# 🖥️ Step-by-Step Guide to Installing and Configuring an IP Address Manager An **IP Address Manager (IPAM)** is a tool or software solution that helps in managing, tracking, and organizing IP addresses within a network. It allows administrators to assign, monitor, and audit IP addresses efficiently, ensuring there are no conflicts and that the network runs smoothly. For your blog, you could use an **IP Address Manager** to ensure that your site's backend infrastructure is properly configured and to prevent any potential IP-related issues that might disrupt the accessibility or security of your site. ## 📜 Open-source IP address managers When implementing a solution to a problem, such as saving and maintaining IP addresses, I always start by looking for an open-source project that is actively maintained. Opting for open-source software offers several advantages. The main being that open-source projects are often developed by a community of contributors, ensuring that the software is continually improved and adapted to meet user needs. This community-driven approach leads to greater transparency, as the code is available for anyone to inspect, modify, and enhance, which fosters innovation and security. ### **🔍** What are the options? The following open-source and free to use IP Address Managers (IPAMs) are available at the time of writing this article. 1. **phpIPAM**: is developed by **Miha Petkovsek**, a network engineer, and is now maintained by a community of contributors with regular updates and contribution from the community on its **GitHub** repository. 2. **NetBox**: was initially developed by **DigitalOcean**, a cloud infrastructure provider, to manage their own infrastructure needs. **NetBox** continues to be actively maintained, now by a broader community of contributors, with the **NetBox** community and maintainers overseeing the project’s development. 3. **GestióIP**: is developed by the Catalan company **NEXUS-IT**. The project is still maintained by **NEXUS-IT**, although it sees less frequent updates compared to some other IPAMs. 4. **NIPAP (Neat IP Address Planner)**: was originally created by the Swedish company **Spotify**, specifically by staff network engineers. NIPAP is currently maintained by a small community of contributors. While not as actively updated as some others, it still receives updates and support from its users. 5. **OpenIPAM**: was developed by the **University of Utah’s Center for High Performance Computing**. The project is primarily maintained by the University of Utah, with contributions from other users. It is still maintained, although updates are less frequent. While **phpIPAM** and **NetBox** are my favorite open-source IPAMs, we will be using **phpIPAM** in this tutorial. ## **🚀** Getting started with phpIPAM ### **⚙️** Step 1: Set-up Ubuntu VM or container Start by setting up the base Ubuntu 22.04 VM or container, of course you can also install Ubuntu on bare metal, meaning without a hypervisor. In this example I will be using Proxmox as the (type 1) hypervisor using the configuration down below. ![](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1723800516758/156e097e-81d5-4b4d-b0f3-ba5ae8f7f2fd.jpeg align="center") ### **🛠️** Step 2: Configuring Ubuntu Once the base Ubuntu VM or container is configured, first step is to login in using SSH or a console session. Personally I like to change the hostname to make it descriptive of its function. You can change the default hostname by renaming the current hostname in the following configuration files. *sudo nano /etc/hostname*  *sudo nano /etc/hosts* After that, reboot to apply the changes. *sudo reboot* Once rebooted, update the package index and installed packages to ensure the latest (security) patches, bug fixes and latest stable features. ```bash sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade ``` After that is done, install the packages that PHP IPAM relies on. Personally I have found issues installing all packages in one go, so these are split up. ```bash sudo apt install curl wget zip git -y sudo apt install apache2 mariadb-server mariadb-client -y ``` Once the packages are installed, now install all the PHP modules to be able to make phpIPAM work. ```bash sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php sudo apt update sudo apt install php8.2 php8.2-curl