Installing NetBox on Ubuntu 20.04

NetBox requires PostgreSQL 10 or later. Please note that MySQL and other relational databases are not supported.

PostgreSQL Database Installation

# sudo apt update
# sudo apt install -y postgresql

Once PostgreSQL has been installed, start the service and enable it to run at boot:

# sudo systemctl start postgresql
# sudo systemctl enable postgresql

Database Creation

At a minimum, we need to create a database for NetBox and assign it a username and password for authentication. Start by invoking the PostgreSQL shell as the system Postgres user.

# sudo -u postgres psql

Within the shell, enter the following commands to create the database and user (role), substituting your own value for the password:

CREATE DATABASE netbox;
CREATE USER netbox WITH PASSWORD 'netbox123';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE netbox TO netbox;

Do not use the password from the example. Choose a strong, random password to ensure secure database authentication for your NetBox installation.

Once complete, enter \q to exit the PostgreSQL shell.

Redis Installation

Redis is an in-memory key-value store which NetBox employs for caching and queuing. This section entails the installation and configuration of a local Redis instance. Redis v4.0 or later required.

# sudo apt install -y redis-server

Before continuing, verify that your installed version of Redis is at least v4.0:

# redis-server -v

You may wish to modify the Redis configuration at /etc/redis.conf or /etc/redis/redis.conf , however in most cases the default configuration is sufficient.

# sudo systemctl start redis-server.service

Verify Service Status

Use the redis-cli utility to ensure the Redis service is functional:

# redis-cli ping

If successful, you should receive a PONG response from the server.

NetBox Installation

This section of the documentation discusses installing and configuring the NetBox application itself.

Install System Packages

Begin by installing all system packages required by NetBox and its dependencies. Python 3.8 or later required

# sudo apt install -y python3 python3-pip python3-venv python3-dev build-essential libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev libffi-dev libpq-dev libssl-dev zlib1g-dev

Before continuing, check that your installed Python version is at least 3.8:

# python3 -V