This recipe covers another open source collaboration tool, Mattermost. Mattermost is a modern communication tool that includes one-to-one chat, group chat IRC-like channels, file sharing, and a super-fast search functionality. It can be thought of as a modern IRC tool. Mattermost is well known as an open source Slack alternative, but the Mattermost website says it is not limited to being a Slack alternative. You can find a list of features at http://www.mattermost.org/features .
The GitHub repository contains a step-by-step guide for installing Mattermost on production servers. We will use the same guide as our base.
Getting ready
You will need a 64-bit Ubuntu server and access to an account with sudo privileges. Mattermost prebuilt binaries are available only on a 64-bit platform. If you are running 32-bit Ubuntu, you will need to compile Mattermost from source. We will use MySQL as a database for Mattermost. I will use the same server for the database and Mattermost. You may want to separate these services on two different servers for better performance.
Create a separate MySQL user account and database for Mattermost. I will use the lowercase mattermost as a database name as well as a username.
Additionally, you will need a proxy if you are planning to load balance multiple Mattermost instances or have a secure setup with SSL enabled.
You will need a separate storage directory for shared multimedia contents. You should use a separate large volume specifically assigned for this purpose. Make sure that the directory is owned by the current user. To keep things simple, I will use a data directory under the current user's home, that is, /home/ubuntu/mattermost-data.
How to do it…
Mattermost is based on Golang as a backend and React, a JavaScript framework, for the frontend. Golang is capable of creating self-sufficient independent binaries. We will download the prebuilt package available on GitHub. As of writing this, the latest stable version is 1.3.0:
Download the Mattermost archive with the following command:
$ wget https://github.com/mattermost/platform/releases/download/v1.3. 0/mattermost.tar.gz
Extract content from the archive. This will create a new directory named mattermost:
$ tar -xf mattermost.tar.gz
Next, edit the Mattermost configuration file located under the config directory:
$ cd mattermost
$ vi config/config.json
It is already configured to use MySQL as a data source. We need to set our username and password details for the database. Search for the SqlSettings section and replace the content of the DataSource parameter with the following line:
"DataSource": "mattermost: password@tcp(localhost:3306)/mattermost?charset=utf8mb4,utf 8"
Next, search for the FileSettings section and set the Directory parameter to the directory we created for multimedia content:
"Directory":"/home/ubuntu/mattermost-data/"
Now, run the Mattermost server with the following command, and wait for the server to start listening:
$./bin/platform
Now you can access the Mattermost service at the hostname of your server at http://server_ip_or_host:8065 . However, the service is still running from the console and will be terminated when we close the terminal.
Terminate this process by pressing Ctrl + C and set a startup daemon so that we can start Mattermost in the backend and automatically start the service on system reboot.
Create a new upstart configuration under the /etc/init directory:
$ sudo nano /etc/init/mattermost.conf
Add the following content to the newly created file:
start on runlevel [2345]
stop on runlevel [016]
respawn
chdir /home/ubuntu/mattermost
setuid ubuntu
exec bin/platform
Now you can start Mattermost with any of the following commands:
$ sudo start mattermost
Or
$ sudo service mattermost start
Optionally, if you want to load balance the Mattermost service using Nginx or HAProxy in front of it, please refer to article 3, Working with Web Servers, for detail on how to do so. The use of a load balancer will also give you an option to enable SSL security for all communication.
Once you start the Mattermost service and access the homepage, you will be asked to sign up. Create an account with an email address and you can start using your own Mattermost instance. You can access the server at http://yourserver:8065.
How it works…
Mattermost is all about team communication and collaboration. When you access the Mattermost server for the first time and sign up with your email address, you will get an option to create a new team or join existing teams.:
To join an existing team, you need to submit your email address and Mattermost will reply with links to the team page where you are a member. If you have not yet created a team, simply proceed with signup. On signup, after you have entered your email address, you will be asked to select a team name and URI or a web address for your team page. Enter a good name for your team and click Next:
On the next page, you will be asked to choose a URL for your team page. The box should be pre-filled with a suggested URL. Feel free to change it if you have a better idea:
Once you are done with signup, you will be greeted with a welcome message and a simple walkthrough of the Mattermost service. Once you are done with the introduction, you will land on the Town Square channel. This is a prebuilt public channel accessible to all users. There's one more prebuilt channel named Off-Topic listed on the left side menu. You can create your own public channel, create a Private Group, or have a one-to-one chat through Direct Messages.
Before you start using the service, invite some more users to your team. Click on the Invite others to this team link or click on your username at the top left and then select the Invite New Member link. Here, you can enter the email and name of a single member to invite them. Optionally, you can get a team invite link, which can be shared with a group:
The username menu on the left gives you some more options. You can update team settings, manage team members, and even create a new team altogether. You will need to be a team admin to access these options. If you are part of multiple teams, then you can see an option to switch to a different team.
The team members will receive all communication in public channels. A user can decide to be a part of a channel or leave it and not receive any communication from a specific channel. Other options are Private group and Direct messages. In private groups, you can communicate and share with selected people and not the entire team, whereas in a direct message, as the name suggests, it is a one-to-one chat.
