+--------------------------------+ | LINUX MCP SERVER SETUP GUIDE | +--------------------------------+

Overview

Would you like to control a Linux machine by using your local LLM? You can use this very very (did I say very?) simple MCP server. It uses Redis + BullMQ as a persistent queue for command execution, it also has API-key authentication but please don't deploy it anywhere other than your own PRIVATE LOCAL NETWORK.

Prerequisites

• Node 24 To build the server
• Redis-server To store the queueueueue
• OpenSSL generates the server secret
• Curl To test APIs
• Nano or vi if you are fancy
• Ollama or Claude
• GptOSS:20b because that's what I used!

Installation

1. Clone the repository

cd ~/workspace
git clone https://github.com/aayushkumaraks/linux-mcp-redis
cd linux-mcp-redis

2. Install Dependencies

Check if you have node installed:

node -v

if it returned version above 18, then all good or else install Node. Better to install NVM

If you have installed nvm then setup Node 24 LTS.

nvm install 24 && nvm use 24

Install all the required Node Packages.

npm i

Generate server secret and store it in the .env file.

openssl rand -hex 32 | xargs -I {} bash -c "echo SERVER_SECRET={} >> .env && echo SERVER_SECRET set"

Generate API key.

node create_api_key.js "LLM client - trusted"

Please save it somewhere! You will need it while setting up the client or when you are testing.

Install Pm2 to create startup services. (Alternatively you can use Systemd but I don't like it.)

npm install -g pm2@latest --location=global

# Refresh your CLI
source ~/.bash

# create services
pm2 start ecosystem.config.cjs --env production
pm2 save
pm2 pm2 startup # skip if you dont want it to run on startup.

Install and setup Redis.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install redis-server

# Start Redis service
sudo systemctl start redis-server
sudo systemctl enable redis-server

# Verify Redis is running
redis-cli ping
# Should return: PONG

3. Setup ENV variables

Look at the .env.local file for reference. The ENV variables should look something like this.

REDIS_URL=redis://127.0.0.1:6379
MCP_NAME=linux-mcp
MCP_VERSION=1.0.0
JOB_RESULT_TTL=86400
SERVER_SECRET= #Somthing

4. Expose every service to the local network

Allow port 5379 or whatever you have used in the env variable HTTP_PORT

ufw allow 5379

Install ufw if you don't have it. IT IS EASYYYYYY!

THAT'S IT!

Now go and install the MCP bridge.