Chatcola server

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This repository hosts the chatcola server needed to self-host reliance and storage of your messaging.

Getting started

With docker (the easier way)

• run docker install chatcola/chatcola
• run docker run -e THIS_INSTANCE_ADDRESS={{your instance address here}}

Without docker

• Install node.js 14:

  Linux / MacOS:

  curl -s https://install-node.now.sh | bash -s --

    Windows:     download installer from here

• Install chatcola p2p server:

  npm install -g chatcola-server

• Run the server

  chatcola-server

• If you plan to use the server for longer (i.e. raspberry pi), daemonize it with some process manager, for example:

 $ npm install -g pm2 
 $ pm2 run "chatcola-server"

you will be asked for instance address, give it a string that's easy for you to remember (it can be anything provided no one has taken it before, i.e. "foobar") -

To host the chatroom on your instance insert

webrtc:{{YOUR INSTANCE ADDRESS GOES HERE}}

when creating a chatroom at chatcola.com/start

For example, if you have address foobar, then you will have to insert webrtc:foobar

If you want to change the address later run the server with the --resetAddress flag:

chatcola-server --resetAddress

you will be then guided through the process of assigning address again. Note that all chatrooms created beforehand will be left fatherless and impossible to use again.

Hosting a http instance

This comes a bit harder than hosting a webrtc instance, but provides a more performant and probably more stable experience.

You'll need a linux computer (probably a VPS) with a public IP

1. Point your domain name (you can get a free one at Freenom.com) to the VPS.

2. Make a ~/.chatcola-http directory

3. Copy your SSL cert files (they need to be named fullchain.pem for the cert and privkey.pem for the private key) to ~/.chatcola-http directory

4. At this point you should have already installed chatcola-server from npm and prepared your home directory to look like so:

/home/<your-username>/
├── .chatcola-http/ # <----- notice the dot
│    ├── privkey.pem
|    |── fullchain.pem

You are now ready to launch the chatcola server.

• Run

  chatcola-server-http

Available options are:

• PORT - if using this, then also remember to change the port from 7777 in THIS_INSTANCE_ADDRESS. So if you set PORT to be, for example, 5050 and you have domain example.com, you have to set THIS_INSTANCE_ADDRESS to example.com:5050. You can do a reverse proxy with nginx/apache/caddy and bind port 443 to your chatcola instance, then you won't have to specify the port in this variable.

• SHOULD_REPORT_ERRORS Set this to false to disable our sentry.

Both of them should be set as environent variables.

Building from source

1. Clone the repository and run npm install
2. Make the script executable - chmod +x ./scripts/build
3. Either run ./scripts/build to build for webrtc or ./scripts/build http for http. Your build will be in build/p2p or build/http.

License

This program is free software. For alternate licensing arrangements contact us at [email protected]