Install Mattermost by Almalinux 8

Guide to install Mattermost server on Almalinux 8. This time using a self-hosted server. Mattermost is an opensource tool for an alternative to Slack.

Before starting the installation, make sure your Almalinux 8 has been upgraded to the latest version.

Using a self-hosted Mattermost server has a choice of 2 database options. That is either MySQL or PostgreSQL. However, this tutorial will use MySQL MariaDB.

Install MariaDB 10.5

First install MariaDB 10.5. Install from the MariaDB repository.

# vi /etc/yum.repos.d/mariadb.repo

Then copy and paste the following

[mariadb]
name = MariaDB
baseurl = http://yum.mariadb.org/10.5/rhel8-amd64
module_hotfixes=1
gpgkey=https://yum.mariadb.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-MariaDB
gpgcheck=1

If so, update.

# dnf update

Then continue to install MariaDB for version 10.5

Then make sure that it auto starts up and runs when the server is restarted. Then start MariaDB.r

# dnf install mariadb-server
# systemctl enable --now mariadb

Then it's time to configure mysql for the first time.

# mysql_secure_installation
# Switch to unix_socket authentication [Y/n]
# Change the root password? [Y/n]
# Remove anonymous users? [Y/n]
# Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n]
# Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n]
# Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n]

Because we will use a MySQL type database, we must first create a database so that it will be used by Mattermost.

#mysql -u root -p
CREATE DATABASE matterdb;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON matterdb.* TO 'matteruser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'passwordmatters';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit;

Thus the database that will be used is matterdb with the password passwordmatters. In this case it is very important that you use a password that is at least 12 characters long plus a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols.

Install Mattermost

Make sure wget is installed on your server.

# yum install wget -y

Download the latest version of Mattermost.

# wget https://releases.mattermost.com/7.2.0/mattermost-7.2.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz
# tar -xvzf mattermost*.gz
# mv mattermost /opt
# mkdir /opt/mattermost/data

Then create a system group that will run this service. Make sure the user group is the same, namely mattermost, and finally, give the folder write permission.

# useradd --system --user-group mattermost
# chown -R mattermost:mattermost /opt/mattermost
# chmod -R g+w /opt/mattermost

Modify the database setup in /opt/mattermost/config/config.json

Change the following lines accordingly

"DriverName": "mysql",
"DataSource": "matteruser:passwordmatters@tcp(localhost:3306)/matterdb?charset=utf8mb4,utf8\u0026readTimeout=30s\u0026writeTimeout=30s",

Then create a new service entry.

vi /etc/systemd/system/mattermost.service

Fill in the config contents as below:

[Unit]
 Description=Mattermost
 After=network.target
 After=mariadb.service
 Requires=mariadb.service

 [Service]
 Type=notify
 ExecStart=/opt/mattermost/bin/mattermost
 TimeoutStartSec=3600
 Restart=always
 RestartSec=10
 WorkingDirectory=/opt/mattermost
 User=mattermost
 Group=mattermost
 LimitNOFILE=49152

 [Install]
 WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then we reload everything.

# systemctl daemon-reload
# systemctl enable mattermost
# systemctl start mattermost

Make sure the MySQL service is started and you can now access Mattermost on port 8065. For example:

http://ip-ip-ip-ip:8065

When accessed, you will need to setup the first time. Make sure to use a strong password, which is a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols with at least 8 characters.

Then you can refer to the Mattermost basic setup for more detailed guidance.