Monday, October 29, 2018

Setting up Rocketchat on a UBUNTU 18.04 server

Rocketchat 0.70.4 on UBUNTU 18.04 Server

Installing Ubuntu server is pretty straight forward.  I did it on virtual hardware.  Its what I call a "next next next" install.  I used all the default settings that Ubuntu had asked me.  I had no issues on hardware recognition.  There are plenty of sites that can assist if you run into anything.  This is a summary of steps that I did from https://rocket.chat/docs/installation/manual-installation/ubuntu/
Just tons of info.  These steps worked with my server implementation, so they might help you!


NETWORK CONNECTIONS

By default the system will ask you about network, and have DHCP set to enabled.  This is fine for most users.  If you want to hardcode your IP, you can do it now by selecting IPv4 and entering in the information specific to your server.


If you are using DHCP, you'll notice that the DHCP address (if NIC is discovered and assigned properly) is already showing.  Note this IP if you need to logon to the server when done.

If you are configuring your server and want to hardcode the IP, Ubuntu does it differently and isn't really the same as any other entry method I've ever encountered.  Subnet is handed differently:

In my example, I want to set the ip to 10.1.80.182

When you put in the subnet, it wants to calculate the subnet for you, so instead of a common "255.255.255.0" subnet, you put in the subnet class instead for the ip.

Instead of 255.255.255.0, you would put in 10.1.80.0/24 (or the subnet class that you need if its not the common one)


SYSTEM CREDENTIALS

Enter in some user specific information.  This is the information that you will use to identify and connect to your server.


ADDITIONAL PACKAGES

System is going to ask you to install some other applications, including rocket chat.

For this document, I didn't select it, but instead installed it via SNAP.  It should work, I haven't tested it yet at the time of writing this document.

One thing that I do recall, if you select this option, it took like a minute or so (for my installs anyway) for the rocketchat service to become available.  So you should be able to make it work, just be patient when testing for the rocketchat login screen for the services to start (sudo service snap.rocketchat-server.rocketchat-server status)


Once completed, reboot your server and you should see the login in screen if all is successful!

INSTALLING ROCKET CHAT SERVER APPLICATION

Login to your server using the administrator account you configured above

I would make a suggestion that you do the remaining steps via a terminal application vs straight on the console, simply for situations where you might be copy/pasting the information.  Might save you typing if your console doesn't support paste functions

Installation is really straight forward.  Assuming you have network setup, internet is working, and the repo site is up, this command should install it:

sudo snap install rocketchat-server

System will start the snap download from the stable release repository
Takes a a minute or two, depends on network speeds and machine speeds

Once its completed you'll see something like:

rocketchat-server 0.70.4 from 'rocketchat' installed

Now use a browser http to your server.  After installation, it might take 30-60 seconds for the processes to startup, so if the server doesn't resolve right away, be patient before you panic.

http://IPofYourServer:3000

You should see the default RocketChat screen asking for your basic admin info


That is pretty much it for a default rocket chat installation.   You can put in your admin information and you are ready to go!

At this point it might be advisable to get the recent updates for the server with the following 

sudo apt-get update
then
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
This step can take a while depending on network speed and volume of updates required.

Look at some of the other documentation here to secure your server with SSL connections






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