4. Increase resource limits​

By default, Caddy is limited to 1 CPU core and 1GB RAM. To increase the limits:

1. Edit the .env file:

nano /root/.env

2. Adjust the values:

CADDY_CPU="1.0"
CADDY_RAM="1.0G"

3. Save the file and rebuild the container:

cd /root
docker compose down caddy
docker compose up -d caddy

5. View logs​

If the above steps don’t resolve the issue, check the logs:

docker logs -f caddy

Copy any errors and search online or post them on our Discord channel or OpenPanel forums for help.