How to Install Nautobot on Ubuntu

Install Nautobot on Ubuntu Server

This post will cover how to install Nautobot, installing and configuring the Nautobot application on an Ubuntu Server.

You can install Nautobot onto a RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) or Ubuntu. This post will cover a basic installation, with all of Nautobot’s processes running on a single server.

Nautobot Docker

The easiest way to install Nautobot is to clone the Nautobot Docker Repository and bring up Nautobot using Docker.

This post will cover a full install, installing Redis, Postgres and configuring the application.

Nautobot Dependencies

• Python 3.8 or greater
• Redis
• PostgreSQL
• Ubuntu Server 24.04
• 4 x vCPU
• 100GB disk space
• 16GB RAM

I am using a virtual Ubuntu Server in my lab, but the process will work the same on bare metal.

1. Install Redis

sudo apt install -y redis-server

To validate the Redis server is running you can use the regis-cli ping command

redis-cli ping 

You should get a PONG response

2. Install PostreSQL

sudo apt install -y postgresql

Once Postgres has installed we need to create a database

3. Create a Database

sudo -iu postgres psql

Next create the database (remember to use a semicolon at the end of the command

CREATE DATABASE nautobot;

You should get the following command back

CREATE DATABASE
postgres=#

4. Create a username and password

CREATE USER nautobot WITH PASSWORD 'yoursecretpassword';

Ensure your password is in quotes

5. Grant permissions to access the database

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE nautobot TO nautobot;

You now need to connect to the database to grant schema permissions

\connect nautobot

6. Grant permissions to create schema

GRANT CREATE ON SCHEMA public TO nautobot;

To exit Postgres CLI type \q

Validate access as the granted user

psql --username nautobot --password --host localhost nautobot

You will be prompted for the password you created earlier and you should get back something like this

Password: 
psql (16.7 (Ubuntu 16.7-1.pgdg22.04+1))
SSL connection (protocol: TLSv1.3, cipher: TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384, compression: off)
Type "help" for help.
nautobot=> 

7. Install the Nautobot Application

Now all the prerequisites have been completed we can now progress with the install of Nautobot

8. Create a Nautobot user

sudo useradd --system --shell /bin/bash --create-home --home-dir /opt/nautobot nautobot 

Verify user is created correctly and home folder is /opt/nautobot

eval echo ~nautobot 

You should get back

/opt/nautobot

You can also validate the permissions

ls -l /opt/ | grep nautobot

Your response should be

drwxr-x--- 2 nautobot nautobot 4096 Aug 25 14:41 nautobot

9. Create a Virtual Environment to run Python dependencies for Nautobot

sudo -u nautobot python3 -m venv /opt/nautobot

10. Update the Nautobot_Root environment variable so it will always be set

echo "export NAUTOBOT_ROOT=/opt/nautobot" | sudo tee -a ~nautobot/.bashrc

11. Change user to Nautobot and verify environment variable is set as expected

sudo -iu nautobot 

echo $NAUTOBOT_ROOT

You should see

/opt/nautobot

12. Activate the virtual envrionment

source /opt/nautobot/bin/activate

Ensure your prompt has changed to show the venv is active

13. Now we are ready to Install Nautobot

Everything is now performed as the nautobot user – do not install Nautobot as root.

14. Check you are running the latest version of pip

pip3 install --upgrade pip wheel

15. Install Nautobot latest version

All releases are here : https://github.com/nautobot/nautobot/releases

For this installation I am going to use version 3.0.9

pip install nautobot==3.0.9

Once installed you can check the version with

nautobot-server --version 

16. Configure Nautobot

Run the init command and decline sending any metrics, a file called nautobot_config.py will be created.

nautobot-server init

17. Uncomment parts of the config file

You now need to uncomment a few lines in the config file.

