Linux Offline Deployment

This article will walk you through the procedure to install and deploy Bitwarden to your own server in an offline or air-gapped environment. Please review Bitwarden software release support documentation.

[!WARNING] Manual Server Setup Manual installations should be conducted by advanced users only. Only proceed if you are very familiar with Docker technologies and desire more control over your Bitwarden installation.

Manual installations lack the ability to automatically update certain dependencies of the Bitwarden installation. As you upgrade from one version of Bitwarden to the next you will be responsible for changes to required environment variables, changes to nginx default.conf, changes to docker-compose.yml, and so on.

We will try to highlight these in the release notes on GitHub. You can also monitor changes to the dependency templates used by the Bitwarden installation script on GitHub.

Requirements

Minimum Recommended
Processor x64, 1.4GHz x64, 2GHz dual core
Memory 2GB RAM 4GB RAM
Storage 12GB 25GB
Docker Version Engine 26+ and Composeª Engine 26+ and Composeª

ª - Docker Compose is automatically installed as a plugin when you download Docker Engine. Download Docker Engine for Linux.

Additionally, ensure the following requirements are met:

  • Using a machine with internet access, you have downloaded the latest docker-stub-US.zip or docker-stub-EU.zip file from the Bitwarden Server repository's releases page and transferred this file to your server.
  • An offline SMTP Server is setup and active in your environment.

The server your Bitwarden deployment runs on will not be required to allow outbound traffic to any addresses outside of your network, however client applications must be configured to access the server's fully qualified domain name (FQDN) on, by default, ports 80 and 443. You may opt to choose different ports during installation, but whichever ports you choose these must be opened for client access.

Installation procedure

Configure your domain

By default, Bitwarden will be served through ports 80 (http) and 443 (https) on the host machine. Open these ports so that Bitwarden can be accessed from within and/or outside of the network. You may opt to choose different ports during installation.

We recommend configuring a domain name with DNS records that point to your host machine (for example, server.example.com), especially if you are serving Bitwarden over the internet. We recommend not including Bitwarden in your hostname to keep the server identity or type concealed.

Create Bitwarden local user and directory

Configure your Linux server with a dedicated bitwarden service account, from which to install and run Bitwarden. Doing so will isolate your Bitwarden instance from other applications running on your server. For more information, see Docker's Post-installation steps for Linux documentation.

  1. Create a bitwarden user:
sudo adduser bitwarden
  1. Set a password for the bitwarden user:
sudo passwd bitwarden
  1. Create a docker group (if it doesn't already exist):
sudo groupadd docker
  1. Add the bitwarden user to the docker group:
sudo usermod -aG docker bitwarden
  1. Create a bitwarden directory:
sudo mkdir /opt/bitwarden
  1. Set permissions for the /opt/bitwarden directory:
sudo chmod -R 700 /opt/bitwarden
  1. Set the bitwarden user ownership of the /opt/bitwarden directory:
sudo chown -R bitwarden:bitwarden /opt/bitwarden

Configure your machine

[!TIP] If you've setup self-host local user and directory. Once you have created a Bitwarden user & directory, complete the following as the bitwarden user from the /opt/bitwarden directory. Do not install Bitwarden as root, as you will encounter issues during installation.

To configure your machine with the assets required for your Bitwarden server:

  1. Create a new directory named bwdata and extract docker-stub-US.zip (or docker-stub-EU.zip) to it, for example:
unzip docker-stub-US.zip -d bwdata

Once unzipped, the bwdata directory will match what the docker-compose.yml file's volume mapping expects. You may, if you wish, change the location of these mappings on the host machine. 2. In ./bwdata/env/global.override.env, edit the following environment variables:

  • globalSettings__baseServiceUri__vault=: Enter the domain of your Bitwarden instance.
  • globalSettings__sqlServer__ConnectionString=: Replace the RANDOM_DATABASE_PASSWORD with a secure password for use in a later step.
  • globalSettings__identityServer__certificatePassword: Set a secure certificate password for use in a later step.
  • globalSettings__internalIdentityKey=: Replace RANDOM_IDENTITY_KEY with a random alphanumeric string.
  • globalSettings__oidcIdentityClientKey=: Replace RANDOM_IDENTITY_KEY with a random alphanumeric string.
  • globalSettings__duo__aKey=: Replace RANDOM_DUO_AKEY with a random alphanumeric string.
  • globalSettings__installation__id=: Enter an installation id retrieved from https://bitwarden.com/host.
  • globalSettings__installation__key=: Enter an installation key retrieved from https://bitwarden.com/host.
  • globalSettings__pushRelayBaseUri=: This variable should be blank. See Configure Push Relay for more information.

