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Bare Metal Installation

Introduction

Remotely is an amazing tool. It's open source, self hosted, and free to use.  The developer puts in a ton of time and effort to make this a really nice remote support tool, so if you have a few bucks, and you are saving hundreds, or thousands by utilizing this software, think about donating a bit of cash to him over at GitHub.

https://github.com/lucent-sea/Remotely

This application is a great replacement for tools like Team Viewer, AnyDesk, Go To Assist, Bomgar, and so many more.  If you want to support your family, or friends, or even business clients, in a safe way, with open source software that doesn't rely on third party controlled servers, then this is very likely the software you've been looking for.

Server Install on "Bare Metal"

I put "bare metal" in quotes, because I actually use a Digital Ocean VPS for it, but the process is the same regardless.

First, figure out where you want to run this server, and make sure you've setup a Ubuntu 18.04 or later, or a Windows Server  (I would guess 2016 or later - but I'm not a Windows user, so no real sure on that one).  

Next, jump over to the GitHub page (linked above), and go to the Releases section.  Find the latest release (usually at the top of that page), and expand it.  You'll find downloadable binaries and installer scripts there.  Grab the installer script for your distrro (OS) of choice, and get ready to run it.

We'll be doing this on Linux, but for Windows I think it's an executable or a power shell script.

On Linux, just open your terminal (shell) application on your server, and type

For instance I ran

wget https://github.com/lucent-sea/Remotely/releases/download/v2021.05.19.1433/Remotely_Server_Installer

Let it download, then run it using the command

sudo ./Remotely_Server_Installer

Now just answer the questions as they are presented.

You'll want to make sure to answer "Yes" to the first question unless you have a Github account setup, know how to make personal access tokens, have forked the repo, and can setup GitHub Actions.

Next, provide the folder to host the remotely server from.  I used

/var/www/remotely/

Next, provide the Fully Qualified Domain Name you want to use for your server.  This needs to be a domain or sub-domain that you own.  

I used https://remote.osia.me because I own the domain osia.me.

Finally, answer the questions for LetsEncrypt and pick the server type you want to run.  I prefer NGinX, so that's what I selected.

Once the script completes with no errors, you should be able to access your new Remotely server at the domain you entered during install.

Navigate to that page in your browser (Firefox, Chrome, Edge, etc), and create your first / admin account.

Check out the video for more settings and UI features.