ChirpStack stack setup (Ansible & Vagrant)

This repository provides an Ansible playbook to setup the ChirpStack open-source LoRaWAN Network Server (v4). With the included Vagrant file, ChirpStack can also be setup locally inside a VM (e.g. using VirtualBox).

It will:

• Setup firewall rules (iptables)
• Setup Mosquitto (MQTT broker) + client and server-certificate configuration
• Setup Redis
• Setup PostgreSQL + creation of role and database
• Setup ChirpStack Gateway Bridge for UDP
• Setup ChirpStack Gateway Bridge for Basics Station
• Setup ChirpStack
• Request a HTTPS certificate from Let's Encrypt

Vagrant (local environment using VirtualBox)

Ports

The included Vagrantfile will setup a Debian Bullseye (11.x) virtual machine with the latest ChirpStack components installed. It will also forward the following ports to your host system:

• 4443: ChirpStack UI and gRPC API (with TLS, e.g. https://localhost:4443/)
• 1700: ChirpStack Gateway Bridge UDP listener (configured for EU868 region by default)
• 3001: ChirpStack Gateway Bridge Basics Station listener (configured for EU868 region by default, with TLS, client-certificate files can be generated in the ChirpStack UI)
• 8883: Mosquitto MQTT (with TLS, client-certificate files can be generated in the ChirpStack UI)

Note: when using Vagrant, there is no need to install Ansible (this will be automatically installed inside the Vagrant machine).

Requirements

When setting up ChirpStack, make sure you have a recent version of Vagrant installed.

Also make sure you have a recent version of VirtualBox installed, including the VirtualBox Extension Pack.

Getting started

1. Update host_vars/vagrant.yml where needed.

2. Within the root of this repository execute the following command:

   vagrant up

   As this will import the Vagrant box, install all requirements etc... this is going to take a while.

3. Configure your LoRa Gateway so that it points to the IP address of your computer (port 1700).

4. Point your browser to https://localhost:4443/. As a self-signed certificate is used, your browser will prompt that the certificate can't be trusted. This is ok for testing.

5. For updating your Vagrant environment (e.g. updating the configuration or to upgrade installed packages, execute the following command:

   vagrant provision

6. Other useful commands:

   # stop the vagrant machine
   vagrant halt 
   
   # restart the vagrant machine
   vagrant reload
   
   # ssh into the vagrant machine
   vagrant ssh
   
   # destroy the vagrant machine
   vagrant destroy

Remote deployment

This playbook has been tested on DigitalOcean.com but should also work on bare-metal, AWS, ...

Don't have a DigitalOcean account yet? Use this link and get $10 in credits for free :-)

Ports

• 443: ChirpStack UI and gRPC API (with TLS, e.g. https://subdomain.example.com/)
• 1700: ChirpStack Gateway Bridge UDP listener (configured for EU868 region by default)
• 3001: ChirpStack Gateway Bridge Basics Station listener (configured for EU868 region by default, with TLS, client-certificate files can be generated in the ChirpStack UI)
• 8883: Mosquitto MQTT (with TLS, client-certificate files can be generated in the ChirpStack UI)

Requirements

On the machine from where you will execute this Ansible playbook (e.g. your own computer), make sure you have Ansible 2.10+ installed. You can install Ansible with pip (pip install ansible) or using Homebrew (OS X) (brew install ansible). Refer to the Ansible installation guide for more installation instructions.

The Ansible playbook has been tested on the following images:

• Debian

  • Bullseye (11.x)

• Ubuntu

  • Jammy (22.04 LTS)

Configuration

1. Create a new Debian Bullseye 11.x instance and make sure that from your own machine on which Ansible is installed, you can ssh to this machine using public-key authentication (e.g. ssh user@ip).

2. Configure a DNS record for your target instance and wait until this record resolves to your IP address.

3. Copy the inventory.example inside this repository to inventory and replace example.com with the hostname created in step 2.

4. Copy the group_vars/chirpstack.example.yml inside this repository to group_vars/chirpstack.yml and change the settings where needed.

For more information, see also:

• https://www.chirpstack.io/docs/

Provisioning

Run the following command from your machine to deploy ChirpStack to your target instance, to upgrade to the latest versions or to update the configuration:

ansible-playbook -i inventory deploy.yml

After the playbook has been completed, ChirpStack should be accessible from the domain you configured as fqdn in the group_vars/chirpstack.yml.