Installing Modmail on Ubuntu

⚠️

For safety reasons, DO NOT install Modmail with a root user. A misbehaving or malicious plugin installed on your Modmail bot can easily access your entire system. If you are unsure how to create a new user on Linux, see DigitalOcean’s tutorial: How To Create a New Sudo-enabled User (opens in a new tab).

Prerequisites

Root access (sudo), not root user
Minimum 1 GB of RAM
At least 2 GB available disk space
Tested releases:
- Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish)

Dependencies

We will be using the following dependencies:

Python 3.11
Tools: git, wget, nano, software-properties-common
Additional Modmail requirements: libffi-dev, g++

ℹ️

All code blocks should be executed in bash and line by line unless specified otherwise.

To install these dependencies, we will be using apt.

We recommend adding the deadsnakes ppa to install Python 3.11:

sudo apt update
sudo apt -y install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:deadsnakes/ppa

Now install the pre-requirements with apt, you can copy and run these 3 lines at once:

sudo apt -y install python3.11 python3.11-dev python3.11-venv python3-pip \
                    libffi-dev g++ \
                    git nano

After that, install pipx and poetry with:

python3.11 -m pip install pipx
python3.11 -m pipx install poetry
python3.11 -m pipx ensurepath

Failed to install Python 3.11?

You can manually compile Python instead of adding using the Deadsnakes PPA. Compiling Python may take a while (est. 5-10 minutes).

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install -y software-properties-common \
                    libffi-dev g++ \
                    git wget nano \
                    build-essential zlib1g-dev libncurses5-dev \
                    libgdbm-dev libnss3-dev libssl-dev \
                    libreadline-dev libffi-dev libsqlite3-dev libbz2-dev
wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.11.7/Python-3.11.7.tgz
tar xzf Python-3.11.7.tgz
cd Python-3.11.7
./configure --enable-optimizations 
make altinstall

Now, restart your OS or reinstate your shell session for the PATH change to take effect.

Installation

Clone and change directory into the Modmail folder with:

git clone https://github.com/modmail-dev/modmail
cd modmail

Inside the Modmail folder, Install pipenv and its Python packages with:

poetry install --no-root

Create a file named .env with nano and paste all the environmental variables (secrets) needed to run the bot via right-clicking in the nano editor. Refer to the Getting Started page for instructions on where to obtain these values.

nano .env

After that, press Ctrl+O and Enter to save your changes. Exit the nano editor with Ctrl+X.

ℹ️

If using the nano editor is a bit of a learning curve, you can always FTP into your server using software like WinSCP (opens in a new tab) to edit the .env file manually with your preferred GUI-based editor like Notepad.

After your .env file is ready, you can now go ahead and try running your bot with:

poetry run python bot.py

If no error shows up, it means your bot is now running correctly. You can stop the bot from running with Ctrl+C to continue using your terminal.

Set up auto-restart

The recommended way to set up auto-restart on Ubuntu is to install and use pm2 (opens in a new tab).

sudo apt install npm -y && sudo npm i pm2 -g
pm2 start modmail.sh --name "modmail"

Inspect the logs with:

pm2 logs modmail

make sure that pm2 stays active and persistent between machine restarts:

pm2 save && pm2 startup

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