Installing Red on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
Warning
For safety reasons, DO NOT install Red with a root user. If you are unsure how to create a new user on Linux, see DigitalOcean’s tutorial: How To Create a New Sudo-enabled User.
Installing the pre-requirements
We recommend adding the deadsnakes
ppa to install Python 3.11:
sudo apt update
sudo apt -y install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:deadsnakes/ppa
Now install the pre-requirements with apt:
sudo apt -y install python3.11 python3.11-dev python3.11-venv git openjdk-17-jre-headless build-essential nano
Creating a Virtual Environment
Tip
If you want to learn more about virtual environments, see page: About Virtual Environments
We require installing Red into a virtual environment. Don’t be scared, it’s very straightforward.
Using venv
This is the quickest way to get your virtual environment up and running, as venv
is shipped with
python.
First, choose a directory where you would like to create your virtual environment. It’s a good idea
to keep it in a location which is easy to type out the path to. From now, we’ll call it
redenv
and it will be located in your home directory.
Create your virtual environment with the following command:
python3.11 -m venv ~/redenv
And activate it with the following command:
source ~/redenv/bin/activate
Important
You must activate the virtual environment with the above command every time you open a new shell to run, install or update Red.
Installing Red
Choose one of the following commands to install Red.
To install without additional config backend support:
python -m pip install -U pip wheel
python -m pip install -U Red-DiscordBot
Or, to install with PostgreSQL support:
python -m pip install -U pip wheel
python -m pip install -U "Red-DiscordBot[postgres]"
Setting Up and Running Red
After installation, set up your instance with the following command:
redbot-setup
This will set the location where data will be stored, as well as your storage backend and the name of the instance (which will be used for running the bot).
Once done setting up the instance, run the following command to run Red:
redbot <your instance name>
It will walk through the initial setup, asking for your token and a prefix. You can find out how to obtain a token with this guide.
Tip
If it’s the first time you’re using Red, you should check our Getting started guide that will walk you through all essential information on how to interact with Red.