Debian

Deploy Modmail on Debian / Raspberry Pi OS.

For safety reasons, DO NOT install Modmail with a root user. A misbehaving or malicious plugin installed on your Modmail bot can easily access your entire system. If you are unsure how to create a new user on Linux, see DigitalOcean’s tutorial: How To Create a New Sudo-enabled User.

Raspberry Pi OS 11 Bullseye and Raspberry Pi OS 10 Buster are based on Debian 11 Bullseye and Debian 10 Buster respectively so you can essentially follow this guide if you're running any of the OS mentioned above.

Prerequisites

1. Root access (sudo).

2. Minimum 1GB of RAM

3. At least 2GB available disk space.

4. Supported releases:

   • Debian 11 Bullseye

   • Debian 10 Buster

   • Raspberry Pi OS 11 Bullseye

   • Raspberry Pi OS 10 Buster

Dependencies

• Python 3.9 / 3.10

• Tools: git, wget, nano

• Additional Modmail requirements: libcairo2-dev, libffi-dev, g++

All code blocks should be executed in bash and line by line unless specified otherwise.

To install these dependencies, we will be using apt.

Debian 11 Bullseye / Raspberry Pi OS 11 Bullseye

sudo apt update
sudo apt -y install python3 python3-dev python3-venv python3-pip libcairo2-dev libffi-dev g++ git wget nano

At the time of writing, this will install Python 3.9 from Debian's repository.

Debian 10 Buster / Raspberry Pi OS 10 Buster

You will need to manually compile Python 3.10 from source. Compiling Python may take a while (est. 5-10 minutes). Make sure to run line 2-7 all at once.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y  # Update and upgrade all packages
sudo apt install -y software-properties-common \
                    libcairo2-dev libffi-dev g++ \
                    git wget nano \
                    build-essential zlib1g-dev libncurses5-dev \
                    libgdbm-dev libnss3-dev libssl-dev \
                    libreadline-dev libffi-dev libsqlite3-dev libbz2-dev
wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.10.9/Python-3.10.9.tgz
tar xzf Python-3.10.9.tgz
cd Python-3.10.9
./configure --enable-optimizations 
sudo make altinstall

After that, ensure pip is installed and updated for Python 3.10 with:

python3.10 -m ensurepip --upgrade

Then log out and log back in to continue the installation steps.

Installing Bot

Clone and change directory into the Modmail folder with:

git clone https://github.com/modmail-dev/modmail
cd modmail

Inside the Modmail folder, Install pipenv and the bot dependencies with:

python3.9 -m pip install pipenv
python3.9 -m pipenv install --python 3.9

Replace 3.9 with 3.10 on the command above if you followed Debian 10 Buster method previously.

Create a file named .env with nano and paste all the environmental variables (secrets) needed to run the bot via right-clicking in the nano editor. Refer to the steps in the parent Installation page to find where to obtain these.

nano .env

After that, press Ctrl+O and Enter to save your changes. Exit the nano editor with Ctrl+X.

If using the nano editor is a bit of a learning curve, you can always FTP into your server using software like WinSCP to edit the .env file manually with your preferred GUI-based editor like Notepad.

After your .env file is ready, you can now go ahead and try running your bot with:

python3.9 -m pipenv run bot

Replace 3.9 with 3.10 on the command above if you followed Debian 10 Buster method previously.

If no error shows up, it means your bot is now running correctly. You can stop the bot from running with Ctrl+C to continue using your terminal.