*** Official Ubiquiti Discussion Thread ***

All the YouTube videos I watched before I bought and set up my Ubiquiti bits made it look so simple and straight forward but the reality wasn't.

No one in their videos had to reboot the broadband hub, in modem mode, as it might not feed internet through to the CGU. I did after several minutes wondering why my CGU screen was saying no internet when it was clearly plugged in.
No one in their videos had an issue with setting up their Gateway through a browser. For some reason mine wasn't playing ball but I could "activate" it via the app in the end, then I went back to a browser and it was all working.
No one in their videos had an item not adopt first time. My 8 port PoE Lite didn't want to adopt and took several tries.

Either they're all very lucky or I'm just a little unlucky. All's good now though.
 
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ElliorR said:
All the YouTube videos I watched before I bought and set up my Ubiquiti bits made it look so simple and straight forward but the reality wasn't.

No one in their videos had to reboot the broadband hub, in modem mode, as it might not feed internet through to the CGU. I did after several minutes wondering why my CGU screen was saying no internet when it was clearly plugged in.
No one in their videos had an issue with setting up their Gateway through a browser. For some reason mine wasn't playing ball but I could "activate" it via the app in the end, then I went back to a browser and it was all working.
No one in their videos had an item not adopt first time. My 8 port PoE Lite didn't want to adopt and took several tries.

Either they're all very lucky or I'm just a little unlucky. All's good now though.
Click to expand...
Were you trying to do too much all at the same time? Guess much smoother of you just do one bit of hardware at a time. I made sure the UDM SE was all sorted and updated before I start connecting the APs and switches.
 
robj20 said:
Were you trying to do too much all at the same time? Guess much smoother of you just do one bit of hardware at a time. I made sure the UDM SE was all sorted and updated before I start connecting the APs and switches.
Click to expand...

No, I actually went one item at a time even though the odd video I watched that connected everything at once had no issues. End of the day they were minor hassles in that were not difficult to overcome.
 
alex24 said:
Finally got the courage (memories of previously having to remove ceiling mounted APs to reset and adopt) to move my self-hosted controller into the updated two-image docker with mongodb. The backup and upgrade actually worked perfectly. A few issues with conencting to the database (issues in my docker compose) but after that it was all good. Just in case anyone else is still sitting on the older 'single' image container which is stuck at an older network application version.
Click to expand...
Did you follow a guide for this? I'm just about to deploy this and a lot of the guides miss out this issue. I'm pretty sure I could work it out, but it's always easier for someone else to figure out the fiddly parts
 
CooK1E said:
Did you follow a guide for this? I'm just about to deploy this and a lot of the guides miss out this issue. I'm pretty sure I could work it out, but it's always easier for someone else to figure out the fiddly parts
Click to expand...

I used this. What issue are you talking about exactly?

I put both containers in one docker compose file and start it using that. The only tricky bit was making sure I put a matching password in each containers flags so that the application can access the database.
 
Sorry I meant the changes to mongodb, meaning the need to have split instances. I'm new to docker so really just a guide to how to do it was what I was looking for. I'll send you a PM
 
Self-hosting the UniFi Network Application

I do this as I use UniFi APs, have a home server but do not have any UniFi equipment that runs this application (cloudkey, gateway etc.). A Raspberry Pi can even run this for you. This guide assumes you know how to setup a server and the basics of docker (compose, specifically).

So in the interest of helping anyone else, the 2 containers (or services) can be put into a single compose file as below. I elected for mongodb 7.0 (see the tag against the unifi-db service), which seems to be the most recent officially supported version.

First thing is first - backup your existing UniFi controller config and if you want, history into a .unf file. Don't skip this unless you want to setup the whole thing from scratch again.

You then need to also do a some things:
  1. Create a folder for containing all the data relating to the services. I just create a directory called 'unifi' for both that I map it to.
  2. Create the docker-compose.yml file using the data below.
  3. Update the **path to data** in the volume definitions for both services so that it maps correctly.
  4. Update the 3 password fields in the compose with a password of your choice to secure the database.
  5. Make any other changes to the compose such as timezone, ports and other variables depending on your own setup.
  6. Create the init-mongo.sh file in a directory you'll give access to by using the 'volumes' section under 'unifi-db' service. I used the same directory as above, more or less. Copy this, unchanged, from the linuxserver github here.
  7. You can then run
    Code: 
    docker compose up -d
    from the directoy of your compose file to start both containers. Then try to get to https://serverip:8443 (replace server IP with the IP of your server - in case it wasn't obvious!). It can take a couple of minutes the first time. If you get the controller screen then great, you're done! If not, then you can try
    Code: 
    docker compose down
    and then remove any local data created from the directory (not the init-mogo.sh or your compose file though!) and then try
    Code: 
    docker compose up
    , which will spin up the services and let you see the output to check for errors.
  8. You should now be able to boot the software and restore your backup using the .unf file from earlier.
  9. Finally, make sure with the self-hosted option you update the 'inform' IP address in the UniFi settings to that of your server, and that it is accessible (as with the other ports) to your devices, otherwise they won't be able to be adopted or run properly.

