Want to make local ODK Central Server for dev

Support
1

Hello everybody,
I'd like to learn odk and then use it as replacement of CSPro for my organization. But it seems to be very difficult to deploy in local.
I use Ubuntu 25.10, I tried to do it on docker. But Ican use enketo. I want also to make some tests on my tablet, but ODK seems to not allow use of IP address as replacement of domain name. I have not any.
Help me please, I'm very conviced of the potentials of ODK from what I heard about it.
But the setup is so discouraging.
Thanks in advance.

1. What is the issue? Please be detailed.

2. What steps can we take to reproduce this issue?

3. What have you tried to fix the issue?

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2

Hello @Elnar_Finn You can’t use IP address as replacemnt for domain name. The first three phases of ODK Central Installation are

  1. Getting a server with the appropriate base OS (you should use Ubuntu LTS - Long Term Support images)
  2. Getting a web address (domain name) and pointing it at your new server. (You can get free domain name from https://freedomain.one)
  3. Installing ODK Central Software on your server.

Read more on the official docs page here - https://docs.getodk.org/central-install-digital-ocean/#central-install-digital-ocean

1 Like
3

Thanks for answering.
But I have not any public IP address.
I want a fully offline (off internet) server. I want to connect only 2 tablets with my local pc (ubuntu 25.10 with docker if it is possible) as server. Is it possible ?
CsPro is useable without all of that.
Thank you.

4

Hi @Elnar_Finn , welcome to the ODK Community!

ODK Central assumes that you will have web access with a domain name. There is a recent thread that summarizes previous discussions on running ODK Central offline here: Running ODK Central Offline Summary and Questions about Tour Workflow in Remote + BYOD Context

As @joybindroo mentioned, you can spin up an instance of ODK Central without much effort using something like Cloudflare Tunnels or Telebit to test it out. In essence, you would create a tunnel to your machine and use the tunnel’s domain name to install ODK Central on your local machine. There are a million and two tunneling options to choose from.

This will at least allow you to test it out and see how it works. However, if you want to deploy ODK Central in production, you’ll want to have a real domain name and public IP to limit your exposure (and therefore risk) to other services.

You can also sign up for trials on VPS providers, such as Digital Ocean. There may be some that provide credit you can use to just play around or may have a free tier that you can use. They typically require a credit card on file, though.

Best of luck!

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5

I read it. But everything seemed to be too difficult ! Urghh.