Install RocketChat on an Ubuntu 14.04 VPS

In this blog post we will show you how to install RocketChat on an Ubuntu 14.04 VPS. RocketChat is a web chat server which runs on Node.js and MongoDB. RocketChat allows you to chat with your colleagues and friends face-to-face over audio and video, upload files, record and transmit voice messages and many more. This guide should work on other Linux VPS systems as well but was tested and written for Ubuntu 14.04 VPS.

Login to your VPS via SSH

ssh user@vps

Update the system and install necessary packages.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y upgrade
sudo apt-get install -y software-properties-common git nano curl build-essential graphicsmagick

Install Node.Js and npm modules

We will install the latest Node.js package and the Node.js package manager (npm)from the official Ubuntu repository.

sudo apt-get install -y nodejs npm

To install nave globally (Virtual Environments for Node) and set node to version 0.10.43 run:

sudo npm install nave -g
sudo nave usemain 0.10.43

Install MongoDB

We will install the latest MongoDB package from the official MongoDB repository.

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv 7F0CEB10
echo "deb http://repo.mongodb.org/apt/ubuntu trusty/mongodb-org/3.0 multiverse" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-3.0.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y mongodb-org

When the installation is complete, we will setup MongoDB replica set. Open your editor of choice

nano /etc/mongod.conf

and append the following at the end of the file

replication:
      replSetName:  "001-rs"

Once you saved the file, restart the MongoDB service,

sudo service mongod restart

open up the MongoDB shell

sudo mongo

and run

rs.initiate()

you should see something like this:

{
"info2" : "no configuration explicitly specified -- making one",
"me" : "vps:27017",
"info" : "Config now saved locally.  Should come online in about a minute.",
"ok" : 1
}

If you get an error message like below, open the /etc/mongod.conf file and change the bind_ip to 0.0.0.0.

"errmsg" : "couldn't initiate : can't find self in the replset config"

Install RocketChat

Download the latest stable Rocket.Chat release to your server

cd /opt/
curl -L https://rocket.chat/releases/latest/download -o rocket.chat.tgz

and unpack the downloaded archive

tar zxvf rocket.chat.tgz

All Rocket.Chat files will be unpacked in a ‘bundle’ directory. We will rename the directory to ‘Rocket.Chat’

mv bundle rocket.chat
cd rocket.chat/programs/server
npm install
cd ../..

Set the necessary environment variables

export ROOT_URL=http://yourdomainname.com:3000/
export MONGO_URL=mongodb://localhost:27017/rocketchat
export PORT=3000

Replace ‘yourdomainname.com’ with your actual domain name.

and run the Rocket.Chat server

node main.js

Now, open http://yourdomainname.com:3000 in your favorite web browser and you should see the RocketChat login/register screen. The first user created is the admin user by default.

That’s it. You have successfully installed RocketChat on your Ubuntu 14.04 VPS. For more information about how to manage your RocketChat installation, please refer to the official RocketChat documentation.

Of course you don’t have to do any of this if you use one of our Linux VPS Hosting services, in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to set RocketChat web chat software for you. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately. A new version is available here: How to Install Rocket.Chat on Ubuntu 18.04.

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