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
), notroot
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++
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
![Hello](/_next/image?url=%2Fvps-env.png&w=1200&q=75)
After that, press Ctrl+O
and Enter
to save your changes. Exit the nano
editor with Ctrl+X
.
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