Zammad is an open-source help desk platform that makes managing customer support easy. It brings together emails, chats, and social media in one place, helping teams respond quickly and stay organized. You can customize it, track tickets, and automate tasks to improve your support workflow. In this article, I will show you how to install Zammad with Elasticsearch on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.
The hardware requirements will depend on your needs and the number of agent users. To start, create a server with at least 12GB of RAM, 6 CPU cores, and 100GB of disk space.
Install Elasticsearch
Before we begin exploring and installing Zammad, it is recommended to install Elasticsearch first.
SSH into your server and run the following commands.
apt update && apt install apt-transport-https
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/elasticsearch.gpg] https://artifacts.elastic.co/packages/7.x/apt stable main"| \
tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/elastic-7.x.list > /dev/null
curl -fsSL https://artifacts.elastic.co/GPG-KEY-elasticsearch | \
gpg --dearmor | tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/elasticsearch.gpg> /dev/null
apt update
apt install elasticsearch
/usr/share/elasticsearch/bin/elasticsearch-plugin install ingest-attachmentStart the Elasticsearch instance and enable it to start at boot time.
systemctl start elasticsearch
systemctl enable elasticsearchZammad requires a few additional options to be added to the Elasticsearch configuration.
vim /etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.ymlAdd the following into it:
http.max_content_length: 400mb
indices.query.bool.max_clause_count: 2000Restart it with systemctl restart elasticsearch.
We have completed the Elasticsearch setup. After installing Zammad, we will integrate it with Elasticsearch later.
Install Zammad
There are different ways to install Zammad. We will focus on installing it from the Zammad repository using the package method.
Check if your server has the correct locale set by running locale | grep "LANG=". It should return something like en_US.UTF-8 or similar. If the output is empty, set it using the following commands.
apt install locales
locale-gen en_US.UTF-8
echo "LANG=en_US.UTF-8" > /etc/default/localeWe will now add the Zammad repository.
curl -fsSL https://dl.packager.io/srv/zammad/zammad/key | \
gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/pkgr-zammad.gpg> /dev/null
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/pkgr-zammad.gpg] https://dl.packager.io/srv/deb/zammad/zammad/stable/ubuntu 24.04 main"| \
sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/zammad.list > /dev/nullOnce done, it’s time to update the packages and install Zammad.
apt update
apt install zammadSet up the firewall and allow the necessary ports. Port 22 is for SSH.
ufw allow 80
ufw allow 443
ufw allow 22
ufw enableStart and enable the following services:
systemctl start zammad
systemctl enable zammad
systemctl start zammad-web
systemctl enable zammad-web
systemctl start zammad-worker
systemctl enable zammad-worker
systemctl start zammad-websocket
systemctl enable zammad-websocketConnect Elasticsearch
At this point, Zammad is installed and running. We can now connect Elasticsearch to it and perform the initial indexing.
Remember, this is for Elasticsearch 7, not 8.
Run the following commands:
zammad run rails r "Setting.set('es_url', 'http://localhost:9200')"
zammad run rake zammad:searchindex:rebuildWeb server setup
Zammad, by default, installs and configures Nginx for us. What we need to do is configure it with our domain name and install the necessary packages to obtain an SSL certificate.
Go to /etc/nginx/sites-available/ and edit the zammad.conf file. Look for the line that says server_name localhost; and change localhost to your actual domain name.
To obtain a certificate and automate the entire process, we need to install the python3-certbot-nginx package.
apt install python3-certbot-nginxOnce completed, run the following command to obtain an SSL certificate. Be sure to replace your domain name in the command. This will also update the zammad.conf file and automatically redirect to HTTPS.
certbot --nginx -d DOMAIN.COMWith that, your Zammad instance is now ready to use. Browse to the domain name in your browser and go through the initial setup screens, which will prompt you to set up a username, password, SMTP settings, and more.
You can always refer to the Zammad documentation for further reading.
