How to install KChat on POP! OS Latest?

KChat is a free, open-source, self-hosted chat application that lets you chat within your organization. In this tutorial, we will show you how to install KChat on POP! OS Latest.

Requirements

Before proceeding with the installation, make sure you have the following requirements.

A VPS or dedicated server with a minimum of 2GB RAM, 2 CPU cores, and 10GB of free disk space
POP! OS Latest installed on your machine
A non-root user with sudo privileges
SSH access to your server

Step 1: Install LEMP stack

The first step is to install the LEMP stack on your server. LEMP stack consists of Linux, Nginx, MySQL/MariaDB, and PHP.

To install LEMP stack on POP! OS Latest, open the terminal and run the following command:

sudo apt update

This will update the package repository.

To install the LEMP stack, run the following command:

sudo apt install nginx mariadb-server mariadb-client php-fpm php-mysql

Once the installation is complete, start the nginx and MySQL services using the following command:

sudo systemctl start nginx
sudo systemctl start mysql

Verify that nginx and MySQL are running by running the following command:

sudo systemctl status nginx
sudo systemctl status mysql

Step 2: Install Git

The next step is to install Git. Git is a version control system and is required to download KChat from Github.

To install Git, run the following command:

sudo apt install git

Step 3: Clone the KChat repository

Now that we have installed Git, it's time to clone the KChat repository. To do so, run the following command:

cd /var/www/
sudo git clone https://github.com/php-kchat/kchat.git

Once the repository is cloned, you should see a folder named "kchat".

Step 4: Configure Nginx

The next step is to configure Nginx. To do so, create a new server block configuration file using the following command:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/kchat

Paste the following Nginx configuration into the file:

server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  example.com;

    root /var/www/kchat;
    index index.php;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock;
    }
}

Make sure to change the domain name and the PHP version based on your configuration.

Once the configuration file is created, save and exit.

Next, disable the default Nginx server block configuration and enable the KChat server block configuration using the following commands:

sudo unlink /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/kchat /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

Lastly, test the Nginx configuration using the following command:

sudo nginx -t

If no errors are displayed, reload the Nginx configuration using the following command:

sudo systemctl reload nginx

Step 5: Create a MySQL Database and User

The next step is to create a MySQL database and user for KChat. To do so, run the following commands:

sudo mysql -u root -p

Enter your MySQL root password when prompted.

Once you're logged in to MySQL, run the following commands to create a new database and user:

CREATE DATABASE kchat;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON kchat.* TO 'kchatuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Make sure to replace the "password" with a strong password.

Step 6: Configure KChat

The final step is to configure KChat.

Rename the ".env.example" file to ".env" using the following command:

cd /var/www/kchat
sudo mv .env.example .env

Edit the ".env" file using the following command and replace the database information with the information you set up in the previous step:

sudo nano .env

Finally, run the following commands to install the required dependencies and set the appropriate permissions:

sudo composer install
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/kchat
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/kchat

Conclusion

Congratulations! You have successfully installed KChat on your POP! OS Latest server. You can now access KChat by navigating to your server's IP address in your web browser.