Installing Thingsboard in your own server

The original content was accessed on 7th July 2025 from https://thingsboard.io/docs/user-guide/install/ubuntu/

Have a fresh Ubuntu 20.04 installation ready, recommended is to have a 4GB machine, but 1GB also tested but extremely slow in loading.

First things first.

SSH login as root first, and create a sudo user,

adduser <user>
usermod -aG sudo <user>

For security reasons, disable root ssh login and change port in the following file,

nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Change the values,

Port <any unused between 1024 and 65535>
PermitRootLogin no

Save, exit and restart the service,

sudo service ssh restart

For good measure exit from ssh and re-login using new port and sudo user.

Installing the system.

Install Java 17,

sudo apt update && sudo apt install openjdk-17-jdk-headless -y

Check Java version,

java -version

Get Thingsboard,

wget https://github.com/thingsboard/thingsboard/releases/download/v4.1/thingsboard-4.1.deb

Install it, (as a service)

sudo dpkg -i thingsboard-4.1.deb

Install gnupg ,

sudo apt-get install -y gnupg2 gnupg gnupg1

Install Postgres dependency,

sudo apt install -y postgresql-common
sudo /usr/share/postgresql-common/pgdg/apt.postgresql.org.sh

Install and launch the postgresql service,

sudo apt update
sudo apt -y install postgresql-16

If during this process, NO_PUBKEY error comes up, (Your key will be shown in the terminal), add the key and rerun installation.

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys <your key>

Then start the Postgres service,

sudo service postgresql start

Then, secure Postgres with a password, (use Alphanumeric only)

sudo -u postgres psql -c "\password"

Lets connect to the Database,

psql -U postgres -d postgres -h 127.0.0.1 -W

Postgress prompt should appear.

In it, create the database for Thingsboard

CREATE DATABASE thingsboard;

Then type and execute,

EXIT;

to exit.

Now Thingsboard configuration,

sudo nano /etc/thingsboard/conf/thingsboard.conf

Copy and paste below to end of file, (better get it from original source)

# DB Configuration export DATABASE_TS_TYPE=sql
export SPRING_DATASOURCE_URL=jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/thingsboard
export SPRING_DATASOURCE_USERNAME=postgres
export SPRING_DATASOURCE_PASSWORD=PUT_YOUR_POSTGRESQL_PASSWORD_HERE
# Specify partitioning size for timestamp key-value storage. Allowed values: DAYS, MONTHS, YEARS, INDEFINITE.export SQL_POSTGRES_TS_KV_PARTITIONING=MONTHS

Since I'm using a 1GB machine, I'm adding that to the end of configuration,

export JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Xms2G -Xmx2G"

Save and exit.

I'm also loading the demo data

sudo /usr/share/thingsboard/bin/install/install.sh --loadDemo

And lastly, start the Thingsboard service,

sudo service thingsboard start

Once the system is running you can access it at,

http://localhost:8080/
or
http://<server_IP>:8080/
or
htt?//<your_domain_name>

nginx Web server to handle requests.

This is a precursor to enabling SSL in the future

This is useful if you have a domain name. This will allow us to access the server on port 80. then your URL becomes <your_domain_name>, no need to enter port 8080

Install nginx,

sudo apt-get install nginx

Test nginx working by,

http://<your_domain_name>

on your browser or

sudo service nginx status

on the terminal.

Assuming we have only one server, lets load a configuration file to serve Thingsboard via nginx, first create file and open for editing,

sudo nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/<filename>.conf (tbproxy.conf)

Add the following server block to the file,

server {
	listen 80;
	server_name <domain_name>;
	location / {
  proxy_pass http://<LOCAL_THINGSGBOARD_IP_OR_DOMAN>:8080;
                proxy_http_version 1.1;
                proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
                proxy_set_header Connection "Upgrade";
                proxy_set_header Host $host;
	}
}

After saving and exiting the text editor, run,

sudo systemctl reload nginx

This will restart the nginx reloading all configurations.

You should be able to access the server with your domain name.