Install Mattermost on Managed Server

Introduction

This tutorial will show you how to set up a Mattermost Server on a Managed Server.

Prerequisites

You will need:

• A Managed Server with SSH access
• A Processwatch exception for "mattermost" (-> You can request this through a support request via konsoleH)
• A MySQL Database (-> You can create one in konsoleH)

This is the example Data that is used throughout the tutorial. Please replace this with your own data:

• Database Name: mattermost
• MySQL Username: holu
• MySQL Password: dbpassword
• Domain: example.com

Step 1 - Getting Mattermost

First you need to download Mattermost. You can get the most recent link from the official download page. In this case we will install version 6.0.2:

wget https://releases.mattermost.com/6.0.2/mattermost-6.0.2-linux-amd64.tar.gz

After the download is finished, the archive must be extracted:

tar -xvzf mattermost*.tar.gz

If the extraction finished successfully, you can remove the archive:

rm mattermost*.tar.gz

Congratulations, you successfully downloaded mattermost to your server! 🎉 In the next steps you will find out, how to set it up properly.

Step 2 - Creating the data directory

Next we need to create a storage directory. This will contain all files and images that users post on Mattermost. The default directory is called data. If you want to use another directory for this, please change the path in the Mattermost configuration file.

cd mattermost
mkdir data

Step 3 - Configuring Mattermost

Now that the file structure is prepared, you need to do some adjustments to the configuration file, to get Mattermost started. The file can be found at config/config.json. You can open it with your favorite editor. In this example nano is used:

nano config/config.json

The first setting, that needs to be adjusted, is the SiteURL and WebsocketURL. Here you need to set the URL, that you want to run your mattermost installation on. For example:

"SiteURL": "https://example.com",
"WebsocketURL": "wss://example.com"

Next you need to connect Mattermost with your MySQL Database (please replace the sample data):

"SqlSettings": {
    "DriverName": "mysql",
    "DataSource": "holu:dbpassword@tcp(localhost:3306)/mattermost?charset=utf8mb4,utf8\u0026writeTimeout=30s",
    ...
  },

This is everything that you need to change in the default configuration, to get Mattermost up and running. You can save and close the file.

Step 3 - Testing your configuration

Now that you finished your configuration, you can test it by starting mattermost with the following command:

./bin/mattermost

If your configuration is correct, mattermost should now start normally. If there is any error, please make sure that there is no error in your configuration.

Step 4 - Running Mattermost

The basic installation is now finished. You can start Mattermost in the background with:

nohup /<path-to-mattermost>/bin/mattermost &

The output of the process will get logged in a nohup.out file.

To restart Mattermost, if the server is rebooted, you can add a @reboot Cronjob in the Cronjob Manager advanced view:

@reboot /<path-to-mattermost>/bin/mattermost  > /dev/null 2>&1

Step 5 - Accessing your Installation

If Mattermost is running, you have multiple ways to access it:

Using the Port in the Browser directly

For this to work, you need to open the port of your mattermost installation (default: 8065) via konsoleH. After that, you can access it directly through the browser. For example http://example.com:8065

Using Apache as a proxy

Using Apache as a poxy enables you to reach mattermost without directly supplying the port in the address bar of your browser. To do this, please send a support request and ask for the installation of mod_proxy_wstunnel and the activation of the following VHost configuration:

#Mattermost
ProxyPreserveHost On

# Set web sockets
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /api/v[0-9]+/(users/)?websocket [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP:UPGRADE} ^WebSocket$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP:CONNECTION} \bUpgrade\b [NC]
RewriteRule .* ws://127.0.0.1:8065%{REQUEST_URI} [P,QSA,L]

<Location />
      Require all granted
      ProxyPass http://127.0.0.1:8065/
      ProxyPassReverse http://127.0.0.1:8065/
      ProxyPassReverseCookieDomain 127.0.0.1 example.com
</Location>

Conclusion

Your installation and configuration of Mattermost is now finished. Happy chatting 🎉

License: MIT