Installation

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS setup for Red-DiscordBot using Python 3.11, a virtual environment, and systemd.

Always keep the official Red documentation open and follow it first: docs.discord.red/en/stable. This page is the practical potatosips setup version.

1. Install Ubuntu packages

Recommended base system: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

sudo apt update
sudo apt -y install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa -y
sudo apt update
sudo apt -y install python3.11 python3.11-dev python3.11-venv git openjdk-17-jre-headless build-essential nano

2. Create RedBot virtual environment

python3.11 -m venv ~/redenv
source ~/redenv/bin/activate
pip install -U pip wheel setuptools
pip install Red-DiscordBot

3. Create the bot instance

Run setup and choose your instance name. In my setup the instance name was also redbot, but yours can be different.

redbot-setup

4. Start manually once

In redbot redbot, the first redbot is the terminal command. The second redbot is the instance name made by redbot-setup. Replace the second one if your instance name is different.

redbot YOUR_INSTANCE_NAME --owner YOUR_DISCORD_USER_ID --team-members-are-owners

5. systemd service

Create a template service so red@YOUR_INSTANCE_NAME starts the matching RedBot instance.

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/red@.service

[Unit]
Description=%i redbot
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
User=ubuntu
Group=ubuntu
WorkingDirectory=/home/ubuntu
ExecStart=/home/ubuntu/redenv/bin/python -O -m redbot %i --owner YOUR_DISCORD_USER_ID --team-members-are-owners --no-prompt --rpc
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=20

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

6. Enable and start

Replace YOUR_INSTANCE_NAME with the instance name you created in redbot-setup.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable red@YOUR_INSTANCE_NAME
sudo systemctl start red@YOUR_INSTANCE_NAME
sudo systemctl status red@YOUR_INSTANCE_NAME

7. Check logs

sudo journalctl -u red@YOUR_INSTANCE_NAME -n 80 --no-pager