How to install Zulip on Ubuntu/Debian

Zulip is open-source collaboration and chat software created by Jeff Arnold, Waseem Daher, Jessica McKellar, and Tim Abbott in 2012. Today, it is one of the leading free and open-source alternatives to Slack, with more than 500.000 contributions by over a thousand people.

As a result, Zulip has a significantly larger and more active development community than other modern open-source chat solutions such as Mattermost, Rocket.Chat and Matrix. It includes a native Web interface, but there are also clients available for most operating systems for desktops and smartphones in their respective stores.

It also has more than 120 native integrations, for example monitoring systems such as Grafana, Zabbix, Nagios, BigBlueButton, etc. It also supports different types of authentication, including LDAP.

Installation

Installing Zulip is really simple: it includes an automated installation script and will be ready in a matter of minutes. Simply run the following commands on a new server with a Debian-based distribution.

First, update the packages by running:

# apt update && apt upgrade -y

Once finished, go to the temporary directory and download Zulip there:

# cd /tmp && curl -fLO https://download.zulip.com/server/zulip-server-latest.tar.gz

Next, extract the downloaded file:

# tar -xf zulip-server-latest.tar.gz

And run the installation script with the certbot option; remember to change the example email address and subdomain (remember to have a DNS A record pointing to the server's IP address beforehand for the record you are going to use):

# ./zulip-server-*/scripts/setup/install --certbot --email=usuario@ejemplo.es --hostname=zulip.ejemplo.es

The Zulip installation will run and finish in a few minutes; remember that it will ask you to accept the agreement with Let's Encrypt for the SSL certificate. 

When the installation finishes, it will provide a link to create the organization, as in the following message:

Please visit the following secure single-use link to register your new Zulip organization:

https://zulip.ejemplo.es/new/kyjls6xoolyzyksg3zcm5r3s

If the link expires, you can obtain a new one by running the following:

# su zulip -c '/home/zulip/deployments/current/manage.py generate_realm_creation_link'

Finally, open the link in a browser and complete the setup:

First enter your email address and then complete the form: 

Once finished, Zulip will be ready for you to start using:

We hope this article has helped you. Have you tried it? Leave us your comments! 🙂

Remember, if you have questions about this or any other matter related to your servers on Clouding, do not hesitate to write to soporte@clouding.io We are here for whatever you need!