# This is a list of valid fully-qualified domain names (FQDNs) for the Nautobot server. Nautobot will not permit write
# access to the server via any other hostnames. The first FQDN in the list will be treated as the preferred name.
#
# Example: ALLOWED_HOSTS = ['nautobot.example.com', 'nautobot.internal.local']
#
ALLOWED_HOSTS = ["*"]
# The django-redis cache is used to establish concurrent locks using Redis.
#
 CACHES = {
     "default": {
         "BACKEND": os.getenv(
             "NAUTOBOT_CACHES_BACKEND",
             "django_prometheus.cache.backends.redis.RedisCache" if METRICS_ENABLED else "django_redis.cache.RedisCache",
         ),
         "LOCATION": parse_redis_connection(redis_database=1),
         "TIMEOUT": 300,
         "OPTIONS": {
             "CLIENT_CLASS": "django_redis.client.DefaultClient",
             "PASSWORD": "",
         },
     }
 }
# Number of seconds to cache ContentType lookups. Set to 0 to disable caching.
 CONTENT_TYPE_CACHE_TIMEOUT = int(os.getenv("NAUTOBOT_CONTENT_TYPE_CACHE_TIMEOUT", "0"))
# Celery Beat heartbeat file path - will be touched by Beat each time it wakes up as a proof-of-health.
 CELERY_BEAT_HEARTBEAT_FILE = os.getenv(
     "NAUTOBOT_CELERY_BEAT_HEARTBEAT_FILE",
     os.path.join(tempfile.gettempdir(), "nautobot_celery_beat_heartbeat"),
 )
# Celery broker URL used to tell workers where queues are located
#
 CELERY_BROKER_URL = os.getenv("NAUTOBOT_CELERY_BROKER_URL", parse_redis_connection(redis_database=0))
# Optional configuration dict for Celery to use custom SSL certificates to connect to Redis.
#
 CELERY_BROKER_USE_SSL = None
# Database configuration. See the Django documentation for a complete list of available parameters:
#   https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/stable/ref/settings/#databases
#
 DATABASES = {
     "default": {
         "NAME": os.getenv("NAUTOBOT_DB_NAME", "nautobot"),  # Database name
         "USER": os.getenv("NAUTOBOT_DB_USER", ""),  # Database username
         "PASSWORD": os.getenv("NAUTOBOT_DB_PASSWORD", ""),  # Database password
         "HOST": os.getenv("NAUTOBOT_DB_HOST", "localhost"),  # Database server
         "PORT": os.getenv("NAUTOBOT_DB_PORT", ""),  # Database port (leave blank for default)
         "CONN_MAX_AGE": int(os.getenv("NAUTOBOT_DB_TIMEOUT", "300")),  # Database timeout
         "ENGINE": os.getenv(
             "NAUTOBOT_DB_ENGINE",
             "django_prometheus.db.backends.postgresql" if METRICS_ENABLED else "django.db.backends.postgresql",
         ),  # Database driver ("mysql" or "postgresql")
     }
 }
# Ensure proper Unicode handling for MySQL
#
if DATABASES["default"]["ENGINE"].endswith("mysql"):
    DATABASES["default"]["OPTIONS"] = {"charset": "utf8mb4"}
# This key is used for secure generation of random numbers and strings. It must never be exposed outside of this file.
# For optimal security, SECRET_KEY should be at least 50 characters in length and contain a mix of letters, numbers, and
# symbols. Nautobot will not run without this defined. For more information, see
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/stable/ref/settings/#std:setting-SECRET_KEY

18. Export Variables to use

echo "export NAUTOBOT_DB_USER=nautobot" | tee -a ~nautobot/.bash

echo 'export NAUTOBOT_DB_PASSWORD=yoursecretpassword' | tee -a ~nautobot/.bashrc

Reload your terminal so the environment variables are available

Or just type source ~/.bashrc

18. Launch Nautobot

Before we launch Nautobot you need to do a database migration

nautobot-server migrate 

This will take a few minutes but when complete we still have a few steps

19. Create a Nautobot Superuser

nautobot-server createsuperuser

You will be prompted for a username, email address and password

When completed it will say Superuser created successfully.

20. Collect Static File

This command copies any static files into /opt/nautobot/static

nautobot-server collectstatic

21. Start the server

nautobot-server runserver 0.0.0.0:8080 --insecure 

You should now be able to access Nautobot at http://<yourserverip>:8080

NOTE: This will only be operational whilst the terminal is open – in the next post I will cover how to make your Nautobot Server productionised

Frequently asked questions