How to Setup a TeamSpeak Server on Ubuntu 16.04

About Teamspeak

Teamspeak is free and one of the most commonly used voice communication applications for real-time voice chat over the internet. TeamSpeak uses a small part of your bandwidth and is usually used by gamers who want to chat with each other as they play a game to get rid of latency issues.
Every user needs to have a client installed on their device and a central server which a client can connect to.
In this tutorial we will teach you how to install and set up a Teamspeak server on Ubuntu 16.04.
Step 1: Login via SSH.
Begin by entering your Ubuntu 16.04 VPS as user root.

ssh root@IP_address -p port_number

Step 2: Update your system

Ensure that your system is up to date by running the command below.

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

You can also enable automatic updates.

Step 3: Creating a new system user

Create a new system user with disabled login for TeamSpeak in order for the application to run under this user.

adduser --disabled-login teamspeak

Adding new group `teamspeak' (1000) ...
Adding new user `teamspeak' (1000) with group `teamspeak' ...
Creating home directory `/home/teamspeak' ...
Copying files from `/etc/skel' ...
Changing the user information for teamspeak
Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default
Full Name []:
Room Number []:
Work Phone []:
Home Phone []:
Other []:
Is the information correct? [Y/n]

Feel free to leave the fields for user information empty.

Step 4: Download TeamSpeak Server

The next step is to download TeamSpeak, Go to their official website and download the latest stable release of TeamSpeak Server. When the tutorial was written, the version 3.0.13.6 was the latest.

cd /usr/local
wget http://dl.4players.de/ts/releases/3.0.13.6/teamspeak3-server_linux_amd64-3.0.13.6.tar.bz2

Step 5: Unpacking the archive

When it is finished downloading, you may unpack the archive and rename the ‘TeamSpeak’ folder to something simpler.

tar -jxvf teamspeak3-server_linux_amd64-3.0.13.6.tar.bz2
mv teamspeak3-server_linux_amd64 teamspeak

Step 6: Setting up the TeamSpeak Server

Make the newly created user an owner of the TeamSpeak files.

chown -R teamspeak:teamspeak /usr/local/teamspeak

The startup script is inside the files, so create a symbolic link.

ln -s /usr/local/teamspeak/ts3server_startscript.sh /etc/init.d/teamspeak

Then execute a command to make the TeamSpeak server automatically start on boot time.

update-rc.d teamspeak defaults

Step 7: Starting up the TeamSpeak Server

Lastly, start the TeamSpeak server with the command below.

service teamspeak start.

Step 8: Confirm TeamSpeak installed correctly

To verify if TeamSpeak is running, execute the command below.

service teamspeak status

• teamspeak.service

Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/teamspeak; bad; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Sun 2017-05-21 20:26:32 CDT; 1min 12s ago
Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
Process: 13214 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/teamspeak start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
CGroup: /system.slice/teamspeak.service
└─13218 ./ts3server

You can also find the username, password, and the privilege key. You are going to need this information to manage your server.

You do not have to setup a TeamSpeak Server on your VPS but it could be useful to people who desire so.