Debian / Ubuntu installation

These steps have been tested on:

Ubuntu 18.04 (LTS)
Debian 10 (Stretch)

Creating an user and database

ChirpStack Network Server needs its own database. To create a new database, start the PostgreSQL prompt as the postgres user:

sudo -u postgres psql

Within the the PostgreSQL prompt, enter the following queries:

-- create the chirpstack_ns user with password 'dbpassword'
create role chirpstack_ns with login password 'dbpassword';

-- create the chirpstack_ns database
create database chirpstack_ns with owner chirpstack_ns;

-- exit the prompt
\q

To verify if the user and database have been setup correctly, try to connect to it:

psql -h localhost -U chirpstack_ns -W chirpstack_ns

ChirpStack Network Server Debian repository

ChirpStack provides pre-compiled binaries packaged as Debian (.deb) packages. In order to activate this repository, execute the following commands:

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 1CE2AFD36DBCCA00

sudo echo "deb https://artifacts.chirpstack.io/packages/3.x/deb stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/chirpstack.list
sudo apt update

Install ChirpStack Network Server

In order to install ChirpStack Network Server, execute the following command:

sudo apt install chirpstack-network-server

After installation, modify the configuration file which is located at /etc/chirpstack-network-server/chirpstack-network-server.toml.

Settings you probably want to set / change:

postgresql.dsn
postgresql.automigrate
network_server.net_id
network_server.band.name
metrics.timezone

Starting ChirpStack Network Server

How you need to (re)start and stop ChirpStack Network Server depends on if your distribution uses init.d or systemd.

init.d

sudo /etc/init.d/chirpstack-network-server [start|stop|restart|status]

systemd

sudo systemctl [start|stop|restart|status] chirpstack-network-server

ChirpStack Network Server log output

Now you've setup ChirpStack Network Server, it is a good time to verify that ChirpStack Network Server is actually up-and-running. This can be done by looking at the ChirpStack Network Server log output.

Like the previous step, which command you need to use for viewing the log output depends on if your distribution uses init.d or systemd.

init.d

All logs are written to /var/log/chirpstack-network-server/chirpstack-network-server.log. To view and follow this logfile:

tail -f /var/log/chirpstack-network-server/chirpstack-network-server.log

systemd

journalctl -u chirpstack-network-server -f -n 50

Example output:

INFO[0000] starting ChirpStack Network Server                band=EU868 docs=https://www.chirpstack.io/network-server/ net_id=010203 version=3.1.0
INFO[0000] setup redis connection pool                   url=redis://localhost:6379
INFO[0000] backend/gateway: connecting to mqtt broker    server=tcp://localhost:1883
INFO[0000] connecting to application-server              ca-cert= server=127.0.0.1:8001 tls-cert= tls-key=
INFO[0000] backend/gateway: connected to mqtt server
INFO[0000] backend/gateway: subscribing to rx topic      topic=gateway/+/rx
INFO[0000] no network-controller configured
INFO[0000] starting api server                           bind=0.0.0.0:8000 ca-cert= tls-cert= tls-key=

When you get the following log-messages, it means that ChirpStack Network Server can't connect to the application-server.

INFO[0000] grpc: addrConn.resetTransport failed to create client transport: connection error: desc = "transport: dial tcp 127.0.0.1:8001: getsockopt: connection refused"; Reconnecting to {"127.0.0.1:8001" <nil>}
INFO[0001] grpc: addrConn.resetTransport failed to create client transport: connection error: desc = "transport: dial tcp 127.0.0.1:8001: getsockopt: connection refused"; Reconnecting to {"127.0.0.1:8001" <nil>}
INFO[0002] grpc: addrConn.resetTransport failed to create client transport: connection error: desc = "transport: dial tcp 127.0.0.1:8001: getsockopt: connection refused"; Reconnecting to {"127.0.0.1:8001" <nil>}

Configuration

See Configuration for details on each config option.