Lab 1 – Install Posit Connect and R

In this first hands-on lab, you will set up a minimal installation of Posit Connect. In this first lab, you will:

  1. install Posit Connect
  2. install R
  3. activate the license
  4. configure Connect

At that point, Connect will run but will not be ready to render most of the content that your users may create (in particular, Python and Quarto will not be installed). You will take care of these steps in the next lab. The following labs will teach you how to secure your installation by setting up HTTPS and integrating Connect into an authentication system.

NoteTimings for this chapter
  • Reading time: 15 minutes
  • Documentation reading time: 30-50 minutes
  • Hands-on exercise time: 30-50 minutes
TipRequired Reading

  • Read this section on Server installation.

  • Read this section on installing R. Note that this section is not part of the Posit Connect Admin Guide but is the recommended guide to install R across all Posit Products. Read also the Overview section about how to configure Connect to interact with the R executables present on the system.

  • License Management. Note that there are only rare cases where you will want to use a license key instead of a license file to activate your installation. If you use a license file, you won’t need to worry about Floating Licensing.

1. Install Posit Connect

TipWhat is the version of the latest release of Posit Connect?

To determine the version of the latest release of Posit Connect, you can navigate to the landing page of the Posit Connect documentation. It displays the version number. Clicking on “Previous Versions” card brings you to a page with all currently supported versions, their associated documentation, release notes, and links to their installers.

Install version 2026.06 of Posit Connect using the following commands in the terminal:

Terminal
## Set up the repository from which Posit Connect will be installed.
curl -1sLf   'https://dl.posit.co/public/pro/setup.deb.sh'   | sudo -E bash

## Check the list of available versions of Posit Connect for installation.
sudo apt list -a rstudio-connect

## Install Posit Connect 2026.06.1
sudo apt install rstudio-connect=2026.06.1-1

## Prevent Posit Connect from unintended upgrades during routine system maintenance.
sudo apt-mark hold rstudio-connect

Posit Connect gets installed in /opt/rstudio-connect/. The bin/ folder contains the executables. You can check if the installation was successful by running:

/opt/rstudio-connect/bin/connect --version

which should produce the following output:

Version: 20XX.YY.ZZ
Build: v20XX.YY.ZZ-W

To check if Connect is running, you can use the systemd command (type q on your keyboard to go back to the shell prompt):

Terminal
sudo systemctl status rstudio-connect.service
Terminal
● rstudio-connect.service - Posit Connect
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/rstudio-connect.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Wed 2026-07-01 13:49:59 UTC; 55s ago
   Main PID: 3503 (connect)
      Tasks: 8 (limit: 4616)
     Memory: 35.3M (peak: 35.3M)
        CPU: 576ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/rstudio-connect.service
             └─3503 /opt/rstudio-connect/bin/connect --config /etc/rstudio-connect/rstudio-connect.gcfg

Jul 01 13:49:59 connect-vm systemd[1]: Started rstudio-connect.service - Posit Connect.
Jul 01 13:49:59 connect-vm rstudio-connect[3503]: time="2026-07-01T13:49:59.959Z" level=info msg="Running as: root"
Jul 01 13:49:59 connect-vm rstudio-connect[3503]: time="2026-07-01T13:49:59.963Z" level=info msg="Loaded server configuration from '/etc/rstudio-connect/rstudio-connect.gcfg'"
Jul 01 13:49:59 connect-vm rstudio-connect[3503]: time="2026-07-01T13:49:59.965Z" level=info msg="Found 0 environment variables starting with 'CONNECT_' that may affect configuration.\n"
Jul 01 13:49:59 connect-vm rstudio-connect[3503]: time="2026-07-01T13:49:59.966Z" level=info msg="Successfully set oom_score_adj to -950"
Jul 01 13:49:59 connect-vm rstudio-connect[3503]: time="2026-07-01T13:49:59.966Z" level=info msg="Using file /var/log/rstudio/rstudio-connect/rstudio-connect.log to store Server Logs."

Connect is running. You can click on the “Connect” tab and see that Connect is running, but you cannot access its web interface as it does not have a valid license.

Let’s inspect the logs to confirm. The logs for Connect are located in /var/log/rstudio/rstudio-connect/, with rstudio-connect.log being the application log. Let’s inspect the end of this file:

Terminal
sudo tail /var/log/rstudio/rstudio-connect/rstudio-connect.log

The logs point to a 'warning' level issue indicating that no valid license is present. Let’s activate the license.

2. Activate your License

We provide you with a license file for the purpose of this training, located in the home folder of your virtual machine (/home/ubuntu/<license-file>.lic). Follow the instructions in the documentation to use this license file to activate your installation.

You can determine the current license status with the following command:

Terminal
sudo /opt/rstudio-connect/bin/license-manager status

After restarting Posit Connect, check that it is running as expected by checking the output of sudo systemctl status rstudio-connect.service. Click on the circular arrow icon on the “Posit Connect” tab in Instruqt to reload the content and check that Connect now loads.

3. Install R

For Connect to render R content (Quarto documents with R code, Shiny applications, R Markdown documents, etc.), you need to install R on your Connect server. Typically, you will want to install multiple versions of R to support the needs of your users. For this lab, you will install a single version of R (4.6.0).

Use the instructions in the documentation to install the latest version of R version.

NoteWhat is the latest version of R?

The Posit Install R documents are usually up to date, but should be checked against the CRAN Release Notes to make sure you are providing end-users the latest version of R.

