Installing and Setting Up Metabase with Postgres

This guide is written for installation of Metabase on Ubuntu 18.04. Instead of using H2 as the application database, we will be using Postgres. You can opt to use MySQL as well. Please follow the steps below:

Update and install Java with proper configuration

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install openjdk-8-jdk

Get the installation path via

sudo update-alternatives --config java

Set JAVA_HOME to installation path and along with metabase application database variables

sudo nano /etc/environment

Add this to the file

JAVA_HOME="/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64/jre/bin/java
MB_DB_TYPE=postgres
MB_DB_DBNAME=metabase
MB_DB_PORT=5432
MB_DB_USER=<username>
MB_DB_PASS=<password>
MB_DB_HOST=localhost

Don't forget to reactivate your terminal session via source /etc/environment
Download metabase

wget http://downloads.metabase.com/v0.34.2/metabase.jar

Move the downloaded file to /opt/metabase (or anywhere, make sure the path follows for next steps)
Configure user group

sudo addgroup --quiet --system metabase
sudo adduser --quiet --system --ingroup metabase --no-create-home --disabled-password metabase

Configure permission

sudo chown -R metabase:metabase /opt/metabase
sudo touch /var/log/metabase.log
sudo chown metabase:metabase /var/log/metabase.log
sudo touch /etc/default/metabase
sudo chmod 640 /etc/default/metabase

Add metabase as an OS service

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

Configuration for the service as below:

[Unit]
Description=Metabase server
After=syslog.target
After=network.target

[Service]
WorkingDirectory=/opt/metabase/
ExecStart=/usr/bin/java -jar /opt/metabase/metabase.jar
EnvironmentFile=/etc/default/metabase
User=metabase
Type=simple
StandardOutput=syslog
StandardError=syslog
SyslogIdentifier=metabase
SuccessExitStatus=143
TimeoutStopSec=120
Restart=always
 
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enable metabase to start on boot

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable metabase

Configure metabase to properly log with the system

sudo nano /etc/rsyslog.d/metabase.conf

Add this piece of condition into that

if $programname == 'metabase' then /var/log/metabase.log
& stop

Then you can start with sudo systemctl start metabase
And also check status with sudo systemctl status metabase

Then can configure nginx as usual, with this config:

server {
     listen [::]:80;
     listen 80;

     server_name metabase.domain.com;

     location / {
         proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
         proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;
         proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
         proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
         client_max_body_size 100M;
     }
 }

djoudi/metabase-setup.md

Installing and Setting Up Metabase with Postgres