Ubiquiti UniFi Software on Linux

Hardware Hub Networking
1

Anyone here get the Ubiquiti UniFi software working on Linux? They have an Ubuntu package, but I am running Fedora. They provide a generic Linux version, and I followed the readme instructions. Basically the only thing it requires is mongodb, which I have installed and have verified that the service is running. When I run the command 

java -jar lib/ace.jar start

which should start the application, nothing happens. No error messages, just a flashing cursor.

Anyone have any ideas? Has @wendell used the software in Linux? I know he's mentioned Ubiquiti a few times in videos. I may need to install a few of these access points for someone, which is why I bought one for myself to learn with. I don't really have a windows machine to use, no Mac machines, and I don't really want to install Ubuntu on a second hard drive just for this.

2

put the controller in a vm if you dont want to do a full install. personally i have the controller just running on a laptop but that runs windows...so not much help

3

Yeah, I probably will have to do that. Problem is that both my Windows VMs don't see my network. They access the internet fine, but they don't see my local network for some reason. So I will have to research how to solve that before using one for the controller software.

In case anyone wants to see some logs, here's the last section of the server.log, from when I started the software to where I stopped it (using ctrl-c in the terminal).

[2016-05-22 16:58:53,719] <launcher> INFO  webrtc - WebRTC library version: EvoStream Media Server (www.evostream.com) version 1.6.5 build 1712-48e9072-master - Gladiator - (built for Debian-7.0.5-x86_64 on 2016-04-26T20:32:34.000)
OpenSSL version: 1.0.2g
usrsctp version: 7a9ea9f53e63af46
compiled on machine: Linux debian-7-0-5-64 3.2.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.2.68-1+deb7u6 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[2016-05-22 16:59:03,735] <stat-daily> INFO  system - housekeeper[stat-daily] exception caught
com.mongodb.MongoException: '$set' is empty. You must specify a field like so: {$set: {<field>: ...}}
	at com.mongodb.CommandResult.getException(CommandResult.java:100)
	at com.mongodb.CommandResult.throwOnError(CommandResult.java:134)
	at com.mongodb.DBTCPConnector._checkWriteError(DBTCPConnector.java:142)
	at com.mongodb.DBTCPConnector.say(DBTCPConnector.java:183)
	at com.mongodb.DBTCPConnector.say(DBTCPConnector.java:155)
	at com.mongodb.DBApiLayer$MyCollection.update(DBApiLayer.java:349)
	at com.mongodb.DBCollection.update(DBCollection.java:177)
	at com.mongodb.DBCollection.update(DBCollection.java:208)
	at com.ubnt.service.OoOO.K.o00000(Unknown Source)
	at com.ubnt.service.OoOO.K.Ò00000(Unknown Source)
	at com.ubnt.service.OoOO.OooO.super(Unknown Source)
	at com.ubnt.service.OoOO.OooO.super(Unknown Source)
	at com.ubnt.service.OoOO.OooO$14.run(Unknown Source)
	at com.ubnt.ace.class$_Oo.run(Unknown Source)
	at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:511)
	at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.runAndReset(FutureTask.java:308)
	at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$ScheduledFutureTask.access$301(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:180)
	at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$ScheduledFutureTask.run(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:294)
	at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1142)
	at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:617)
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)
[2016-05-22 17:01:33,955] <db-server> INFO  db     - DbServer stopped

If I had to guess, I'd say something is not set up right with mongodb, but I don't know what it is or how to fix it.

4

I think you also need open jdk or open jre. It definitely works on Ubuntu but not on the current version because of outdated dependencies.

5

You're probably right about openjdk. It's probably not installed. I did get my Window 10 VM networking figured out, and was able to install the software there and connect to my access point. Pretty cool.

I may fiddle around with getting it to work in Fedora, mainly because I don't always have the VM running.

6

It runns perfectly fine on a raspberry as well, natively from 2 upwards but I have a guide for a hack onto the raspberry 1 as well =)

and yeah, jdk is needed

7

is this different to the readme?

  • for the VM, IMO this software is bloated and leaky, plus you'll be able to use a 'buntu and get updates via packages.
8

No, that's significantly more in depth. Thanks for that, it should help a lot with setting it up in Fedora.

Something happened with Fedora now where it won't wake up after the monitors turn off. So that sucks.

What's weird, though, is that after the screens turned off last night (and I couldn't get it to come back on) the access point failed and started flashing it's light and I lost the network connection on my laptop. The Windows VM with the controller software was running when it did that. Not sure why that would cause the AP to stop working. I plugged it back in after work today and it came right back up and worked fine. Haven't turned the desktop back on.

9

Are you familiar with Docker?
If not it takes some setup and you probably want to go through some tutorials if interested, but you can essentially get the service up and running with one command and without all of the dependencies installed into your OS.

There seems to be about 130 implementations of unifi containers by the community
https://hub.docker.com/search/?isAutomated=0&isOfficial=0&page=1&pullCount=0&q=unifi&starCount=0

In this well documented example:
https://hub.docker.com/r/rednut/unifi-controller/

you can get the service running and accessible in your local network with one command:

docker run -d \
        -p 8080:8080 -p 8443:8443 -p 8880:8880 -p 37117:27117 \
        -v /srv/data/apps/docker/unifi/data:/usr/lib/unifi/data \
        --name unifi rednut/unifi-controller
1 Like