Teamspeak is a free voice chat software that can be used by teams, groups, and communities. It’s popular among gamers because it allows them to communicate complex strategies in real-time while playing their favorite game. Teamspeak has many other uses besides gaming though. It can also be used for running online conferences or meetings, distance learning courses, language lessons, and much more.

Is TeamSpeak better than Discord?

Teamspeak is preferred by most gamers because it’s very stable and lightning fast. In fact, the voice quality of TeamSpeak has been praised as being superior to that offered by Discord or Skype. Better sound quality isn’t all though – with Teamspeak you can also have a custom server built exactly how you want it. If there are a lot of users in your online community then an integrated web chat box will come in handy too!

Is TeamSpeak secure?

Teamspeak servers are very secure. It’s also free of malware and viruses, which is a plus if you’re worried about compromising your computer or network with spyware or other malicious code. Because TeamSpeak doesn’t have to be installed on each device that connects it can run from an external drive – making it easy to transfer between devices as needed without having to install anything new!

This article will walk you through the steps required to set up your own Teamspeak server on an Ubuntu 20.04 server. Other Debian-based distros are also supported although some of the steps may vary slightly.

Prerequisites

  1. You must have root access. The user account running TeamSpeak needs superuser privileges (i.e., administrative rights) to perform many of the tasks outlined in this tutorial.
  2. A fresh Ubuntu 20.04 server. If there are any leftover packages from previous Teamspeak installations on your server then it’s best to clean them up before continuing with this guide.
sudo apt-get autoremove -y
sudo apt autoclean

Updating your System

Open the terminal of your server and run the following commands:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y && sudo reboot

Once your system has rebooted, log back in with the same non-root user.

Installing TeamSpeak Server

TeamSpeak requires you to create a user account before you can use it. You can call this user whatever you like and it doesn’t need to be logged into the system.

Open a terminal session and create the new account using this command:

sudo adduser teamspeak

This command asks you for a new password. Enter this and keep it safe as you’ll need it to log in to your server with the user account you just created. After that personal user details will be requested. You can leave them all blank if you like, just press enter for each one or fill in the details as needed.

How to Install TeamSpeak Server on Ubuntu 20.04 ubuntu

Use wget command to download TeamSpeak server using the newly created user

su - teamspeak
wget https://files.teamspeak-services.com/releases/server/3.13.5/teamspeak3-server_linux_amd64-3.13.5.tar.bz2

How to Install TeamSpeak Server on Ubuntu 20.04 ubuntu

Unzip the downloaded archive and copy the extracted files into the Home folder for the TeamSpeak account, then delete the downloaded file.Advertisement

tar xvfj teamspeak3-server_linux_amd64-3.13.5.tar.bz2
cp teamspeak3-server_linux_amd64/* -R /home/teamspeak/
rm -rf teamspeak3-server_linux_amd64 teamspeak3-server_linux_amd64-3.13.5.tar.bz2

Now, create a blank license file called ts3server_license_accepted. It should be placed in the same folder as your executable file of Teamspeak3.

touch .ts3server_license_accepted

This file is just an empty file that will be used to indicate that the server has an active license and you are accepting the license agreement.

At this point, TeamSpeak is installed on your server but you can’t use it yet. The configuration file for the TeamSpeak server must be created before you can run it.

Now logging out of the TeamSpeak account and returning to the root user. Then create a configure file called ts3server.service in /lib/systemd/system directory as follows:

exit
sudo nano /lib/systemd/system/ts3server.service

Populate the file with the lines below:

[Unit]
Description=Teamspeak Service
Wants=network.target

[Service]
WorkingDirectory=/home/teamspeak
User=teamspeak
ExecStart=/home/teamspeak/ts3server_minimal_runscript.sh
ExecStop=/home/teamspeak/ts3server_startscript.sh stop
ExecReload=/home/teamspeak/ts3server_startscript.sh restart
Restart=always
RestartSec=15

[Install]

WantedBy=multi-user.target

Save and close the file when you are done.

Now, refresh the list of system services to apply the changes

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Start the TeamSpeak server and allow it to start upon booting your computer.

sudo systemctl start ts3server.service
sudo systemctl enable ts3server.service

Make sure TeamSpeak is running correctly by checking the service status:

sudo systemctl status ts3server

You should see the following output:

How to Install TeamSpeak Server on Ubuntu 20.04 ubuntu

To see what ports TeamSpeak uses, type the following command:

ss -antpl | grep ts3server

How to Install TeamSpeak Server on Ubuntu 20.04 ubuntu

Setting an Admin Password

An administrator password is required for TeamSpeak.

Stop the TeamSpeak service and switch to TeamSpeak user.

sudo systemctl stop ts3server
su - teamspeak

Start the Teamspeak server manually and pass the serveradmin_password parameter with your password as follows

./ts3server_startscript.sh start serveradmin_password=your_password

Remember to replace your_password with your password.

Stop TeamSpeak manually after setting the password, log out the TeamSpeak user, and start the TeamSpeak service using systemctl command

./ts3server_startscript.sh stop
exit

sudo systemctl start ts3server

Installing TeamSpeak Web Interface

In order to use TeamSpeak web interface you need to install a separate component.

Login as root user, install Apache web server and PHP software packages along with the unzip package with the following commands:

sudo apt-get install apache2 -y
sudo apt-get install php libapache2-mod-php
sudo apt-get install unzip -y

Move into the Apache Root document folder and download the web UI package called ts3wi using wget command

cd /var/www/html
wget https://www.bennetrichter.de/downloads/ts3wi.zip

After downloading is complete, unzip the file and ensure the ts3wi directory has proper ownership.

unzip ts3wi.zip
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/ts3wi

Now open your web browser and navigate to http://your_server_ip/ts3wi where your_server_ip is the public IP address of your server. You will be taken to the login page.

How to Install TeamSpeak Server on Ubuntu 20.04 ubuntu

Provide username admin and password and click Login. You will be directed to TeamSpeak web UI. You can create channels, manage users and do anything else that is the same as on the windows client.

How to Install TeamSpeak Server on Ubuntu 20.04 ubuntu

That’s it! You have successfully installed TeamSpeak server on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS server. Find more info on TeamSpeak official website.

Conclusion

We have learned how to install TeamSpeak server on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS in this tutorial. It was easy to configure and get up and running in no time. We also learned about some of the important configuration parameters that are needed for setting up a TeamSpeak server.