Installing Ignition on a Headless Linux Server

Since Ignition 8 it is really simple to install Ignition in a headless linux server environment. A java runtime is no longer needed as Ignition ships with its own built in correctly licensed java executable. There is just one gotcha, and that is downloading the linux install file to your headless server. The inductive automation website wont let you directly download the file from the link provided from the website, as it is expecting the referrer to be the inductive automation website itself.

1. Downloading Ignition To Your Server

Once you have your Ubuntu install running and ready and you have logged in via SSH, copy the following into your terminal window, don’t hit enter because we’ll be pasting the download location right after it:

curl -L -O -H 'Referer: https://inductiveautomation.com/downloads/ignition' 

Go to the inductive downloads page https://inductiveautomation.com/downloads/

Click on other operating systems find the Linux Installer 64 bit download and right click and copy the location.

Now paste that location after the curl command from above, and press enter to download it to your server. You should end up with a line similar to this:

curl -L -O -H 'Referer: https://inductiveautomation.com/downloads/ignition' https://files.inductiveautomation.com/release/ia/8.1.15/20220301-1426/ignition-8.1.15-linux-64-installer.run

Once it has finished downloading we just need to make it executable and then we can run and install.

2. Make the Ignition Installer Executable

If you do an ls -alh in the downloaded directory you’ll see your downloaded executable, but you’ll also notice that the only attributes that are set are Read and Write.

To fix this we use the chmod command. Type the following, but replace with the version that you have downloaded.

When typing in linux terminals you can use the <tab> key to autocomplete, so to type the below command just type chmod +x Ign and then press tab to autocomplete.

chmod +x ignition-8.1.15-linux-64-installer.run 

4. Create an Ignition User

Add a user for Ignition to run as with the following command:

sudo adduser ignition

Document and use a secure password, but all of the other user information can be left blank.

3. Installing

We have to run the Ignition installer as root, so we will use the sudo command.

sudo ./ignition-8.1.15-linux-x64-installer.run

Initially after running the installer, you will get some warnings/errors, but these are only related to the lack of a desktop/windowed interface so it falls back to a command line installer.

Accept the defaults with the exception of the user which will use the "ignition" user we added above and your ignition will be installed in less than a minute.