The first line in this script specifies which version of R to install.

Terminal
export R_VERSION=4.6.0
curl -O https://cdn.posit.co/r/ubuntu-2404/pkgs/r-${R_VERSION}_1_$(dpkg --print-architecture).deb
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ./r-${R_VERSION}_1_$(dpkg --print-architecture).deb

The installers that Posit provides for R put the files required in /opt and allow you to install multiple versions side-by-side. You can check that R is correctly installed by running:

/opt/R/4.6.0/bin/R --version

which should produce the following output:

R version 4.6.0 (2026-04-24) -- "Because it was There"
Copyright (C) 2026 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu

R is free software and comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
You are welcome to redistribute it under the terms of the
GNU General Public License versions 2 or 3.
For more information about these matters see
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

When setting up your own installation, you will want to consult with the data scientists in your team to ensure that you install the versions (they will most likely need more than one version), required for their content.

4. Configure Posit Connect

Let’s now configure Posit Connect. We will only do a basic configuration for this exercise, and we will add more to it during the next labs.

The configuration file for Posit Connect is located at /etc/rstudio-connect/rstudio-connect.gcfg.

To explore the full list of options that can be configured, you can refer to the official documentation at https://docs.posit.co/connect/admin/appendix/configuration/.

For the purpose of this exercise, you will not set up a mailing system to send notifications to users. Instead, you will rely on a setting that prints emails to the console, by setting EmailProvider = "print". However, when you install Posit Connect on your system, we strongly recommend configuring it correctly from the start so all Connect features are available right away.

Within the Instruqt platform, you can get the URL of the Posit Connect instance using the environment variables $HOSTNAME and $_SANDBOX_ID. By default, Posit Connect is available on port 3939. You can get the URL at which your Posit Connect installation will be served with this command (note that the URL is also visible in the “Instructions” panel in the bottom right of the Instruqt interface):

Terminal
echo http://$HOSTNAME.$_SANDBOX_ID.instruqt.io

For now, you will start with using passwords to authenticate users. However, when you install Posit Connect on your system, we suggest you configure Connect to use the Authentication system you intend to use in production from the start to avoid any issues down the road.

By default, when R is enabled, Connect scans the system to detect R installations. Here we disable scanning (using the R.ExecutableScanning setting) to have complete control over the R versions in use. We will also specify the path of the executable. This ensures that R is properly configured, and will allow you to use and manage multiple versions of R in our Connect installation.

Use nano (or vi) with sudo, to edit the configuration file. The full rstudio-connect.gcfg file should look like this (use the actual values of the environment variables for your virtual machine for the Server.Address value):

/etc/rstudio-connect/rstudio-connect.gcfg
[Server]
Address = "http://${HOSTNAME}.${_SANDBOX_ID}.instruqt.io/"
EmailProvider = "print"

[HTTP]
; Posit Connect will listen on this network address for HTTP connections.
Listen = ":3939"

[Authentication]
; Specifies the type of user authentication.
Provider = "password"

[R]
Enabled = true
ExecutableScanning = false
Executable = "/opt/R/4.6.0/bin/R"

Once you have edited the configuration file, you can check that the syntax of your configuration file is correct by running:

Terminal
sudo /opt/rstudio-connect/bin/connect --config /etc/rstudio-connect/rstudio-connect.gcfg --check-config

If the configuration file syntax is correct, you will need to restart Posit Connect for the changes to take effect and it is always a good idea to check that the status of the service after the restart

Terminal
sudo systemctl restart rstudio-connect
sudo systemctl status rstudio-connect.service

You can now visit the “Posit Connect” tab to check that your installation is up and running. Given that it is a new installation, no account has been created yet, so if you want to log in to Connect, you will need to create an account (using the information you want) before you can log in. The first account created on the Connect instance has Administrator privileges.

Click on the “Check” button to confirm that you have set up everything correctly.

The “Check” button in Instruqt to check that you completed all the tasks in the assignment

Check Your Understanding

Before proceeding to the next lab, make sure you can answer these questions:

  1. Troubleshooting: How can you check from the command line that Posit Connect is running? Where would you look at logs to check if there are any issues?

  2. License Management: What command would you use to check the current license status of your Posit Connect installation?

  3. R Configuration: In the configuration file, why did we set R.ExecutableScanning = false and explicitly specify the R executable path instead of letting Connect automatically detect R installations?

1. Troubleshooting

You can check that Posit Connect is running with:

sudo systemctl status rstudio-connect.service

The main application logs is located in /var/log/rstudio/rstudio-connect/rstudio-connect.log. You can inspect the 50 most recent log entries with:

sudo tail -50 /var/log/rstudio/rstudio-connect/rstudio-connect.log

2. License Management

You can check the status of your license with:

sudo /opt/rstudio-connect/bin/license-manager status

3. R Configuration

Setting R.ExecutableScanning = false and explicitly specifying the R executable path provides complete control over which R versions are available in the Connect installation. This approach:

  • Prevents Connect from automatically detecting and using unintended R installations on the system
  • Ensures predictable behavior and consistent R version management
  • Allows administrators to precisely control which R versions users can access
  • Facilitates managing multiple R versions side-by-side in a controlled manner

By disabling automatic scanning, you avoid potential issues with Connect finding and using R installations that may not be properly configured or intended for production use.

ImportantPlanning your Posit Connect Installation
  • Which version(s) of R will your end users need?