How To Install CTparental on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install CTparental on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, CTparental is one of the best tools for filtering access to web content. It is made from several components like dnsmasq, iptables, and inguardian privoxy that make CTparental a fully-fledged parental control solution. CTparental software has an elementary and easy-to-use web interface which is actuated by the Lighttpd web server. It supports several web browsers including Firefox, Midori, Chromium, and more.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the CTparental on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint or elementary OS.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install CTparental on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa

Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt commands in the terminal.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install gdebi-core

Step 2. Installing CTparental on Ubuntu 20.04.

Now we download the CTparental .deb file from the Gitlab website:

wget -c https://gitlab.com/marsat/CTparental/uploads/65bce02eb6b7505c6af5f7b72de4e961/ctparental_ubuntu20.04_lighttpd_min_4.45.02-1.0_all.deb

Once the file is downloaded, install the downloaded file with the following command below:

sudo gdebi ctparental_ubuntu20.04_lighttpd_min_4.45.02-1.0_all.deb

Next, run the following command to resolve dependency error:

apt-get install -f

During installation, it will ask you to set the username and password, input this, and re-enter to confirm.

Step 3. Accessing CTparental Web Interface.

Once successfully installed, No we can open the following URL in the web browser in order to access the web interface URL https://admin.ct.local. CTparental login page will be prompted to enter the login credentials and press ENTER KEY to log in.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed CTparental. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the CTparental on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official CTparental website.