php8.2-common php8.2-gmp php8.2-mbstring php8.2-gd php8.2-xml php8.2-mysql php8.2-ldap php-pear -y ``` * pdo, pdo\_mysql : Adds support for mysql connections * session : Adds persistent session support * sockets : Adds sockets support * openssl : Adds openSSL support * gmp : Adds support for dev-libs/gmp (GNU MP library) -> to calculate IPv6 networks * ldap : Adds LDAP support (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol – for AD also) * crypt : Add support for password encryption * SimpleXML: Support for SimpleXML (optional, for RIPE queries and if required for API) * json: Enable JSON support * gettext: Enables translation * filter : Adds filtering support * pcntl : Add support for process creation functions (optional, required for scanning) * cli : Enable CLI (optional, required for scanning and status checks) * mbstring : Enable mbstring support ### **🛠️** Step 3: Configuring MariaDB Now execute the secure configuration of the MariaDB installation that the IPAM will store all content on. I experienced issues executing the configuration when no password is setup for the root user yet, for that reason I switched to the root user using *sudo su*. ```bash sudo su mysql_secure_installation ``` Now setup a secure password for the root user and follow the next steps. ```plaintext Switch to unix_socket authentication [Y/n] y Change the root password [Y/n] y Now enter a secure password for the root user, twice Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] y Disallow root login remotely > [Y/n] y Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] y Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] y ``` After that is done, log in to MariaDB using the root user. ```plaintext mysql -u root -p ``` Now its time to create a database for phpIPAM using the following commands. Where it says <insert password> you will need to provide the new password for the php\_ipam\_rw database user that we will use to configure phpIPAM with. ```plaintext CREATE DATABASE phpipam;  GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON phpipam.* TO 'php_ipam_rw'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY ''; FLUSH PRIVILEGES;  EXIT; ``` ### **🛠️** Step 4: Install phpIPAM ```plaintext sudo git clone https://github.com/phpipam/phpipam.git /var/www/html/phpipam cd /var/www/html/phpipam ``` Use the latest stable version ```plaintext sudo git checkout "$(git tag --sort=v:tag | tail -n1)" ``` Change owner of phpIPAM installation folder ```plaintext sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/phpipam ``` Copy the default config to the production config location. Make sure you are still in the /var/www/html/phpipam directory. ```plaintext sudo cp config.dist.php config.php sudo nano config.php ``` Edit the config, making sure to define the BASE variable. ```plaintext $db['host'] = '127.0.0.1'; $db['user'] = 'php_ipam_rw'; $db['pass'] = 'Correct&stable@'; $db['name'] = 'phpipam'; $db['port'] = 3306; define('BASE', "/phpipam/"); ``` Enable mod\_rewrite and restart Apache ```plaintext sudo a2enmod rewrite sudo systemctl restart apache2 ``` ### **🛠️** Step 5: Configure phpIPAM Browse to the phpIPAM webserver [http://<ip-address>/phpipam](http://%3Cip-adres%3E/phpipam) Example: [http://172.16.100.10/phpipam/](http://10.10.10.103/phpipam/) Click on **New phpipam installation** Click on **Automatic database installation** * MySQL/MariaDB username: php\_ipam\_rw * MySQL/MariaDB password: <use the password you've setup> * MySQL/MariaDB database location: 127.0.0.1 * MySQL/MariaDB database name: phpipam * Advanced Options: Turn all options off (Drop existing database, Create new database, Set permissions) ![](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1723805991000/1d5a2a70-cf22-4f6a-b6da-48a99d6e4743.jpeg align="center") Click on **Install phpipam database**, you will see a confirmation after that. Next, setup the password for the user 'Admin', setup the site title and site URL. ### **🛠️** Step 6: Start using phpIPAM Log in to phpIPAM with the default user 'Admin' and the password you've setup for it. \# Backup IP address table, remove backups older than 10 days crontab -e @daily /usr/bin/mysqldump -u ipv6 -pipv6admin phpipam > /var/www/html/phpipam/db/bkp/phpipam\_bkp\_$(date +"\\%y\\%m\\%d").db @daily /usr/bin/find /var/www/html/phpipam/db/bkp/ -ctime +10 -exec rm {} \\;