In this tutorial, we'll go through the steps to install Netbox, an open source IP address management (IPAM) and data center infrastructure management (DCIM) solution. We'll assume that you're using POP! OS Latest and want to install Netbox from the official repository on GitHub (netbox">https://github.com/digitalocean/netbox).
Before you start, make sure you have the following:
sudo apt install git -y)sudo apt install python3 python3-pip -y)First, we'll clone the Netbox repository to our local machine. To do that, run the following command:
git clone -b master https://github.com/digitalocean/netbox.git
This will clone the Netbox repository into a directory named netbox.
Next, you'll need to install the required packages for Netbox. Run the following command to install them:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y \
build-essential \
libxml2-dev \
libxslt1-dev \
libssl-dev \
libffi-dev \
libpq-dev \
python3-dev \
python3-pip \
python3-setuptools \
python3-cffi \
libjpeg-dev \
zlib1g-dev \
swig
It is often recommended to run Python applications within a virtual environment to avoid dependency conflicts.
To create a new virtual environment for our Netbox installation, run the following command within the netbox directory:
python3 -m venv venv
This will create a new directory named venv within the netbox directory, containing the virtual environment.
Now that the virtual environment has been created, we need to activate it. We can do this by running the following command:
source venv/bin/activate
This will activate the virtual environment and change the prompt of the terminal to reflect that.
With the virtual environment activated, we can now install the Python dependencies for Netbox using pip3. To do that, we run the following command within the netbox directory (which contain requirements.txt):
pip3 install -r requirements.txt
This will install all the necessary dependencies for Netbox within the virtual environment.
Now that we have the dependencies installed, we need to configure Netbox. To do that, copy the sample configuration file:
cp netbox/netbox/configuration.example.py netbox/netbox/configuration.py
Next, edit the configuration.py file and configure the necessary settings, such as the database and secret key. You can find more information about the available configuration settings in the repository's README file.
Before we can run Netbox, we need to initialize the database. We can do that using the following command:
python3 netbox/manage.py migrate
This will run the database migration scripts and create the necessary tables.
After the database has been initialized, we need to create a superuser for Netbox. We can do that using the following command:
python3 netbox/manage.py createsuperuser
This will prompt you to enter a username, email, and password for the superuser account.
With everything configured and the database initialized, we can now run Netbox by using the following command:
python3 netbox/manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000
This will start the development web server on port 8000, listening on all network interfaces.
Open up any web browser from the local machine and go to http://localhost:8000 to view the Netbox web application. You should see the Netbox login page. Use the login credentials that you created earlier to log in.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Netbox on POP! OS Latest. You are now ready to start using Netbox for your IP address management and data center infrastructure management tasks. It is important to remember to always keep the virtual environment activated when running any Netbox commands or working with the application.
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