How to install TeamSpeak server on Ubuntu 14

TeamSpeak is a voice chat server. Featuring clients for most major platforms, crystal clear voice calls, low latency, and encryption, TeamSpeak is a great choice for use cases ranging from business meetings to gaming. If you’d like to launch a TeamSpeak server of your own, Ubuntu 14.04 with its long support cycle is an excellent platform to use. This guide will get you running with a TeamSpeak server running under Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

Getting Started

Confirm that you have the following before you follow this guide:
• 1 Node (Cloud Server or Dedicated Server) running Ubuntu 14.
• Root access to the node or one sudo non-root user
• A TeamSpeak client on your platform of choice in order to test things out.

Tutorial

Start by running these commands on your Ubuntu 14.04 server. These commands will automatically get the latest update for your server.

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y

Ubuntu should include the nano, wget, perl and bzip2 binaries, but if they aren’t included then you’ll need to install the necessary packages.

apt-get install nano wget tar perl bzip2

We’ll now create a user for the TeamSpeak server to run under. Creating a separate user minimizes the extent to which a TeamSpeak security issue can compromise your server. If TeamSpeak was running as root, a security flaw in TeamSpeak could grant someone root access and let them install or change whatever they wish.

adduser --disabled-login teamspeak

You can leave the fields blank when prompted for information. Simply press “y” when asked to confirm the values you’ve set.

Now we’ll download and set up the TeamSpeak server itself.

wget http://dl.4players.de/ts/releases/3.0.12.4/teamspeak3-server_linux_amd64-3.0.12.4.tar.bz2
tar xvf teamspeak3-server_linux_amd64-3.0.12.4.tar.bz2
cd teamspeak3-server_linux_amd64
cp * -R /home/teamspeak
cd ..
rm -rf teamspeak3-server_linux_amd64*
chown -R teamspeak:teamspeak /home/teamspeak

TeamSpeak does not ship with its own startup script. We’ll create our own so it can be managed in Ubuntu’s init system.

ln -s /home/teamspeak/ts3server_startscript.sh /etc/init.d/teamspeak
update-rc.d teamspeak defaults

With the script in place, it must now be linked into /etc/init.d, where Ubuntu expects to find all of its startup scripts.

Let’s next run the startup script so the server is launched.

service teamspeak start

Pay attention to the startup messages displayed when the server launches. You will be given the necessary credentials to manage the new server, so be sure to record them in a safe place.

Press Enter to return to the shell prompt.

Check if your server is running by typing this command:

service teamspeak status

Server is running

If you’ve set up iptables on your Ubuntu server, you’ll need to open some ports for the TeamSpeak server. Here are the necessary iptables commands so your server can be reached from the outside.

iptables -A INPUT -p udp --dport 9987 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p udp --sport 9987 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 30033 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --sport 30033 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 10011 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --sport 10011 -j ACCEPT

Here are the TeamSpeak service ports:

9987 UDP : TeamSpeak Voice service

10011 TCP : TeamSpeak ServerQuery

30033 TCP : TeamSpeak FileTransfer

If you’re using the iptables-services package to manage your iptables chains, here is a set of rules that can be added to its configuration to open up the firewall for TeamSpeak.

-A INPUT -p udp --dport 9987 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -p udp --sport 9987 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -p tcp --dport 30033 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -p tcp --sport 30033 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -p tcp --dport 10011 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -p tcp --sport 10011 -j ACCEPT

It is now necessary to administer the TeamSpeak server itself. On first launch, you were given an administrative token, along with credentials for a superuser account.

service teamspeak start

Starting the TeamSpeak 3 server

TeamSpeak 3 server started, for details please view the log file
------------------------------------------------------------------
I M P O R T A N T
------------------------------------------------------------------
Server Query Admin Account created
loginname= "serveradmin", password= "*********"
------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------
I M P O R T A N T
------------------------------------------------------------------
ServerAdmin privilege key created, please use it to gain
serveradmin rights for your virtualserver. please
also check the doc/privilegekey_guide.txt for details.
token=*************************************************
------------------------------------------------------------------

The token is what must be pasted into your TeamSpeak client. Do so now.

If the token is copied successfully, you’ll see the message “Privilege Key successfully used.” Your client now has administrative rights on the new TeamSpeak server.

Conclusion

You are now ready to host clear, high-quality voice chats on your newly-configured TeamSpeak server. If you’ve found this article helpful and know someone else who might benefit, be sure to share it with them so they too can launch their very own system for hosting voice chats.

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