[!TIP] Manual Install Environment Variables At this time, consider also setting values for all globalSettings__mail__smtp__ variables and for adminSettings__admins. Doing so will configure the SMTP mail server used to send invitations to new organization members and provision access to the System Administrator Portal.

Learn more about environment variables. 3. From ./bwdata, generate a .pfx certificate file for the identity container and move it to the mapped volume directory (by default, ./bwdata/identity/). For example, run the following commands:

openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:4096 -sha256 -nodes -keyout identity.key -out identity.crt -subj "/CN=Bitwarden IdentityServer" -days 10950

and

openssl pkcs12 -export -out ./identity/identity.pfx -inkey identity.key -in identity.crt -passout pass:IDENTITY_CERT_PASSWORD

In the above command, replace IDENTITY_CERT_PASSWORD with the certificate password created and used in Step 2. 4. Create a subdirectory in ./bwdata/ssl named for your domain, for example:

mkdir ./ssl/bitwarden.example.com
  1. Provide a trusted SSL certificate and private key in the newly created ./bwdata/ssl/bitwarden.example.com subdirectory.

[!NOTE] SSL Directory to Volume Mapping This directory is mapped to the NGINX container at /etc/ssl. If you can't provide a trusted SSL certificate, front the installation with a proxy that provides an HTTPS endpoint to Bitwarden client applications. 6. In ./bwdata/nginx/default.conf:

  1. Replace all instances of bitwarden.example.com with your domain, including in the Content-Security-Policy header.
  2. Set the ssl_certificate and ssl_certificate_key variables to the paths of the certificate and private key provided in Step 6.

  3. Take one of the following actions, depending on your certificate setup:

  4. If using a trusted SSL certificate, set the ssl_trusted_certificate variable to the path to your certificate.

  5. If using a self-signed certificate, comment out the ssl_trusted_certificate variable.
  6. In ./bwdata/env/mssql.override.env, replace RANDOM_DATABASE_PASSWORD with the password created in Step 2.
  7. In ./bwdata/web/app-id.json, replace bitwarden.example.com with your domain.
  8. In ./bwdata/env/uid.env, set the UID and GID of the bitwarden users and group you created earlier so the containers run under them, for example:
LOCAL_UID=1001
LOCAL_GID=1001

Download and transfer images

To get docker images for use on your offline machine:

  1. From an internet-connected machine, download all ghcr.io/bitwarden/image_name:latest docker images, as listed in the docker-compose.yml file in docker-stub.zip. For example:

```plain text docker image pull ghcr.io/bitwarden/mssql:latest

2. Save each image to a `.img` file, for example:

docker image save -o mssql.img ghcr.io/bitwarden/mssql:latest

3. Transfer all `.img` files to your offline machine.
4. On your offline machine, load each `.img` file to create your local docker images, for example:

docker image load -i mssql.img


### Start your server

Start your Bitwarden server with the following command:

docker compose -f ./docker/docker-compose.yml up -d


Verify that all containers are running correctly:

docker ps


![Docker healthy](/uploads/projects/bitwarden-password-guide/202610/18e2277c720b4d62.png)

Congratulations! Bitwarden is now up and running at `https://your.domain.com`. Visit the web vault in your browser to confirm that it's working.

You may now register a new account and log in. Your will need to have configured SMTP environment variables (see [environment variables](https://bitwarden.com/help/environment-variables/)) in order to verify the email for your new account.

## Next Steps:

- If you are planning to self-host a Bitwarden organization, see [self-host an organization](https://bitwarden.com/help/self-host-an-organization/) to get started.
- For additional information see [self hosting FAQs](https://bitwarden.com/help/hosting-faqs/).

## Update your server

Updating a self-hosted server that has been installed and deployed manually is different from the [standard update procedure](https://bitwarden.com/help/updating-on-premise/). To update your manually-installed server:

1. Download the latest `docker-stub.zip` archive from the [releases pages on GitHub](https://github.com/bitwarden/server/releases).
2. Unzip the new `docker-stub.zip` archive and compare its contents with what's currently in your `bwdata` directory, copying anything new to the pre-existing files in `bwdata`.
**Do not** overwrite your pre-existing `bwdata` directory with the contents of the newer `docker-stub.zip` archive, as this would overwrite any custom configuration work you've done.
3. Download the latest container images and transfer them to your offline machine [as documented above](https://bitwarden.com/help/install-and-deploy-offline/#download-transfer-images/).
4. Run the following command to restart your server with your updated configuration and the latest containers:

docker compose -f ./docker/docker-compose.yml down && docker compose -f ./docker/docker-compose.yml up -d ```