Postbot Deployment

Deploys postbot (Mattermost broadcast bot) and webui (Django admin) as rootless Podman containers managed by podman compose.

Prerequisites

• Podman and podman-compose installed on the server
• The container images published to Docker Hub (./publish.sh from the main repo)

Fresh server setup

Run the bootstrap script — it clones the repo, sets up the systemd service, and prepares all directories:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CollegiumAcademicum/mattermost_bots_deployment/main/setup.sh | bash

Then fill in the required values in ~/postbot/.env:

nano ~/postbot/.env   # fill in all CHANGE_ME values

Optionally place your LDAP CA certificate:

cp /path/to/ca.pem ~/postbot/data/certs/ca.pem

Finally, pull images and start:

cd ~/postbot && ./start.sh

After this the stack starts automatically at every boot.

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Manual setup (alternative)

1. Clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/CollegiumAcademicum/mattermost_bots_deployment.git ~/postbot
cd ~/postbot

2. Configure

cp .env.example .env
nano .env   # fill in all CHANGE_ME values

3. Install the systemd service

mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user
cp postbot.service ~/.config/systemd/user/
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable postbot.service
loginctl enable-linger $USER   # start at boot without login

4. Start

./start.sh

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Update

Pull the latest images and restart:

./start.sh

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Directory structure

~/postbot/
├── .env                      # secrets — never commit this
├── docker-compose.yaml
├── postbot.service           # systemd unit (installed by setup.sh)
├── setup.sh                  # bootstrap script for fresh servers
├── start.sh                  # pull latest images and restart
├── stop.sh                   # stop all containers
└── data/
    ├── postbot/              → mounted into postbot at /app/data
    │   ├── channels.toml     # channel group configuration
    │   ├── broadcast_log.db
    │   ├── tasks/            # custom task plugins (.py files)
    │   └── logs/
    ├── webui/                → mounted into webui at /app/data
    └── certs/                → mounted into webui at /app/certs (read-only)
        └── ca.pem            # LDAP CA certificate — required if using LDAP over TLS

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Common commands

podman compose restart postbot   # restart postbot
podman compose restart webui     # restart webui
podman compose stop webui        # stop a service
podman compose logs postbot      # container logs
podman compose down              # stop everything

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Troubleshooting

webui can't reach postbot

Check both containers are on the internal network:

podman network inspect postbot_internal

Port 8080 not reachable

# Fedora/RHEL
sudo firewall-cmd --add-port=8080/tcp --permanent && sudo firewall-cmd --reload
# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo ufw allow 8080/tcp

podman compose pull fails with auth error

podman login docker.io

Service not starting at boot

Make sure linger is enabled — without it the user service only starts on login:

loginctl enable-linger $USER
loginctl show-user $USER | grep Linger   # should show Linger=yes