Installation on Debian 11 (Bullseye)

Quick install

After obtaining the License Key, please use our interactive installation script to quickly install IDSTower:

$ curl -O https://download.idstower.com/install_script/1.1.0/install-IDSTower.sh
$ echo "a2d8a712add3fc732ce517cef54007817e432f9434e19d631772da96c5853313 install-IDSTower.sh" \
 | sha256sum -c -
$ bash install-IDSTower.sh -i

Manual install

Please follow these steps to install IDSTower on Debian 11:

  1. Add IDSTower repository

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install -y curl gnupg2
$ curl -s https://download.idstower.com/repos/apt/idstower.key | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/idstower.gpg > /dev/null
$ echo "deb [arch=amd64,arm64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/idstower.gpg] https://download.idstower.com/repos/apt stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/idstower.list

  1. Add backports repository

$ source /etc/os-release && echo "deb http://deb.debian.org/debian ${VERSION_CODENAME}-backports main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/${VERSION_CODENAME}-backports.list
$ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 0E98404D386FA1D9 6ED0E7B82643E131

  1. Add MariaDB 10.6 repository

$ source /etc/os-release && echo "deb [arch=amd64,arm64] https://archive.mariadb.org/mariadb-10.6/repo/debian/ ${VERSION_CODENAME} main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mariadb.list
$ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys F1656F24C74CD1D8

  1. Install Python 3.9, pip, and Ansible

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install -y python3.9 python3.9-distutils curl
$ curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.py
$ sudo python3.9 get-pip.py
$ python3.9 -m pip install ansible-core ansible
$ sudo rm -rf get-pip.py

  1. Install MariaDB and IDSTower

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install mariadb-server idstower -y

  1. Start and enable MariaDB service

$ sudo systemctl enable mariadb.service
$ sudo systemctl start mariadb.service
$ sudo systemctl status mariadb.service

  1. (Recommended) Run mariadb-secure-installation Script

$ sudo /usr/bin/mariadb-secure-installation

  1. Create a database user for IDSTower

Note

Change USERNAME and PASSWORD in the command below with your desired username and password for IDSTower database user

$ sudo mariadb -u root -p -e "GRANT ALL ON *.* TO 'USERNAME'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'PASSWORD' WITH GRANT OPTION; FLUSH PRIVILEGES;"

  1. Edit the appsettings.json configuration file (located in: /opt/idstower/) and set the following settings

    • set the LicenseKey key value with the key you obtained from the license page.

    • set the URL key value with the url you want IDSTower to listen to, example: http://idstower.mydomain.local, this url must be reachable from your Suricata hosts, note that you can use ip addresses as well.

    • set the MySQL Database settings like host, port, database name, username & password via the Database key.

  2. Initialize the IDSTower database

$ cd /opt/idstower/
$ sudo ./IDSTower --init-database

Note

If you wish to initialize the database manually, you can find the schema initialization script here: https://download.idstower.com/packages/latest/sql_scripts/

You can import the script by running:

$ sudo mysql -u [username] -p [DatabaseName] < idstower_schema_script.sql

  1. Add an admin user to IDSTower

$ cd /opt/idstower/
$ sudo ./IDSTower --add-user [Your Admin Username]

Example:

$ sudo ./IDSTower --add-user admin

  1. Enable and start IDSTower Service

$ sudo chown -R idstower:idstower /var/log/idstower
$ sudo systemctl enable idstower.service
$ sudo systemctl start idstower.service

  1. Verify that IDSTower Service started correctly

$ sudo systemctl status idstower.service

  1. Configure firewall to allow HTTP and HTTPS traffic (if UFW is enabled)

$ sudo ufw allow 80/tcp
$ sudo ufw allow 443/tcp
$ sudo ufw reload

  1. Access IDSTower web interface

You can now access the IDSTower web interface using the URL specified in your appsettings.json configuration file. Log in using the admin username and password you created in step 9.