YAML: 
---

services:

  unifi-network-application:

    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/unifi-network-application:latest

    container_name: unifi-network-application

    environment:

      - PUID=1000

      - PGID=1000

      - TZ=Europe/London

      - MONGO_USER=unifi

      - MONGO_PASS=*****

      - MONGO_HOST=unifi-db

      - MONGO_PORT=27017

      - MONGO_DBNAME=unifi

      - MONGO_AUTHSOURCE=admin

      - MEM_LIMIT=1024 #optional

      - MEM_STARTUP=1024 #optional

      - MONGO_TLS= #optional

    volumes:

      - /**path to data**/data:/config

    ports:

      - 8443:8443

      - 3478:3478/udp

      - 10001:10001/udp

      - 8080:8080

      - 1900:1900/udp #optional

      - 8843:8843 #optional

      - 8880:8880 #optional

      - 6789:6789 #optional

      - 5514:5514/udp #optional

    restart: unless-stopped


  unifi-db:

    image: docker.io/mongo:7.0

    container_name: unifi-db

    environment:

      - MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME=root

      - MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD=*****

      - MONGO_USER=unifi

      - MONGO_PASS=*****

      - MONGO_DBNAME=unifi

      - MONGO_AUTHSOURCE=admin

    volumes:

      - /**path to data**/data:/data/db

      - /**path to init-mongo.sh**:/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/init-mongo.sh:ro

    restart: unless-stopped

Final disclaimer - this worked for me, it may not work for you so YMMV. The UniFi software is complex and ever-changing it seems, so there definitely can be issues, especially with self-hosting. If that's daunting to you, then maybe a cloud key or gateway that already runs the software is the better option. In fact, that's what I'm planning to do once I get a UniFi gateway at some point.
 
ElliorR said:
All the YouTube videos I watched before I bought and set up my Ubiquiti bits made it look so simple and straight forward but the reality wasn't.

No one in their videos had to reboot the broadband hub, in modem mode, as it might not feed internet through to the CGU. I did after several minutes wondering why my CGU screen was saying no internet when it was clearly plugged in.
No one in their videos had an issue with setting up their Gateway through a browser. For some reason mine wasn't playing ball but I could "activate" it via the app in the end, then I went back to a browser and it was all working.
No one in their videos had an item not adopt first time. My 8 port PoE Lite didn't want to adopt and took several tries.

Either they're all very lucky or I'm just a little unlucky. All's good now though.
Click to expand...
Even after using the video you linked, I still had further issues.

Some of my VLan stuff just flat out hadn't been copied across. Ok no biggie in the grand scheme of things, it took me less than 20 minutes to get everything up and running as was. But then one of my access points failed to be moved over, and wouldn't you know it its the worst to get to as its in crawl space in the loft, and I had to factory reset it to re-adopt it :mad:.

These sorts of migrations really should be much easier.
 
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Just checking in after about three months of Cloud Gateway Ultra ownership to say that I still recommend it for the home user, and it's probably good for SMB as well. I know there are people who don't like cloud integration and I believe you can run the entire thing locally if you want, but the ability to connect via Site Manager, turn the Teleport VPN on, and then connect back to your home network to grab a file off a NAS or whatever is such a useful feature that on many other platforms would require knowing in advance that you want a VPN so it can be configured before you leave. The other day I grabbed a few GB off my NAS at more or less line speed from 30 miles away, I can't really find any faults with it.

If you can stretch to the Max then it's probably worth doing that to get the 2.5Gb interfaces (though I wish a couple of them were PoE at the price point, it would make it perfect) but the Ultra is a bargain.
 
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Caged said:
Just checking in after about three months of Cloud Gateway Ultra ownership to say that I still recommend it for the home user, and it's probably good for SMB as well. I know there are people who don't like cloud integration and I believe you can run the entire thing locally if you want, but the ability to connect via Site Manager, turn the Teleport VPN on, and then connect back to your home network to grab a file off a NAS or whatever is such a useful feature that on many other platforms would require knowing in advance that you want a VPN so it can be configured before you leave. The other day I grabbed a few GB off my NAS at more or less line speed from 30 miles away, I can't really find any faults with it.

If you can stretch to the Max then it's probably worth doing that to get the 2.5Gb interfaces (though I wish a couple of them were PoE at the price point, it would make it perfect) but the Ultra is a bargain.
Click to expand...

I bought the Ultra recently and am more than happy with it. I don't need the 2.5gb ports currently, nor cameras etc, so the Max would have been a waste of money but if I can ever get Fibre above 1gb, I have VM 1gb currently, I'll probably upgrade then to the DRMSE or some such.
 
Without me going down the rabbit hole of what I need long term, if I buy new or preowned, what unifi access point should I aim to start out some POC work with? After something cheap initially?

Already have two ubiquiti switches tagged up with vlans, OPNsense running elsewhere, next step was for me to just get one or two cheap access points so I could start setting the wifi networks up, then once comfortable drop some money on new spec ones as and when they're available and affordable to me.
 
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