Installation

To begin with, you will need the compiled jar file. You can either download it from the releases section of this repo, or by building it from source.

On linux systems, place the jar file in a directory such as /var/lib/chatto or /var/www/chatto.

Place the below application.properties config file in the same directory -

chatto.datasource.username=chatto_user
chatto.datasource.password=test
chatto.datasource.database-name=chatto_db
chatto.datasource.url=localhost
chatto.datasource.port=3306
chatto.datasource.params=useSSL=false

Then you would need to configure a reverse proxy, preferably with SSL. You can obtain a free SSL certificate from letsencrypt (be sure to donate if possible). Below is a sample nginx config -

upstream chat {
    server 127.0.0.1:8080;
}

# Expires map
map $sent_http_content_type $expires {
    default                    off;
    text/html                  epoch;
    text/css                   max;
    application/javascript     max;
    ~image/                    max;
}
server {
    server_name chat.example.com;
    access_log /var/log/nginx/chat.acess.log;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/chat.acess.log;

    expires $expires;   
	
    location / {
       proxy_pass http://localhost:8080;
       proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
       proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
       proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
       proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    }
    

    #listen [::]:443 ssl ipv6only=on; # managed by Certbot
    listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/chat.example.com/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/chat.example.com/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
    include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot

}

server {
    if ($host = chat.example.com) {
        return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
    } # managed by Certbot
    
    listen 80 ;
    listen [::]:80;
    server_name chat.example.com;
    return 404; # managed by Certbot
}

Place the file as chat.conf in

/etc/nginx/sites-available/

(depending on your linux distro this may differ).

Now make a symlink -

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/chat.conf /nginx/sites-enabled

verify configration -

sudo nginx -t

and restart nginx -

sudo systemctl restart nginx

Now create a linux user -

sudo useradd -r -s /bin/false chatto

Next create a systemd script making use of the created user-

[Unit]
Description=System Daemon for Chatto

[Service]
WorkingDirectory=/path/to/chatto-jar/
ExecStart=/path/to/java -jar Chatto.jar --spring.profiles.active=prod 
User=chatto
Type=simple

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Take note of the spring profiles argument. It enabled the production profile. Omitting it would run the app in dev profile.

Name the file chatto.service and place it in

/etc/systemd/systemd

Reload systemd daemon -

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Then start the service -

sudo systemctl start chatto

If everything went well then the app should start. Check with

sudo systemctl status chatto

and if it fails to start do


sudo journalctl -u chatto

to check the cause of the failure.

Default Password

When running the jar file for the first time, a file containing the default(randomly generated) password for the admin account will have been generated in the same directory as the jar.

Please make note of the password, and then delete the file.