In support of anyone else struggling adopting a Unifi AP to the TrueNAS Unifi App in Electric Eel (but might apply in other configurations, but I don’t know)
I struggled this weekend to Install my first AP under Unifi.
Basically after much hit and miss, it got as far as (not) adoption stage.
Googling eventually led me to a link and to complete adoption I did the following (YMMV)
ssh into the new AP (WiFiman seemed to be the easiest way to get this)
ssh ubnt@“IP Address of AP”
Password ubnt
This issue this command
set-inform http://“IP Address of your TrueNAS server”:30073/inform
Once issued, it immediately started adoption. What I am NOT certain about is what if any preceding steps were needed in unifi IOS app or the controller, but this was my stumbling block.
Thank you for that. I thought I was the only suffering from Unifi-Derangement Syndrom (UDS), an affliction similar to Frigate-Derangement-Syndrome (FDS) in that UDS and FDS take something that should be simple and make it incredibly hard. In the case of UDS, I get the container up, it boots, it presents a web-ui, it manages to talk to the mothership for authentication but then initiating a restore of a working cloudkey backup file results in a KerSPLAT!
The Unifi is never heard from again, remaining stuck in a “Deploying” state of mind. What I take from the process is that relying on a backup to make the switch from a hardware cloudkey 2 to a unifi container is a no-go, so the entire controller setup has to be rebuilt from scratch. I am not going to even start to attempt that until I have Fangtooth running here so I can set the unifi docker App at the same IP address as the original IP for the cloudkey 2.
But if even that doesn’t work re: adoption, I’ll have your tip to fall back on. Thank you again!
In the settings of the Unifi app you need to override the Inform Host and set the IP address of your server. Otherwise it advertises the IP of docker network.
Thank you for that. So after an hour of “Deploying” after attempting a restore from a backup file (same version), I decided to stop the App, and restart it. To my surprise, the App did finally start.
I pull up the interface which then helpfully tells me that the login and password I have used successfully earlier today to do a Cloudkey 2 backup no longer functions.
I wonder, is perhaps the Unifi App not able to reach the internet once it has restored a profile and that’s the reason why the thing is not able to authenticate the password?
Thing is, it says the password is wrong, suggesting it can reach the internet or that I should be using a login/password combo like ubnt/ubnt. Has anyone else had this issue?
I was only able to import a exported config using the old interface.
The import process was painless, however, do pay attention to the inform port allocation. In my case, it was assigned to 8080 and so you have to modify the inform port setting in the App setup to listen on port 8080 (or whatever port your previous config points yout to). Otherwise, you won’t get adoption.
For whatever reason, the discovery port in the App setup was also left unassigned in my config. It should be set to 10001.
Lastly, I had to re-setup the Wifi / Network aspects. But now it works and eliminating the CloudKey seems to be saving me about 6W of line power. Not the world but every bit helps.
I can’t find any information on it, but i certainly didn’t set that up, may be something that came with newer firmware and I think it’s totally dope, because instead of rewriting each device, I’ve added record to local DNS and everything started automagically popping up even across VLANs.
Another benefit of running UniFi as an App vs. inside a cloudkey device is that the cloudkey is a less than helpful to secure via SSL unless you go full Kool Aid re: the UBNT-ecosystem. Even MikroTik makes it easier.
Anyhow, the App is awesome because you can either put it behind Nginx or use the built-in certificate system in TrueNAS to pull FQDN certificates for the App. Works a treat, secures the little beastie. Hat tip to the App developer for including the ability to use TrueNAS SSL certificates.
I spent the good part of 2 weeks researching, and trying to get my existing UniFi APs adopted and was just about to give up…
My setup is on a Dell Poweredge r540 server with 2 nics.
I had both nics configured on the same network because I want to use different IPs for different reasons.
I started with TrueNAS 25.04 (I think), then downgraded to 24 to try fix multiple issues, then up to 25.10 (unreleased at time of writing) but still I couldn’t fix the issue:
My UniFi controller was taking up a docker IP on 172.x.x.x but my network is 192.168.x.x so they couldn’t talk.
I tried:
setting HOST network on the APP
Choosing Publish to external and assigning an IP to each of the components (it showed as ‘0.0.0.0’ IP Address”
reinstalling the app countless times
changing the port to default 8080 for inform
trying to talk to different ports from the AP itself
Creating a BRIDGE interface - seemed to work fine for creation but as soon as I applied the configuration it got reverted and disappeared
countless hours investigating and nothing worked.
The one thing that I tried that ACTUALLY worked… was removing the configuration on my 2 NICS and creating a BONDING/AGGREGATE GROUP instead, so 1 IP address assigned across both interfaces. What this allowed me to do is then assign the 192.168.x.x IP to all the subcomponents of the Unifi controller, and that’s when magic happened - it worked!!! I still had to point the devices at the correct inform port and I don’t know if it will auto-detect the port on a new device if I ever get one, but at least its now easy!
Getting UniFi to work is about as much fun as frigate. But once it runs, it’s better than cloudkey since securing the app with SSLs is trivial compared to the cloudkey. Glad you got it to work.
