How to Install Foreman Server Management Tool on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS?

Updated: 28 September 2026 · Applies to: Foreman 5.0 on Ubuntu 24.04, Debian 12 and EL9

Ubuntu 18.04 is end of life. Foreman is an open-source tool for provisioning and managing the life cycle of physical and virtual servers, usually together with Puppet or Ansible. The current release is Foreman 5.0, which supports Ubuntu 24.04/22.04, Debian 12/13 and Enterprise Linux 9, and uses OpenVox (the community Puppet) packages.

Requirements

• A dedicated VPS with at least 4 GB RAM.
• A fully qualified hostname that resolves forward and in reverse: hostname -f must print it.

Install on Ubuntu 24.04

apt-get -y install ca-certificates
cd /tmp && wget https://apt.voxpupuli.org/openvox8-release-ubuntu24.04.deb
apt-get install /tmp/openvox8-release-ubuntu24.04.deb
wget https://deb.theforeman.org/foreman.asc -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/foreman.asc
echo "deb http://deb.theforeman.org/ noble 5.0" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/foreman.list
echo "deb http://deb.theforeman.org/ plugins 5.0" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/foreman.list
apt-get update && apt-get -y install foreman-installer
foreman-installer

Install on AlmaLinux / Rocky Linux 9

dnf -y install https://yum.voxpupuli.org/openvox8-release-el-9.noarch.rpm
dnf -y install https://yum.theforeman.org/releases/5.0/el9/x86_64/foreman-release.rpm
dnf -y install foreman-installer
foreman-installer

The installer runs for several minutes and prints the web address and the initial admin password at the end (also in /var/log/foreman-installer/foreman-installer.log). Run foreman-installer --help to see options, or foreman-installer -i for interactive mode.

Note: Foreman opens ports 80, 443 and 8140 (Puppet/OpenVox). Allow them only as needed, and change the admin password after the first login.