Zammad is free and open source web-based customer support system. It uses PostgreSQL or MySQL to store its data. It provides various features to manage customer support via many different channels like telephone, chat, facebook, twitter and email. You can manage and organize your support team for personalized and quick answers for effective customer support. Zammad also provides external authentication with facebook, twitter, and LinkedIn for quick login.
In this tutorial, we will install Zammad on CentOS 7.
Requirements
Zammad recommends at least 2GB RAM for installation. If you want to run elasticsearch on the same server then you will need at least 4GB RAM on your server. All the required dependencies will be installed throughout the tutorial. You will need a minimal installation of CentOS 7 with root access on it. If you are logged in as a non-root user, you can run sudo -i to switch to root user.
Installing Zammad
Before installing any package it is recommended that you update the packages and repository using the following command.
yum -y update
Now you will need to install EPEL repository as we will need to install few packages which are not available in the default yum repository. Run the following command to install EPEL repository.
yum -y install epel-releaseyum -y update
Zammad can be installed directly using YUM, but before that, you will need to add the Zammad repository to your server. Run the following commands to add Zammad repository in your system.
echo "[zammad]name=Repository for zammad/zammad application.baseurl=https://rpm.packager.io/gh/zammad/zammad/centos7/stableenabled=1" | tee /etc/yum.repos.d/zammad.repo
Once the repository is added, add Zammad public key using the following command.
rpm --import https://rpm.packager.io/key
You can install Zammad using following command.
yum -y install zammad
The above command will install Zammad on your system. During the installation it will install nginx and PostgreSQL. It will automatically initialize the database and will setup everything for you. Once the installation finishes, you can access Zammad using the following URL in your browser.
http://YourServerIP:3000
Zammad also creates a server block or virtual host file for nginx reverse proxy. For non-SSL proxy, you can use the same configuration file but you will need to make a small change in the configuration. Edit the Zammad nginx configuration file using the following command.
nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/zammad.conf
If you don’t have nano installed, you can run yum -y install nano command. Find the following line in the configuration.
server_name localhost;
Change the above line to the following.
server_name yourdomain.com
Change yourdomain.com with your actual domain or subdomain. Once done save the file and exit from the editor and restart the nginx web server using the following command.
systemctl restart nginx
If you want your users to access the application using HTTPS, you can also use SSL with Zammad. In this tutorial, we will generate SSL certificates from Let’s Encrypt client. If you want to use commercial SSL certificates instead, you can purchase SSL certificates from HostPresto.
To install Let’s Encrypt client also called Certbot run the following command.
yum -y install certbot
Once the installation finishes, run the following command to obtain the SSL certificates from Let’s Encrypt. Make sure that your domain is pointed to the server, the Let’s Encrypt will check the domain authority before providing the certificates. Make sure that you do not have nginx running at this moment.
certbot certonly --standalone -d yourdomain.com -d www.yourdomain.com
This command will run Let’s Encrypt client to obtain the certificates only but will not install it. --standalone tells the client to use the standalone web server for authentication of domain authority. -d yourdomain.com tells the domain name for which the certificates needs to be obtained. Provide your email address and accept the terms and condition. Once the certificates are generated, they are likely to be stored in the following directory.
/etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com
Where yourdomain.com is your actual domain. In the directory, you will find cert.pem which is your domains certificate and privkey.pem which is your certificate’s private key.
Let’s Encrypt SSL expires in 90 days, so it is recommended to set an automatic renewal for your certificates. Run the following command to open your crontab file.
crontab -e
Enter the following line into the crontab file.
30 1 * * 1 /usr/bin/certbot renew >> /var/log/le-renew.log
The above cron job will automatically run every Monday at 1:30 AM and if your certificates are due for expiry, it will automatically renew them.
As the SSL certificates are now generated, we can proceed further to configure nginx configuration file. Backup the existing Zammad proxy configuration using the following command.
mv /etc/nginx/conf.d/zammad.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/zammad.conf.bak
Now create a new server block for Zammad nginx configuration file using the following command.
nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/ssl-zammad.conf
Now copy and paste the following lines into the file.
#
# this is the SSL nginx config for zammad
#
upstream zammad {
server localhost:3000;
}
upstream zammad-websocket {
server localhost:6042;
}
server {
listen 80;
return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}
server {
listen 443 http2 ssl;
server_name yourdomain.com www.yourdomain.com;
root /opt/zammad/public;
ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/fullchain.pem;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/privkey.pem;
ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
ssl_ciphers "EECDH+AESGCM:EDH+AESGCM:AES256+EECDH:AES256+EDH";
ssl_ecdh_curve secp384r1;
ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m;
ssl_session_tickets off;
ssl_stapling on;
ssl_stapling_verify on;
resolver 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4 valid=300s;
resolver_timeout 5s;
add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=63072000; includeSubdomains";
add_header X-Frame-Options DENY;
add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff;
access_log /var/log/nginx/zammad.access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/zammad.error.log;
client_max_body_size 50M;
location ~ ^/(assets/|robots.txt|humans.txt|favicon.ico) {
expires max;
}
location /ws {
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection "Upgrade";
proxy_set_header CLIENT_IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_read_timeout 86400;
proxy_pass http://zammad-websocket;
}
location / {
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
proxy_set_header CLIENT_IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_read_timeout 180;
proxy_pass http://zammad;
gzip on;
gzip_types text/plain text/xml text/css image/svg+xml application/javascript application/x-javascript application$
gzip_proxied any;
}
}
In the above configuration change yourdomain.com to your actual domain. Also, make sure that the path to your SSL certificate and private key are correct. Once done save the file and exit from the editor and restart the nginx web server using the following command.
systemctl restart nginx
Now you will need to disable your SELinux because reverse proxy does not work with SELinux policies. To temporary disable SELinux without restarting the server, run the following command.
setenforce 0
To completely disable the SELinux you will need to edit /etc/selinux/config file.
nano /etc/selinux/config
If you don’t have nano installed, you can install it using yum -y install nano Find the following line:
SELINUX=enforcing
Change it to:
SELINUX=disabled
Now you will need to reboot your server so that the new configuration can take effect. Once the server is up again you can access your application at the following URL.
For non-SSL:http://yourdomain.com
For SSL:https://yourdomain.com
You will see the following interface.
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Click on Setup new system button and you will be taken to a new interface in which you will need to create the initial administrator account. Fill the details as asked and click on Create button.
HP_NO_IMG/data/uploads/users/e840080c-7322-4497-85c0-150182bd4c02/1032388416.png” alt=”” />
In next step, you will need to provide your organization details. Provide the name of your organization and upload the logo. The system will automatically detect the URL of your system.
HP_NO_IMG/data/uploads/users/e840080c-7322-4497-85c0-150182bd4c02/1687458500.png” alt=”” />
Click Next to go to the next interface. Choose how emails will be sent from your application. You can choose the local MTA, or SMTP. Choose according and provide the details of your mail server. It is recommended to use SMTP for sending emails.
HP_NO_IMG/data/uploads/users/e840080c-7322-4497-85c0-150182bd4c02/1836857824.png” alt=”” />
Once done you will be taken to your administrative dashboard, which will look like shown below.
HP_NO_IMG/data/uploads/users/e840080c-7322-4497-85c0-150182bd4c02/1097247969.png” alt=”” />
Conclusion
In this tutorial, we have learned how to install Zammad ticketing system on CentOS 7 server. You can now easily create a support desk for your organization.
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