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Setting up Quassel on Debian (Part 2: Quassel-Web)

2 min read

Warning

This post is very old. I no longer use Quassel, but Matrix. Quassel is mostly still alive, and you’ll have to find a more up-to-date guide somewhere else. (I recommend docker compose!)

This post is continues on from Part 1, where I installed quassel, and ended up with a working QuasselCore with valid SSL.

Now, I’d like to get a Web Chat working, and a search backend to easily search IRC logs.

I’m basing this on a vultr guide just because I used this plus a bunch of issues and random help pages to get it working.

Personally I have my quassel running on sub-domain, instead of the root with /quassel, using sockets to connect instead of http proxy, for extra security and possibily extra speed.

Lets Start!

  1. Create a new user quassel-webserver with useradd -d /opt/quassel-webserver -M -r quassel-webserver
  2. git clone https://github.com/magne4000/quassel-webserver.git /opt/quassel-webserver
  3. chown -R quassel-webserver:quasselweb-server /opt/quassel-webserver
  4. su - quassel-webserver
  5. I then followed this issue, specifcially the last comment to get it actually installed.
  6. npm install --production
  7. copy settings.js to settings-user.js and make the following changes 
    host: 'localhost',
forcedefault: 'true',
  8. Put that service file into /lib/systemd/system/quassel-webserver.service
  9. Enable and start the service.
  10. Copy nginx server block into /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/chat.conf and edit the domains to match correctly.

Nginx server block

This runs on chat.domain.com, and has an external location for certbot acme.

server {
	listen 80;
	server_name chat.domain.com;
	location '/.well-known/acme-challenge/' {
		root /var/www/acme/; #certbot
	}
	location / {
		return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
	}
}
 
server {
	listen 443;
	ssl on;
	server_name chat.domain.com;
	ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/chat.domain.com/fullchain.pem;
	ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/chat.domain.com/privkey.pem;
  
	location / {
		proxy_pass http://unix:/var/run/quassel-webserver/quassel-webserver.sock;
		proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
		proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
		proxy_http_version 1.1;
		proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
		proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
		proxy_set_header Host $host;
		proxy_redirect off;
	}
}

SystemD service (With sockets)

[Unit]
Description=Quassel Web server for web-based IRC chatting
After=local-fs.target network.target
 
[Service]
Type=simple
User=quassel-web
# Run ExecStartPre with root-permissions to create socket
# Directory creation and socket deletion can fail, but chown ownership is required
PermissionsStartOnly=true
ExecStartPre=-/bin/mkdir /var/run/quassel-web
ExecStartPre=/bin/chown -R quassel-web:quassel-web /var/run/quassel-web/
ExecStartPre=-/bin/rm /var/run/quassel-web/quassel-web.sock
# Run ExecStart with User/Group permissions above
ExecStart=/usr/bin/node "/opt/quassel-web/quassel_web_root/qweb/quassel-webserver/app.js" --socket="/var/run/quassel-web/quassel-web.sock"
 
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

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