Windows Installer Script

The installer script is the recommended way to install OpenTAKServer on Windows. So far it's only been tested on Windows 10 Pro, but it will probably work on Windows 11 and Windows Server. If you try it on any of these platforms, please leave feedback about how it worked on GitHub issues or on the Discord server.

Note that the Mumble authentication feature is not supported yet in Windows.

Prerequisites

The installer will create new services for MediaMTX and OpenTAKServer that will run under the computer account you are logged in as. The services require that account to have a password. If your account doesn't have a password you can enable one by clicking on Start -> Settings -> Accounts -> Sign-In options -> Password.

The installer also has to be run in Powershell as an administrator. To do that, click on Start and search for Powershell. There should be an option called Run as administrator that you can click on.

Installer Instructions

  1. Run Powershell as an administrator
  2. Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://i.opentakserver.io/windows_installer'))
  3. You may be prompted about the script being untrusted. If so, enter R at the prompt and press Enter to run it anyway.
  4. At this point the script will run with minimal user action required. You may see dialog boxes asking if you want to allow the installed software to access the network. Click allow on all of these dialogs
  5. After everything is installed, the installer will make services for MediaMTX and OpenTAKServer so they can run automatically at boot. You will be prompted for your password. The password is only used to create the services.
  6. If you didn't get any errors, installation should be complete and OpenTAKServer should be running. Try browsing to http://127.0.0.1 and you will see the login page.
  7. If other devices on the network can't see the login page, you may need to configure Windows Firewall. The list of ports that OpenTAKServer uses is here.

Windows Manual Installation

  1. Install chocolatey
    1. Open Powershell as an administrator
    2. Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))
  2. Run choco install python3 openssl rabbitmq nginx sed git jdk8 -y
  3. Install Poetry
    1. Open Powershell as an administrator
    2. (Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://install.python-poetry.org -UseBasicParsing).Content | python -
    3. $Env:Path += ";$env:USERPROFILE\AppData\Roaming\Python\Scripts"; setx PATH "$Env:Path" Replace
  4. Create the directories C:\users\<YOUR_USERNAME>\ots and C:\users\<YOUR_USERNAME>\ots\mediamtx
  5. Download MediaMTX and put the binary in C:\users\<YOUR_USERNAME>\ots\mediamtx
  6. Download OpenTAKServer's config for MediaMTX and place it in C:\users\<YOUR_USERNAME>\ots\mediamtx
  7. Download the latest release of OpenTAKServer from GitHub and extract it to a folder
  8. Go back to the admin Powershell
  9. cd c:\path\to\opentakserver
  10. poetry update
  11. poetry install
  12. poetry run python opentakserver\app.py
  13. OpenTAKServer will automatically create the database, certificates and the administrator user
  14. If there is an error about not being able to open the database, do the following
    1. Open C:\users\<YOUR_USERNAME>\ots\config.yml in a text editor like Notepad++
    2. Change SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI from sqlite:////C:\Users\<YOUR_USERNAME>\ots\ots.db to sqlite:///C:\\Users\\<YOUR_USERNAME>\\ots\\ots.db
    3. The difference is you should only have three slashes between sqlite: and C:, and also two slashes between the folders
    4. poetry run python opentakserver\app.py
  15. Configure Nginx
    1. Download nginx.conf from the installer repo and put it in C:\tools\nginx-<VERSION>\config
    2. Download proxy_params from the installer repo and put it in C:\tools\nginx-<VERSION>\config
    3. Make the C:\tools\nginx-<VERSION>\config\ots directory
    4. Download ots_http.conf, ots_https.conf, and ots_certificate_enrollment.conf and place them in C:\tools\nginx-<VERSION>\config\ots
    5. In each of the three config files, replace NGINX_VERSION with the version number of nginx that's installed. The version as of this writing is 1.25.4
    6. In ots_https.conf and ots_certificate_enrollment.conf replace SERVER_CERT_FILE with C:\Users\<YOUR_USERNAME>\ots\ca\certs\opentakserver\opentakserver.pem
    7. In ots_https.conf and ots_certificate_enrollment.conf replace SERVER_KEY_FILE with C:\Users\<YOUR_USERNAME>\ots\ca\certs\opentakserver\opentakserver.nopass.key
    8. In ots_https.conf replace CA_CERT_FILE with C:\Users\<YOUR_USERNAME>\ots\ca\ca.pem
    9. In an admin Powershell run nssm restart nginx