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