Mattermost Shared Storage Recipe

Problem

You are running a Mattermost cluster and want to use a shared data directory for file uploads, user images, and custom branding logos.

Solution

Before you start, make sure there is a Samba/Windows share accessible to all servers in the cluster.

1. Install cifs-utils so you can conn

sudo apt install cifs-utils

2. Create the directory where you'd like to mount the shared drive:

sudo mkdir -p /media/mmst-data/

3. Create the file /opt/mattermost/config/smbcredentials with the correct username and password to access the file share

username=samba_user
password=samba_password

4. Add the following line to the /etc/fstab file:

//<SHARE HOST>/<SHARE NAME>  /media/mmst-data  cifs  credentials=/opt/mattermost/config/smbcredentials,uid=998,gid=998,iocharset=utf8,rw  0  0

Note: Replace the uid and gid values with the user id and group id of the user running Mattermost on your system

5. Mount the shared drive:

sudo mount -a

6. Copy over any existing data:

rsync -av --progress /opt/mattermost/data/ /media/mmst-data/

7. Change the FileSettings.Directory value in the config.json to the path of the new shared directory.

8. Restart Mattermost

Discussion

This guide used Ubuntu 18.04 as a reference system. The steps for most supported operating systems are similar.

Using a shared network device has obvious advantages over local storage. First, when running in a cluster it ensures all Mattermost application servers have access to the files, so links will always work. Second, this allows Mattermost to run on a system with minimal disk space. Finally, this can leverage your existing storage and backup systems, putting all your organization's files in one place.