Install Ubiquiti Unifi Controller on Ubuntu 20.04

unifi_ubuntu_2004.sh

# Install Ubiquiti Unifi Controller on Ubuntu 20.04.
# As tested on a fresh install of ubuntu-20.04.1-live-server, August 22nd 2020.
# Thanks to https://gist.github.com/tmuncks for posting the updated install steps.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install --yes apt-transport-https

echo 'deb https://www.ui.com/downloads/unifi/debian stable ubiquiti' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/100-ubnt-unifi.list
sudo wget -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/unifi-repo.gpg https://dl.ui.com/unifi/unifi-repo.gpg

sudo apt update
sudo apt install --yes openjdk-8-jre-headless unifi
sudo apt clean

sudo systemctl status --no-pager --full mongodb.service unifi.service

# Now log into https://unifi_controller_hostname:8443/

##  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
##  Previous install steps from when unifi still required mongodb-server <= 3.4.
##  unifi has since been updated to work with mongodb-server 3.6. Which is available from the Ubuntu 20.04 main repository. 
##  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#
#  sudo apt install --yes ca-certificates apt-transport-https
#  echo 'deb https://www.ui.com/downloads/unifi/debian stable ubiquiti' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/100-ubnt-unifi.list
#  sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv 06E85760C0A52C50
#  wget -qO - https://www.mongodb.org/static/pgp/server-3.4.asc | sudo apt-key add -
#  echo 'deb https://repo.mongodb.org/apt/ubuntu xenial/mongodb-org/3.4 multiverse' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-3.4.list
#  sudo apt-mark hold openjdk-11-*
#  sudo apt update
#  # mongodb 3.4 dependency
#  wget http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/o/openssl1.0/libssl1.0.0_1.0.2n-1ubuntu5.3_amd64.deb -P /tmp
#  sudo apt install --yes /tmp/libssl1.0.0_1.0.2n-1ubuntu5.3_amd64.deb
#  rm /tmp/libssl1.0.0_1.0.2n-1ubuntu5.3_amd64.deb
#  sudo apt install --yes mongodb-org
#  sudo apt install --yes unifi

Any help in linking digital ocean with unifi

For those wanting to allow all the ports used by the controller from UI's Documentation, the below adds every port except for the ports used by AP-EDU broadcasting. you might also want to ad an explicit ssh-over-tcp rule with sudo ufw allow 22/tcp.

sudo ufw enable
sudo ufw allow 3478/udp
sudo ufw allow 5514/udp
sudo ufw allow 8080/tcp
sudo ufw allow 8443/tcp
sudo ufw allow 8880/tcp
sudo ufw allow 8843/tcp
sudo ufw allow 6789/tcp
sudo ufw allow 27117/tcp
sudo ufw allow 10001/udp
sudo ufw allow 1900/udp
sudo service unifi restart

For me, this is all that was needed on a clean 20.04 install:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install --yes ca-certificates apt-transport-https wget

echo 'deb https://www.ui.com/downloads/unifi/debian stable ubiquiti' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/100-ubnt-unifi.list
sudo wget -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/unifi-repo.gpg https://dl.ui.com/unifi/unifi-repo.gpg

sudo apt update
sudo apt install --yes openjdk-8-jre-headless unifi

Jupp thanks man. This worked flawlessly.

@RocketLR Thanks for these simple instructions. It worked perfectly for me as well. Cheers! 👍

Yes, thank you for this! I love Debian, but I wasted over an hour fighting with Debian 11 and mongodb versions and other apt problems; I lost. This just works, I installed at Unifi version 7.1.66. I spun up an Ubuntu 20.04 Linux container in Proxmox, updated and (since I was logged in as root, removed sudo, and I like to type Y so):

apt-get install ca-certificates apt-transport-https wget

echo 'deb https://www.ui.com/downloads/unifi/debian stable ubiquiti' | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/100-ubnt-unifi.list

wget -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/unifi-repo.gpg https://dl.ui.com/unifi/unifi-repo.gpg

apt update

apt install openjdk-8-jre-headless unifi

Thanks Dave and everyone.

@lamixer you are welcome.

I feel your dependency hell pain.

The software stack versions for unifi are starting to become a problem with newer operating systems.
The issues I have found are,

• mongodb has been dropped from the stable Debian and Ubuntu repositories.
• unifi requires mongodb 3.x, which requires libssl1.1, which Ubuntu 22.04 depreciated in favor of libssl3.
• Debian stable has dropped openjdk 8. unifi dependencies states it can use openjdk 11. Yet unifi fails to run without modifying the openjdk 11 installation.

I do hope Ubiquity is planning to update unifi to make it easier to install on current Linux operating systems.

If you would like to try Debian again I found that the following install steps worked on Debian 10 and 11.

