OwnTracks allows you to keep track of your own location. You can build your private location diary or share it with your family and friends. OwnTracks is open-source and uses open protocols for communication so you can be sure your data stays secure and private.

The components required to use the free OwnTracks apps are non-trivial to setup. For this reason we have created this project: quicksetup is a set of tools which, when run on a suitable small computer or VPS, will should get your OwnTracks environment set up as comfortably as possible.

Quicksetup is documented in the OwnTracks Booklet

• VPS (512MB RAM) with Linux. Debian (12) or Ubuntu (Jammy, Mantic, Noble)
• alternatively, a Raspberry Pi with Raspbian bookworm
• a DNS domain name pointing to the Linux machine
• three open TCP ports (80, 443, 8883)

• Let's Encrypt certificate enrollment and renewal (cron)
• MQTT broker (Mosquitto) and HTTP server (Apache) secured with SSL/TLS
• OwnTracks Recorder
  • configured for MQTT
  • with support for HTTP POST for location publishes from OwnTracks clients
• configured Frontend
• automatic configuration of friends, each of which can see eachother via MQTT in the apps and on Frontend, etc.
• configuration of any number of friends
  • users are created with random passwords added to files in file system, htpasswd, and Mosquitto password file
  • users can download pre-configured .otrc remote configuration files or click on a URL config for ease of configuration of the apps. Preconfigured with choice of MQTT and HTTP
  • optional configuration of a secret key per user for payload encryption
• optional but recommended configuration of OpenCageData for reverse geo in Recorder defaults file and in .otrc for Android devices. (Sign up for a free account you use with OwnTracks.) Location data is cached by the Recorder and stored alongside location publishes, served from the API
• should be able to support a dozen or more friends on a 512MB VPS
• mosquitto_pub/mosquitto_sub pre-configured to use local broker with files in $HOME/.config/
• jq(1) and jo(1) commands for working with JSON
• bootstrapping of installation
• Recorder Views (without requiring basic auth)
• support for optional:
  • Recorder Lua script
• explicitly no support for:
  • MQTT over websockets, even though our apps support it

1. Get a copy of all files in this repository:

   1. either install git and clone the repository:

      apt install -y git
      git clone https://github.com/owntracks/quicksetup
      cd quicksetup

   2. or download a copy of the files and extract them:

      curl -LO https://github.com/owntracks/quicksetup/archive/master.tar.gz
      tar xf master.tar.gz
      cd quicksetup-main

2. Make a copy of the configuration file used for setup and edit its content.

   cp configuration.yaml.example configuration.yaml
   nano configuration.yaml

3. Launch the installer which will install packages and configure services.

   $ sudo ./bootstrap.sh

If you later decide you wish to add a friend to configuration.yaml, just run the installer again: ./bootstrap.sh.