How To Install Redis on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Redis on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Redis is an in-memory key-value data structure store mainly used as a database, message broker, or cache. Redis supports wide languages with flexibility and high performance. It supports different data structures like strings, lists, sets, maps, spatial indexes, and bitmaps.

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 Redis on an Ubuntu 18.04 (bionic beaver).

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 18.04 (bionic beaver).
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• 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 Redis on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver

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

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Step 2. Installing Redis on Ubuntu.

The Redis packages are available under the default apt repository. For the installation of Redis on an Ubuntu. Run the below command from the terminal to install Redis on your machine:

sudo apt install redis-server

Redis provides a PHP extension to work with PHP. Here we will cover the installation of Redis Extension of PHP from source compilation and using an apt repository. The following command will install and set up Redis extension with PHP:

sudo apt install php-redis

Once the installation is completed, the Redis service will start automatically. To check the status of the service enters the following command:

sudo systemctl status redis-server

Step 3. Configure Redis Cache.

To configure Redis as a cache you need to edit the /etc/redis/redis.conf file:

sudo nano /etc/redis/redis.conf

# IF YOU ARE SURE YOU WANT YOUR INSTANCE TO LISTEN TO ALL THE INTERFACES
# JUST COMMENT THE FOLLOWING LINE.
# ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
bind 0.0.0.0 ::1

Restart the Redis service for changes to take effect:

sudo systemctl restart redis-server

We will now test the Redis instance with some commands:

$ redis-cli
127.0.0.1:6379> ping
PONG
127.0.0.1:6379> set test "Redis Working!"
OK
127.0.0.1:6379> get test
"Redis Working!"
127.0.0.1:6379> exit

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Redis. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Redis in Ubuntu 18.04 (bionic beaver) system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Redis website.