Jack Wallen walks you through the procedure of deploying a Bitwarden vault server with the assistance of Docker containers.
Image: STOATPHOTO/Adobe Stock Bitwarden is among the best open-source password managers on the market. I may even go so far regarding say it’s the best password manager period. Among the many reasons why this is so is because of the tool’s flexibility, and an ideal illustration of that is the ability to deploy your very own Bitwarden server utilizing Docker.
SEE: Password breach: Why popular culture and passwords don’t blend (complimentary PDF) (TechRepublic)
Why would you want to release your own Bitwarden server? You might have incredibly delicate info that you only entrust to your internal groups. If that holds true, why concern that information will be saved on a third-party host?
What you’ll require to release a Bitwarden server
I’ll be demonstrating on an instance of Ubuntu Server 22.04, however you can deploy the Bitwarden vault server on any platform that supports Docker.
How to set up Docker
The very first thing we’ll do is set up the latest release of Docker. First, add the GPG secret with the command:
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg|sudo gpg– dearmor -o/ usr/share/keyrings/ docker-archive-keyring. gpg
Open source: Must-read protection
Next, include the repository:
echo “deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/ usr/share/keyrings/ docker-archive-keyring. gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) stable”|sudo tee/ etc/apt/sources. list.d/ docker.list >/ dev/null
Set up the necessary reliances with the command:
sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl gnupg lsb-release -y
Finally, we can install the latest variation of the Docker engine:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io -y
Make certain your user belongs to the docker group with the command:
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
Log out and log back in for the modifications to work.
How to deploy the Bitwarden server
Before we install, let’s produce a brand-new user with the command:
sudo add user bitwarden
Next, produce a new directory site with;
sudo mkdir/ opt/bitwarden
Set the consents and ownership of the new directory site with:
sudo chmod -R 700/ opt/bitwarden
sudo chown -R bitwarden: bitwarden/ opt/bitwarden
The good news is, the designers of Bitwarden have actually created an useful setup script, which you can download with the command:
curl -Lso bitwarden.sh https://go.btwrdn.co/bw-sh & & chmod 700 bitwarden.sh
When the file has been downloaded, launch it with:
./ bitwarden.sh install
Answer the required questions– such as domain and SSL details– and the script will then start taking down the required Docker images. During the setup, you’ll be requested for your installation ID and key. You can access those keys from the Bitwarden host page, where you’ll be asked to get in an e-mail address.
When that command finishes, start the server with:
./ bitwarden start
When the start command completes, you should be able to open a web browser and point it to https://SERVER, where SERVER is the IP address or domain of the hosting server. You must see the login timely (Figure A), where you can create a brand-new account.
Figure A
The Bitwarden server login prompt. Prior to you produce your account, you’ll need to very first configure SMTP.
How to set up SMTP for Bitwarden
Before you try to create a new account on the server, you’ll need to configure SMTP settings, otherwise, you can not confirm your brand-new account. To do this, open the environment variables submit with the command:
nano ~/ bwdata/env/global. override.env
In that file, try to find (and configure) the following lines:
- globalSettings __ mail __ replyToEmail= – the reply-to address
- globalSettings __ mail __ smtp __ host= – your SMTP host
- globalSettings __ mail __ smtp __ port= – your SMTP port
- globalSettings __ mail __ smtp __ ssl= – true is for SSL false is for TLS
- globalSettings __ mail __ smtp __ username= – username for the SMTP host
- globalSettings __ mail __ smtp __ password= – password for SMTP host
Save and close the file. As soon as you have actually made changes, issue the command:
./ bitwarden.sh rebuild
As soon as everything has actually been reconstructed, head back to the login page, create your account and you’re good to go.
Congratulations, you’ve simply deployed your really own Bitwarden server. You can now keep all that team security details without hosting it on a third-party platform.
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