Mosquitto is a lightweight and open-source message broker that implements the MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) protocol. It is widely used for IoT applications due to its efficiency and ease of use. In this guide, we will walk through the steps to install and secure Mosquitto on Ubuntu 20.04.

Step 1: Update Your System

Start by ensuring your system is up to date:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Step 2: Install Mosquitto

To install the Mosquitto broker, run the following command:

sudo apt install -y mosquitto mosquitto-clients

Step 3: Start and Enable Mosquitto

Start the Mosquitto service and enable it to run at startup:

sudo systemctl start mosquitto
sudo systemctl enable mosquitto

Step 4: Configure Mosquitto

The configuration file for Mosquitto is located at /etc/mosquitto/mosquitto.conf. Open it in a text editor:

sudo nano /etc/mosquitto/mosquitto.conf

Add the following lines to configure the listener and enable password protection:

listener 1883
allow_anonymous false
password_file /etc/mosquitto/passwordfile

Step 5: Create a Password File

To secure your Mosquitto broker, you need to create a password file and add a user:

sudo mosquitto_passwd -c /etc/mosquitto/passwordfile your_username

Follow the prompts to set a password for the user.

Step 6: Restart Mosquitto

After making changes to the configuration, restart the Mosquitto service:

sudo systemctl restart mosquitto

Step 7: Allow Through Firewall

If you are using UFW as your firewall, allow traffic on port 1883:

sudo ufw allow 1883

Step 8: Test the Mosquitto Broker

To test the Mosquitto broker, open two terminal windows. In the first terminal, subscribe to a topic:

mosquitto_sub -h localhost -t "test/topic" -u your_username -P your_password

In the second terminal, publish a message to that topic:

mosquitto_pub -h localhost -t "test/topic" -m "Hello MQTT!" -u your_username -P your_password

If everything is set up correctly, you should see the message in the first terminal.

Conclusion

You have successfully installed and secured the Mosquitto MQTT messaging broker on Ubuntu 20.04. This setup will allow you to manage messages efficiently for IoT applications.

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