# unifi 7 Debian 10 & 11 installation.
#
# https://gist.github.com/davecoutts
#
# mongodb installed from www.mongodb.org 

sudo apt update
sudo apt install --yes gnupg wget haveged

# unifi repository

wget -qO- https://dl.ui.com/unifi/unifi-repo.gpg \
| sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/unifi-archive-keyring.gpg > /dev/null

echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/unifi-archive-keyring.gpg] \
https://www.ui.com/downloads/unifi/debian stable ubiquiti" \
| sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/100-ubnt-unifi.list > /dev/null

# mongodb-org repository

wget -qO- https://www.mongodb.org/static/pgp/server-3.6.asc \
| sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/mongodb-org-server-3.6-archive-keyring.gpg > /dev/null

echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/mongodb-org-server-3.6-archive-keyring.gpg] \
https://repo.mongodb.org/apt/ubuntu bionic/mongodb-org/3.6 multiverse" \
| sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-3.6.list > /dev/null

# set JAVA_HOME environment variable for the unifi service

sudo mkdir /etc/systemd/system/unifi.service.d

printf "[Service]\nEnvironment=\"JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk-amd64\"\n" \
| sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/unifi.service.d/10-override.conf > /dev/null

# Install openjdk 11

sudo apt update
sudo apt install --yes openjdk-11-jre-headless

# Workaround issue where jsvc expects to find libjvm.so at lib/amd64/server/libjvm.so
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk-amd64/lib/ /usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk-amd64/lib/amd64

# Install and enable mongodb 3.6

sudo apt install --yes mongodb-org-server

sudo systemctl enable mongod.service
sudo systemctl start mongod.service

# Install unifi

sudo apt install --yes unifi
sudo apt clean

# Post installation checks

systemctl status --no-pager --full mongod.service unifi.service

wget --no-check-certificate -qO- https://localhost:8443/status | python3 -m json.tool

sudo journalctl --no-pager --unit unifi.service

sudo cat /usr/lib/unifi/logs/server.log

sudo cat /usr/lib/unifi/logs/mongod.log

All - thank you for all the comments and discussion here.

With this post and some extra work, I was able to get Unifi working on Ubuntu Jammy on a Raspberry Pi arm64. Especially thanks to @dbosk for pointing to the armhf Unifi repo.

I wrote up a description and ansible role for those wanting a script and explainer of what worked for me.

what is default admin username and password of mongodb ?

Off the back of @ficematt using https://glennr.nl/s/unifi-network-controller make the process alot easier 👍

Unfortunately the URL - https://www.ui.com/downloads/unifi/debian is now broken.

@jcgit1

Unfortunately the URL - https://www.ui.com/downloads/unifi/debian is now broken.

I don't have any first-hand knowledge, but it's fair to say that UBNT is no longer interested in maintaining a Linux UniFi download, especially not after their "Dream Machine" and Cloud Key offerings have been available for a while. I had gone through all the hassle and trouble of getting UniFi server working on a local Debian box I have here, but I simply got tired of the constant churn and issues that came up every time they make code changes. So I bit the bullet and bought a Cloud Key Gen2 Plus and it's been working flawlessly ever since. Yeah, it's $200, but it's self-maintained and well worth it. Of course now they're out of stock on it so you'll have to wait until they back-fill, but I highly recommend it.

Hi @jcgit1

I'm not seeing an issue with the unifi repository located at https://www.ui.com/downloads/unifi/debian

root@unifi:~# cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/100-ubnt-unifi.list 
deb https://www.ui.com/downloads/unifi/debian stable ubiquiti

root@unifi:~# apt update
Hit:1 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye InRelease
Hit:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm InRelease                    
Hit:3 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates InRelease            
Get:4 http://security.debian.org bookworm-security InRelease [48.0 kB]   
Hit:5 https://dl.ui.com/unifi/debian stable InRelease                          
Fetched 48.0 kB in 0s (115 kB/s)
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
All packages are up to date.
root@unifi:~# 

What do you see when you attempt an install or update using that repository?

Hi all, I have had the issue that # apt update gave an error like E: The repository 'https://www.ui.com/downloads/unifi/debian stable InRelease' is not signed. I've tried to add the key, but still had no success. Until I came across this thread.
Because of your comment @davecoutts, I changed /etc/apt/sources.list.d/100-ubnt-unifi.list to: deb https://dl.ui.com/unifi/debian stable ubiquiti and it seems to work. Maybe there was a redirect before, that isn't there anymore? Can someone confirm if this works?

Hi all, I have had the issue that # apt update gave an error like E: The repository 'https://www.ui.com/downloads/unifi/debian stable InRelease' is not signed. I've tried to add the key, but still had no success. Until I came across this thread. Because of your comment @davecoutts, I changed /etc/apt/sources.list.d/100-ubnt-unifi.list to: deb https://dl.ui.com/unifi/debian stable ubiquiti and it seems to work. Maybe there was a redirect before, that isn't there anymore? Can someone confirm if this works?

It was likely my bad or bad timing. It looks like https://www.ui.com/downloads/unifi/debian is now forwarded to https://dl.ui.com/unifi/debian/

@davecoutts the issue could be architectures. Looks like the latest stable release dropped ARM support:
N: Skipping acquire of configured file 'ubiquiti/binary-armhf/Packages' as repository 'https://www.ui.com/downloads/unifi/debian stable InRelease' doesn't support architecture 'armhf'

Guessing it's working for you on amd64 or something?

Edit: one can change the release from stable to unifi-7.4 to stick to the explicit release snapshot that still has ARM binaries.

Yes it was the same situation on ubuntu 20.04 64-bit:
N: Skipping acquire of configured file 'ubiquiti/binary-i386/Packages' as repository 'https://www.ui.com/downloads/unifi/debian stable InRelease' doesn't support architecture 'i386'

Fixed it by editing /etc/apt/sources.list.d/100-ubnt-unifi.list file, and defined the architecture:
deb [arch=amd64] https://www.ui.com/downloads/unifi/debian stable ubiquiti

Now the updates are working correctly.

I have tested the code that I have published in my git repository below and works fine for me.
https://github.com/shahkamran/unifi-network-ubuntu-server/blob/main/unifi_ubuntu_22.04.sh