Zulip

Zulip is an open source threaded team chat that helps teams stay productive and focused.

Helm chart based on https://github.com/zulip/docker-zulip

Installation

Copy values-local.yaml.example, modify it as instructed in the comments, then install with the following commands:

helm dependency update                      # Get helm dependency charts
helm install -f ./values-local.yaml zulip . # Install Zulip

This will show a message on how to reach your Zulip installation and how to create your first realm. Wait for all your pods to be ready before you continue. You can run kubectl get pods to their current state. Once all pods are ready, you can run the commands to create a Realm, and you can reach Zulip following the instructions as well.

Installing on Minikube

You need to do a few things to make minikube serve Zulip with a TLS certificate. Without it, Zulip will not work.

If you haven't already, you need to set up cert-manager inside your minikube.

First, enable the "ingress" minikube addon (more info available here)

minikube addons enable ingress

Second, install cert-manager into your minikube cluster:

kubectl apply -f https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.8.0/cert-manager.yaml

Now you'll need to add an issuer that issues self-signed certificates. Copy this into a file, self-signed-issuer.yaml

apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
kind: ClusterIssuer
metadata:
  name: selfsigned
  namespace: cert-manager
spec:
  selfSigned: {}

Now apply the issuer: kubectl apply -f self-signed-issuer.yaml

We'll host Zulip on zulip.local. Add that to your /etc/hosts file and point it to the IP address you get with the command minikube ip.

Now you're ready to follow the installation instructions above.

Values

Key	Type	Default
affinity	object	`{}`
fullnameOverride	string	`""`
image.pullPolicy	string	`"IfNotPresent"`
image.repository	string	`"zulip/docker-zulip"`
image.tag	string	`"11.4-0"`
imagePullSecrets	list	`[]`
ingress.annotations	object	`{}`
ingress.enabled	bool	`false`
ingress.hosts[0].host	string	`"zulip.example.com"`
ingress.hosts[0].paths[0].path	string	`"/"`
ingress.tls	list	`[]`
livenessProbe.enabled	bool	`true`
livenessProbe.failureThreshold	int	`3`
livenessProbe.initialDelaySeconds	int	`10`
livenessProbe.periodSeconds	int	`10`
livenessProbe.successThreshold	int	`1`
livenessProbe.timeoutSeconds	int	`5`
memcached.memcachedUsername	string	`"zulip@localhost"`
nameOverride	string	`""`
nodeSelector	object	`{}`
podAnnotations	object	`{}`
podLabels	object	`{}`
podSecurityContext	object	`{}`
postSetup.scripts	object	`{}`
postgresql.auth.database	string	`"zulip"`
postgresql.auth.username	string	`"zulip"`
postgresql.image.repository	string	`"zulip/zulip-postgresql"`
postgresql.image.tag	int	`14`
postgresql.primary.containerSecurityContext.runAsUser	int	`0`
rabbitmq.auth.username	string	`"zulip"`
rabbitmq.persistence.enabled	bool	`false`
redis.architecture	string	`"standalone"`
redis.master.persistence.enabled	bool	`false`
resources	object	`{}`
securityContext	object	`{}`
service.port	int	`80`
service.type	string	`"ClusterIP"`
serviceAccount.annotations	object	`{}`
serviceAccount.create	bool	`true`
serviceAccount.name	string	`""`
sidecars	list	`[]`
startupProbe.enabled	bool	`true`
startupProbe.failureThreshold	int	`30`
startupProbe.initialDelaySeconds	int	`10`
startupProbe.periodSeconds	int	`10`
startupProbe.successThreshold	int	`1`
startupProbe.timeoutSeconds	int	`5`
statefulSetAnnotations	object	`{}`
statefulSetLabels	object	`{}`
tolerations	list	`[]`
zulip.environment.DISABLE_HTTPS	bool	`true`
zulip.environment.SECRETS_email_password	string	`"123456789"`
zulip.environment.SETTING_EMAIL_HOST	string	`""`
zulip.environment.SETTING_EMAIL_HOST_USER	string	`"noreply@example.com"`
zulip.environment.SETTING_EMAIL_PORT	string	`"587"`
zulip.environment.SETTING_EMAIL_USE_SSL	string	`"False"`
zulip.environment.SETTING_EMAIL_USE_TLS	string	`"True"`
zulip.environment.SETTING_EXTERNAL_HOST	string	`"zulip.example.com"`
zulip.environment.SETTING_ZULIP_ADMINISTRATOR	string	`"admin@example.com"`
zulip.environment.SSL_CERTIFICATE_GENERATION	string	`"self-signed"`
zulip.environment.ZULIP_AUTH_BACKENDS	string	`"EmailAuthBackend"`
zulip.persistence.accessMode	string	`"ReadWriteOnce"`
zulip.persistence.enabled	bool	`true`
zulip.persistence.size	string	`"10Gi"`
zulip.persistence.storageClass	string	`nil`

About this helm chart

This helm chart sets up a StatefulSet that runs a Zulip pod, that in turn runs the docker-zulip Dockerized Zulip version. Configuration of Zulip happens through environment variables that are defined in the values.yaml under zulip.environment. These environment variables are forwarded to the Docker container, you can read more about configuring Zulip through environment variables here.

Variables can be either a plain scalar value (i.e., a string or integer), or a projected value from a secret or configmap. For example:

SETTING_EXTERNAL_HOST: zulip.example.com
SECRETS_email_password:
  valueFrom:
    secretKeyRef:
      name: email
      key: password

Dependencies

The chart uses Memcached, RabbitMQ and Redis helm charts defined in the Bitnami Helm repository. Most of these are configured following their default settings, but you can check https://github.com/bitnami/charts/tree/master/bitnami/ for more configuration options of the subcharts.

For PostgreSQL the chart also uses the Bitnami chart to install it on the Kubernetes cluster. However, in this case we use Zulip's zulip-postgresql docker image, because it contains the Postgresql plugins that are needed to run Zulip.

Requirements

Repository	Name	Version
oci://registry-1.docker.io/bitnamicharts	memcached	7.4.16
oci://registry-1.docker.io/bitnamicharts	postgresql	15.5.32
oci://registry-1.docker.io/bitnamicharts	rabbitmq	14.7.0
oci://registry-1.docker.io/bitnamicharts	redis	20.1.4

Uh oh!