How To Install and Secure Redis on Ubuntu

I encountered this towards the end of step 1 when attempting to reload the service:

systemctl reload redis.service
Failed to reload redis.service: Job type reload is not applicable for unit redis-server.service.
See system logs and 'systemctl status redis.service' for details.

In addition to the invalid job type

systemctl reload redis.service
Failed to reload redis.service: Job type reload is not applicable for unit redis-server.service.
See system logs and 'systemctl status redis.service' for details.

I also had a problem with the PID even though it exists. I ran sudo chown redis:redis /var/run/redis and the problem still persists

sudo systemctl status redis

● redis-server.service - Advanced key-value store
 Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/redis-server.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
 Active: active (running) since Wed 2018-09-26 08:34:25 UTC; 1min 14s ago
 Docs: http://redis.io/documentation,
 man:redis-server(1)
 Process: 13975 ExecStop=/bin/kill -s TERM $MAINPID (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Process: 13978 ExecStart=/usr/bin/redis-server /etc/redis/redis.conf (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 13992 (redis-server)
 Tasks: 4 (limit: 1152)
 CGroup: /system.slice/redis-server.service
 └─13992 /usr/bin/redis-server 127.0.0.1:6379

Sep 26 08:34:25 tomify systemd[1]: Starting Advanced key-value store...
Sep 26 08:34:25 tomify systemd[1]: redis-server.service: Can't open PID file /var/run/redis/redis-server.pid (yet?) after start: No such file or directory
Sep 26 08:34:25 tomify systemd[1]: Started Advanced key-value store.

Hi, even without making a change for supervisor keyword in /etc/redis/redis.conf, I can see output for sudo systemctl status redis. So, do I need to make this change? The key reason I am asking this is, I have to install Redis as part of an automated installed. And, I would like to avoid this type of one-off editing.

Might be dumb to ask but I’ll give it a shot because i’m interested in the answer.

How can I authenticate a ping/pong request to redis using cURL and nc.

I’m hitting redis on port 6379 using nc like this

(printf "PING\r\n";) | nc localhost 6379 

It’s supposed to return PONG, but since i have the password set on, it is asking for authentication

-NOAUTH Authentication required.

I’m only interested and want to play with curl and nc in here.

Thanks in advance @mdrake

Hello,

in the past for Ubuntu 14.04 you suggested to use the chris-lea repository to get the latest stable version of Redis. I wonder if there is any good reason now to prefer the official Ubuntu ppa.

I don’t know whats the issue but at very start when install redis-server and change redis.conf fie and run

sudo systemctl restart redis.service

its says “Failed to restart redis.service: Unit redis.service not found.”

Very nice and detail explanation. Thanks!

I set the password as you mentioned! I thought it was really secure. I quit the shell. Then I asked my friend to hack into the redis shell. He entered into the shell using

$ redis-cli

Then he checked the recent commands (using the up arrow key), and it also showed my previous auth command containing the entire password!

> auth your_redis_password_here

Is there any way so that I can hide my password from command history as well?

Awesome, detailed, clean explanation. Congrats!

Solid tutorial! The behavioral verification at each step is hugely useful.

For what it’s worth, I was able to follow this tutorial, to the letter, on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, too.