How to Deploy a Let's Chat Server on CentOS 7

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Let's Chat is an open source chat application is designed to provide self-hosted messaging service for small teams.

Let's Chat is based on NodeJS and MongoDB. In this article, we'll take a look at how to deploy Let's Chat on a CentOS 7 sever.

Prerequisites

A CentOS 7 server instance with at least 2G RAM. 4G RAM recommended.
A sudo user.

Step 1: Update the system

When logging into your system for the first time, it's necessary to perform a system-wide update as follows:

sudo yum install epel-release -y

sudo yum clean all && sudo yum update -y && sudo shutdown -r now

After the reboot, log in back as the same sudo user.

Step 2: Install NodeJS

Install the latest NodeJS 6.x as follows, which is 6.9.5 at the time of writing:

cd

curl --silent --location https://rpm.nodesource.com/setup_6.x | sudo bash -

sudo yum install -y nodejs

Step 3: Install MongoDB

Install the latest MongoDB as follows, which is 3.4 at the time this article was written.

3.1 Create the MongoDB 3.4 YUM repo as follows:

cat <<EOF | sudo tee -a /etc/yum.repos.d/mongodb-org-3.4.repo

[mongodb-org-3.4]

name=MongoDB Repository

baseurl=https://repo.mongodb.org/yum/redhat/7/mongodb-org/3.4/x86_64/

gpgcheck=1

enabled=1

gpgkey=https://www.mongodb.org/static/pgp/server-3.4.asc

EOF

3.2 Install and start the latest stable release of MongoDB Server, which is `3.4.1` at the time this article was written:

sudo yum install -y mongodb-org

sudo systemctl start mongod.service

sudo systemctl enable mongod.service

Step 4: Install Let's Chat

sudo yum install git -y

cd /opt

sudo git clone https://github.com/sdelements/lets-chat.git

cd lets-chat

sudo npm install

Note: It's normal to see several npm WARN ... messages during the installation. Just ignore them.

Step 5 (optional): Create the `settings.yml` file

If you want to customize Let's Chat, you can create a file named /opt/lets-chat/settings.yml and then put your custom settings in it:

sudo cp settings.yml.sample settings.yml

For the purpose of this tutorial, we will use the default settings from the sample settings file.

Step 6: Install Forever

You can start Let's Chat from the /opt/lets-chat directory:

cd /opt/lets-chat

npm start

The output should resemble:

> lets-chat@0.4.8 start /opt/lets-chat

> node app.js



â–ˆâ–ˆâ•—     â–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ•—â–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ•—â–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ•—     â–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ•—â–ˆâ–ˆâ•—  â–ˆâ–ˆâ•— â–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ•— â–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ•—

â–ˆâ–ˆâ•‘     â–ˆâ–ˆâ•”â•â•â•â•â•â•šâ•â•â–ˆâ–ˆâ•”â•â•â•â–ˆâ–ˆâ•”â•â•â•â•â•    â–ˆâ–ˆâ•”â•â•â•â•â•â–ˆâ–ˆâ•‘  â–ˆâ–ˆâ•‘â–ˆâ–ˆâ•”â•â•â–ˆâ–ˆâ•—â•šâ•â•â–ˆâ–ˆâ•”â•â•â•

â–ˆâ–ˆâ•‘     â–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ•—     â–ˆâ–ˆâ•‘   â–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ•—    â–ˆâ–ˆâ•‘     â–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ•‘â–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ•‘   â–ˆâ–ˆâ•‘

â–ˆâ–ˆâ•‘     â–ˆâ–ˆâ•”â•â•â•     â–ˆâ–ˆâ•‘   â•šâ•â•â•â•â–ˆâ–ˆâ•‘    â–ˆâ–ˆâ•‘     â–ˆâ–ˆâ•”â•â•â–ˆâ–ˆâ•‘â–ˆâ–ˆâ•”â•â•â–ˆâ–ˆâ•‘   â–ˆâ–ˆâ•‘

â–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ•—â–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ•—   â–ˆâ–ˆâ•‘   â–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ•‘    â•šâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ–ˆâ•—â–ˆâ–ˆâ•‘  â–ˆâ–ˆâ•‘â–ˆâ–ˆâ•‘  â–ˆâ–ˆâ•‘   â–ˆâ–ˆâ•‘

â•šâ•â•â•â•â•â•â•â•šâ•â•â•â•â•â•â•   â•šâ•â•   â•šâ•â•â•â•â•â•â•     â•šâ•â•â•â•â•â•â•šâ•â•  â•šâ•â•â•šâ•â•  â•šâ•â•   â•šâ•â•



Release 0.4.8

In order to keep the Let's Chat application running, let's press Ctrl-C first to exit and then install an app named forever which can ensure that will happen:

sudo npm install forever -g

Use the forever application to start Let's Chat:

cd /opt/lets-chat

forever start app.js

After Let's Chat gets up and running, you can access it locally via:

http://localhost:5000

You can test your installation with the below command:

curl -I http://localhost:5000

The output should be similar to:

HTTP/1.1 302 Found

X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN

X-Download-Options: noopen

X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff

X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block

Content-Security-Policy:

X-Content-Security-Policy:

X-WebKit-CSP:

X-UA-Compatible: IE=Edge,chrome=1

Location: /login

Vary: Accept, Accept-Encoding

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

Content-Length: 28

set-cookie: connect.sid=s%3A0YTFL6Un5G7iMc3zt8i-vlIh2YDQqTZ3.1dVZFG3VWmwd%2FXXXJiuyWSQ4k432MVvxm7xrgJGIej4; Path=/; HttpOnly

Date: Wed, 01 Feb 2017 11:30:03 GMT

Connection: keep-alive

Step 7: Install Nginx as a reverse proxy

In order to enable external web access, you need to setup a reverse proxy, Nginx, for example, to redirect traffic.

7.1 Install Nginx:

sudo yum install nginx -y

7.2 Modify Nginx's settings:

sudo vi /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

Find the location / {} segment within the http {} segment:

http {



    location / {

    }



}

Insert the below lines into the location / {} segment:

proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;

proxy_set_header Host $host;

proxy_http_version 1.1;

proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;

proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';

proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;

proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:5000;

The final result should be:

http {



location / {

    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:5000;

      proxy_http_version 1.1;

      proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;

      proxy_set_header Host $host;

      proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;

      proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';

      proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;

}



}

Save and quit:

:wq!

7.3 Start the Nginx service:

sudo systemctl start nginx.service

sudo systemctl enable nginx.service

7.4 Modify firewall rules in order to allow web access:

sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-service=http

sudo firewall-cmd --reload

Step 8: Web access

Point your web browser to http://203.0.113.1 to access Let's Chat, and then click the I need an account link to register a username for logging in.

That's it. Thanks for reading.

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