How to install Nightscout on Linux

Table of contents

• Why yet another tutorial for installing Nightscout?
• Before we get started
• Installation and configuration
  • Install required packages
  • Configure MongoDB
  • Download and install Nightscout
  • Run Nightscout
  • Enable SSL support
  • Create a service

Why yet another tutorial for installing Nightscout?

When I found out about Nightscout I felt like drowning by the huge amount of info pages out there on the Internet. I read a lot about the existing solutions with Azure, Hiroku or Vagrant. The reason I don't use these is that I have been running my own private (web) server for a long time and therefore I wanted to install it on my existing server. Thus I became interested in how to setup Nightscout on Linux. Unfortunately I did not find an article for the setup, so I decided to adapt this installation guide and rewrite it for Linux.

If you are heading for a quick development setup, you might prefer to use a docker image.

Before we get started

As I mentioned above, this documentation is based on the docs for Nightscout on Windows Server. I am going to show you how to install Nightscout on Arch Linux. I assume that you have installed Linux on your system already.

For those who are using a different Linux distribution:

The instructions in the examples may differ from other Linux distributions like Debian/Fedora/OpenSuse. Basically you have to do the same steps but probably with different commands or system tools. I am using the pacman package manager. In your distribution it may be apt-get or yum. For service managing I use systemd. Your distro might use init.d. A detailed comparison of Arch to other Linux distributions can be found here.

Installation and configuration

Install required packages

There are a couple of packages that need to be installed:

• MonboDB and tools
• git
• Python
• Node.js and npm
• GNU C++ Compiler

# pacman -S mongodb mongodb-tools git python nodejs npm gcc

Configure MongoDB

After installation, start/enable the mongodb.service daemon:

# systemctl enable mongodb.service
# systemctl start mongodb.service

Then create a new database and a new user:

$ mongo
> use Nightscout
> db.createUser({user: "username", pwd: "password", roles:["readWrite"]})
> quit()

Download and install Nightscout

Create a folder for your nightscout installation. Then clone the Nightscout repository. If you have your own fork, use the URL to your git repository instead.

$ cd your/favorite/path/for/nightscout
$ git clone https://github.com/nightscout/cgm-remote-monitor.git
$ cd cgm-remote-monitor
$ npm install

Finally set up the environment variables. There are several ways to do so. However the easiest way is just to create a startup script for your Nightscout server. Create a new file start.sh and open it with an editor of your choice:

$ nano start.sh

Paste those lines (a detailed description of the variables is here):

#!/usr/bin/bash

# environment variables
export DISPLAY_UNITS="mg/dl"
export MONGO_CONNECTION="mongodb://username:password@localhost:27017/Nightscout"
export BASE_URL="https://YOUR.WEBPAGE.URL"
export PORT=80
export API_SECRET="YOUR_API_SECRET_HERE"

export PUMP_FIELDS="reservoir battery status"
export DEVICESTATUS_ADVANCED=true
export ENABLE="careportal iob cob openaps pump bwg rawbg basal"

export TIME_FORMAT=24

# start server
node server.js

Run Nightscout

You can now run Nightscout by entering ./start.sh. If you have used a different way to configure the system variables, just type node server.js to start the server.

Enable SSL support

You can obtain your own trusted SSL certificate at LetsEncrypt.org.

First of all, you need to install the https package for NodeJS:

$ npm install https

Enable Nightscout's SSL support by just adding the following environment variables to your start script:

export SSL_KEY=privkey.pem
export SSL_CERT=fullchain.pem
export SSL_CA=fullchain.pem

Please recognize that I've used the fullchain for both SSL_CERT and SSL_CA. Before that, I tried it with SSL_CERT=cert.pem which later led me to an error in xDrip+:

Unable to do REST API Download javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException:
java.security.cert.CertPathValidatorException: Trust anchor for certification path not found.

Setting the SSL_CERT to fullchain.pem worked for me.

Create a service

I recommend using a systemd service which automatically starts Nightscout on system startup. To do so, create /etc/systemd/system/nightscout.service and paste the following configuration:

[Unit]
Description=Nightscout Service      
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
WorkingDirectory=/your/nightscout/path/cgm-remote-monitor
ExecStart=/your/nightscout/path/cgm-remote-monitor/start.sh

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Reload systemd:

# systemctl daemon-reload

Start and enable

# systemctl enable nightscout.service
# systemctl start nightscout.service

Finally check if the service is running:

# systemctl status nightscout.service