While I’m more of a fan of Red Hat-based distros, using a Fedora desktop and laptop, and multiple Rocky Linux servers, I decided to revisit UniFi after our NYC townhouse had poor Wi-Fi from MikroTik wAP AXs.
The reality is that UniFi is designed for Debian and Ubuntu as most hobbyists (and startups) use those. Trust me, I run a VPS host and like 90% of my customers (not exact) use Debian or Ubuntu.
So I’ll install UniFi in a LXC container, but this should work on bare metal or a VM as well.
Note: All commands assume you’re logged in as root.
To do that, first, you’ll need to install the pre-requisite tools for MongoDB and the UniFi Controller:
apt install ca-certificates apt-transport-https curl gnupg -y
Then, you’ll need to install the MongoDB signing key:
curl -fsSL https://www.mongodb.org/static/pgp/server-8.0.asc | sudo gpg -o /usr/share/keyrings/mongodb-server-8.0.gpg --dearmor
Next, add the apt repository:
echo "deb [ signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/mongodb-server-8.0.gpg ] http://repo.mongodb.org/apt/debian bookworm/mongodb-org/8.0 main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-8.0.list
Now, install MongoDB:
apt-get update && apt-get install -y mongodb-org
Now, add the signing keys for the UniFi controller:
wget -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/unifi-repo.gpg https://dl.ui.com/unifi/unifi-repo.gpg
And add the apt repository:
echo 'deb https://www.ui.com/downloads/unifi/debian stable ubiquiti' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/100-ubnt-unifi.list
Now, install the UniFi controller:
apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y unifi
In a browser, open the UniFi controller web UI by typing in:
https://X.X.X.X:8443/
Replace X.X.X.X with the IP address of the UniFi controller you’ve just
installed.
From there, it should be self-explanatory.