Installation

One-line server installer (Linux + systemd)

bash <(curl -fsSL https://s.ee/opensnell)

The interactive installer:

• Lets you pick between OpenSnell (default, GPLv3, all-platform), the official Surge snell-server v5.0.1, or the official Surge snell-server v6.0.0b4 (closed-source, Linux only). For the v6 option and what changed, see Snell v6.
• Generates a random PSK with openssl if you leave it blank.
• Picks an unused random port in 10000–60000 if you leave the port blank.
• Writes /etc/snell/snell-server.conf, installs a systemd unit (snell-server.service), opens the port in UFW / firewalld if either is active, and starts the service.
• Re-run with reconfigure, update, uninstall, start, stop, restart, status, or info — see ./install.sh help.

Installing the alpha channel

The alpha branch tracks experimental features ahead of stable release (currently: library-level multi-user server mode, TUN inbound, fake-IP DNS, and tcp-brutal CC — none of which the official Surge snell-server ships). CI publishes a rolling pre-release tagged alpha on every push to that branch; the installer can pull from it via --alpha:

bash <(curl -fsSL https://s.ee/opensnell) install --alpha

The channel is persisted to /etc/snell/.install_meta, so subsequent update runs stay on alpha without re-passing the flag. To switch back to the stable channel, run install again without the flag.

Docker / Docker Compose

The server image is published to GHCR as ghcr.io/missuo/opensnell-server and is multi-arch (linux/amd64 and linux/arm64). All configuration is supplied via SNELL_* environment variables — the container's entrypoint materializes snell-server.conf from them at start. If SNELL_PSK is left blank, a random PSK is generated on first start and printed to the container logs.

services:
  snell-server:
    image: ghcr.io/missuo/opensnell-server:latest
    container_name: snell-server
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "2333:2333/tcp"
      - "2333:2333/udp"
    environment:
      SNELL_LISTEN: "0.0.0.0:2333"
      SNELL_PSK: ""           # leave blank to auto-generate
      SNELL_OBFS: "off"
      SNELL_UDP: "true"
      SNELL_QUIC: "true"
      SNELL_IPV6: "true"
      SNELL_TFO: "false"
      # SNELL_EGRESS_INTERFACE: "eth0"
      # SNELL_DNS: "1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8"

docker compose up -d
docker compose logs snell-server   # grab the auto-generated PSK if you left it blank

Or with plain docker run:

docker run -d --name snell-server --restart unless-stopped \
  -p 2333:2333/tcp -p 2333:2333/udp \
  -e SNELL_PSK=your-shared-secret \
  ghcr.io/missuo/opensnell-server:latest

Tagged releases are available as :1.0.3, :1.0, :1, etc. See Server configuration for the meaning of each SNELL_* knob — the mapping is 1:1 with the ini keys.

Build from source

go build -o snell-server ./cmd/snell-server
go build -o snell-client ./cmd/snell-client

Or fetch directly with go install:

go install github.com/missuo/opensnell/cmd/snell-server@latest
go install github.com/missuo/opensnell/cmd/snell-client@latest

Minimal systemd unit

If you're not using the installer but want systemd supervision:

[Unit]
Description=OpenSnell server
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/snell-server -c /etc/snell/snell-server.conf
Restart=on-failure
LimitNOFILE=65536

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Next steps