Xibo is a very powerful open-source Digital Signage system that is used to create, manage, and deploy digital media solutions via monitors/tv’s. Setting it up may be a little confusing for some people, so I’m going to walk you through how to do it.

To do this, you must already have an understanding of the Linux operating system, and be familiar with all of the commands that are being used in this tutorial. I am not responsible for you breaking anything on your installation, and if you do break something, you need to know how to fix it.

I know that this is very bad practice, but for simplicity, instead of switching to SU before every command, I’m going to have you run every command as SU.

Click on each picture to open them in full-size to see the commands that I have ran. There are a LOT of steps, but trust me, it’s actually very fast and not difficult to do at all. The screenshots that I took are out of date, due to Xibo and Docker releasing newer versions in the past 3 days that I took them.

Updated 05/02/22 to reflect new version of Xibo.

Step 1 – Switch to SU by running this command and entering your password:
$ sudo su

Step 2 – Update your Ubuntu sources:
# apt update

Step 3 – Install available updates:
# apt upgrade

Step 4 – Install utilities that will help with different file formats later on:
# apt install unace unrar zip unzip p7zip-full sharutils rar uudeview mpack arj cabextract file-roller -y

Step 5 –Open ports 80 and 9505 for web and XMR:
# ufw allow 80
# ufw allow 9505
# ufw enable
# ufw status

Step 6 –Install Docker prerequisites:
# apt install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common

Step 7 –Add Docker repository:
# curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | apt-key add –

Step 8 –Configure Docker repository:
# add-apt-repository “deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) stable”

Step 9 –Refresh repository and Install Docker-CE:
# apt update
# apt install docker-ce -y

Step 10 –Test your Docker install
(if it says “Hello from Docker!” then you are good):
# docker run hello-world

Step 11 –Go to https://github.com/docker/compose/releases
Get the link for the newest available version and replace it in this command. The current version as of this writing is 1.25.4:
# curl -L https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.25.4/docker-compose-`uname -s`-`uname -m` -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
# chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

Step 12 –Check your version of Docker-Compose and make sure that it’s the version that you just installed:
# docker-compose –version

Step 13 –Make directory for Xibo install and switch to it:
# mkdir /opt/xibo
# cd /opt/xibo

Step 14 –Go to https://github.com/xibosignage/xibo-cms/releases and get the link for the most recent release available of xibo-docker.tar.gz (3.1.1 as of this writing):

Step 15 –Pull xibo-docker.tar.gz:
# wget https://github.com/xibosignage/xibo-cms/releases/download/3.1.1/xibo-docker.tar.gz

Step 16 –Unpack the xibo-docker.tar.gz that you just downloaded:
# tar –strip 1 -zxvf xibo-docker.tar.gz
(There are TWO hyphen’s before “strip.” WordPress turns it into one for some reason!)

Step 17 –Create a copy of config.env:
# cp config.env.template config.env

Step 18 –Open config.env in Nano:
# nano config.env

Step 19 –Change MySQL database password:
Once you’re in Nano, look for the line that says “MYSQL_PASSWORD=securepassword” and edit “securepassword” to what you want it to be. Do not make it something easy!!
Once you’ve changed it, press CTRL+X, press Y to save and then press Enter when asked for the file name.

Step 20 –Now we’re going to bring Docker up and have it pull the Xibo release data:
# docker-compose up -d

Step 21 –Now we will test our installation in a browser:
Open a web browser and go to http://ipaddress/login
*replace ipaddress with the IP of your Xibo server*

Step 22 –Login:
username – xibo_admin
password – password

Now you should see the Xibo dashboard!

If you have made it this far – congratulations, you now have a fully functional Xibo Digital Signage Server setup and ready to go. You are now on your own to click around and learn how it works, and be sure to visit the Xibo community forums at https://community.xibo.org.uk if you have any more questions/comments.