How to install Filebrowser as a service using www-data as the user on a Raspberry Pi

Install & testing

First we have to set up some folders and download and install filebrowser (change the ip address to that of your rpi and a port of your choosing):

cd /opt
sudo mkdir filebrowser
cd filebrowser
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/filebrowser/get/master/get.sh | bash
sudo filebrowser -r /opt/filebrowser -a 192.168.0.10 -p 8083

And head over to your browser and hit up 192.168.0.10:8083/ to confirm it's working, you can login with admin:admin

Setting up as a service

If we are happy it's working, return to the command line and cancel (ctrl-C) out of filebrowser, then:

sudo nano filebrowser.json

and paste this configuration:

{
  "port": 8083,
  "baseURL": "",
  "address": "192.168.0.10",
  "log": "stdout",
  "database": "/opt/filebrowser/filebrowser.db",
  "root": "/var/www/files/"
}

Ctrl-O, [enter] and Crtl-X to save and exit, now we can set a few permissions:

cd ..
sudo chown pi:www-data -R filebrowser
sudo chmod 775 -R filebrowser

This assumes you already have www-data user and group setup and user pi is a member of the www-data group. Now onto setting filebrowser as a service:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/filebrowser.service

then paste inthe following:

[Unit]
Description=File Browser
After=network.target

[Service]
User=www-data
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/filebrowser -c /opt/filebrowser/filebrowser.json

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Ctrl-O, [enter] and Crtl-X to save and exit, now we can start up the server:

sudo systemctl enable filebrowser.service
sudo systemctl start filebrowser.service

give it a few seconds and we can check it's working:

systemctl status filebrowser.service

You don't have to worry about creatng a folder before hand, just create a test/file when you get there so head over to your browser to check it out (and change the password).

Tags : filebrowser raspberrypi www-data service linux

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