Hi @darkness,
I went trough all your posts and used the ones relevant to me. I did not come across many of your problems though. I should say I did not connect a node and a gateway yet so I cannot talk about that part.

@htdvisser Although the installation is straightforward once you finish it, there is much to put together. I post the detailed installation steps below. However, I cannot make the simulator work "github.com/TheThingsNetwork/lora_simulator" is there another option to simulate gateways and nodes?

HOW TO INSTALL TTL back-end on Linux Mint 17.3
Installation platform
- Mint 17.3 64 Bit (Mate) - based on Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty
- Docker 1.11.1, build 5604cbe
- Docker compose 1.7.1, build 0a9ab35
- Git 1.9.1
- TTN build 4bf8cbd67681859b1f5e117c0c9aeedc41edada1 on master github.com/TheThingsNetwork/ttn/commits/master

Docker installation

Install Docker Engine

SPECIFIC FOR MINT 17.3 should work for all Mint 17.1, 17.2 and ubuntu 14.04
- sudo apt-get update
- sudo apt-get install apt-transport-HTs ca-certificates
- sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://p80.pool.sks-keyservers.net:80 --recv-keys 58118E89F3A912897C070ADBF76221572C52609D

Open the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list file in your favorite editor. If the file doesn’t exist, create it.
Remove any existing entries and add for On Ubuntu Trusty 14.04 (LTS)
- deb HT://apt.dockerproject.org/repo ubuntu-trusty main
save and close
- sudo apt-get update
- sudo apt-get purge lxc-docker
verify the repos are correct
- apt-cache policy docker-engine
Install linux-image-extra package
- sudo apt-get install linux-image-extra-$(uname -r)
Install apparmor
- apt-get install apparmor
Finally install docker engine
- sudo apt-get install docker-engine
start and test
- sudo service docker start
- sudo docker run hello-world

Install Docker Compose

• sudo -i
• curl -L HTs://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.7.1/docker-compose-uname -s-uname -m > /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
• chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
• exit

Test the installation

• docker-compose --version

Install Backend (router,broker,handler)

Create the configuration

Instructions from HT://staging.thethingsnetwork.org/wiki/Backend/ttn/Configuration see "Configuration File" section

Deploy backend

you can use either from environment variables or yaml file in home directory, i.e. ~/.ttn.yaml. Go to the web page and create the yaml file as

Create a folder e.g. TTN_Workspace
- mkdir TTN_Workspace & cd TTN_Workspace
Copy the contents of the docker compose ile from HT://staging.thethingsnetwork.org/wiki/Backend/Docker and put it under the file "docker-compose.yml"
Compose the file using docker compose
- sudo docker-compose up

Install TTNCTL

download and unzip the ttnctl from HTs://ttnreleases.blob.core.windows.net/release/src/github.com/TheThingsNetwork/ttn/release/branch/develop/ttnctl-linux-amd64.zip

unzip the file under TTN_Workspace/ttnctl
rename extracted the executable to ttnctl

Create configuration file at ~/.ttnctl.yaml as explained here HT://staging.thethingsnetwork.org/wiki/Backend/ttnctl/Configuration

quickly create a user and application staging.thethingsnetwork.org/wiki/Backend/ttnctl/QuickStart

Create an account: $ ttnctl user create [Your Email]
Sign in: $ ttnctl user login [Your Email]
Create an application: $ ttnctl applications create [Application Name]
List your applications: $ ttnctl applications
Choose an application to use from now on: $ ttnctl applications use [EUI shown in the previous output]
Create a new device: $ ttnctl devices register [DevEUI must be 16 digit e.g. 0102030405060708, also see 'ttnctl devices register personalized' for device with any size key]
List your devices: $ ttnctl devices
Get info about a specific device: $ ttnctl devices info [DevEUI]
Subscribe to incoming messages from this device: $ ttnctl subscribe [DevEUI]

Simulators

????

POSSIBLE BUG?
staging.thethingsnetwork.org/wiki/Backend/ttn/Configuration yaml file configuration does not seem to affect the deployment. I change the yaml file to update the public port of handler and when I did "docker-composer up" the debug window does not reflect the changes to the public port for the handler

CONFIGURATION

handler:
db-devices: "boltdb:/tmp/ttn_handler_devices.db"
db-packets: "boltdb:/tmp/ttn_handler_packets.db"
status-address: "0.0.0.0"
status-port: 10702
internal-address: "0.0.0.0"
internal-address-announce: localhost
internal-port: 1882
public-address: "0.0.0.0"
public-port: 1500
mqtt-broker: "localhost:1883"
mqtt-username: ""
mqtt-password: ""
ttn-broker: "localhost:1781"

DEBUG WINDOW

handler_1 | INFO Using Configuration devices-database=boltdb:/data/ttn_handler_devices.db internal-server=0.0.0.0:1882 mqtt-broker=mosquitto:1883 packets-database=boltdb:/data/ttn_handler_packets.db public-server=0.0.0.0:1782 status-server=0.0.0.0:10702 ttn-broker=broker:1781