Installation of Zettelstore on a server

You want to provide a shared Zettelstore that can be used from your various devices. Installing Zettelstore as a Linux service is not that hard.

Grab the appropriate executable and copy it into the appropriate directory:

# sudo mv zettelstore /usr/local/bin/zettelstore

Create a group named zettelstore:

# sudo groupadd --system zettelstore

Create a system user of that group, named zettelstore, with a home folder:

# sudo useradd --system --gid zettelstore \
    --create-home --home-dir /var/lib/zettelstore \
    --shell /usr/sbin/nologin \
    --comment "Zettelstore server" \
    zettelstore

Create a systemd service file and store it into /etc/systemd/system/zettelstore.service:

[Unit]
Description=Zettelstore
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=zettelstore
Group=zettelstore
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/zettelstore run -d /var/lib/zettelstore
WorkingDirectory=/var/lib/zettelstore

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Double-check everything. Now you can enable and start the zettelstore as a service:

# sudo systemctl daemon-reload
# sudo systemctl enable zettelstore
# sudo systemctl start zettelstore

Use the commands systemctl and journalctl to manage the service, e.g.:

# sudo systemctl status zettelstore  # verify that it is running
# sudo journalctl -u zettelstore     # obtain the output of the running zettelstore

A word of caution: Never expose Zettelstore directly to the Internet. As a personal service, Zettelstore is not designed to handle all aspects of the open web. For instance, it lacks support for certificate handling, which is necessary for encrypted HTTP connections. To ensure security, place Zettelstore behind a proxy server designed for Internet exposure. For more details, see: External server to encrypt message transport.