fluxcoil wiki

I'm playing with self hosting Mastodon. Setup is not trivial, and everybody has special requirements. Common guides do this:

• plain compilation: which is meant to be installed on VMs or bare metal systems
• docker container: which is containerized, but using docker and docker-compose instead of podman. Also, here many small containers are used, not one single 'mastodon container'

As for my requirements: I have a VM, where I run an nginx as frontend/reverse proxy, and then I run services like Lychee-picture hosting in podman containers. I want to run Mastodon in a single podman container. Mastodon does like the other services just plain http, and the nginx as frontend does the https encapsulation. Following steps are for this setup.

I use a Debian bookworm system which is a KVM guest at a provider. I run systemd in the Debian container, for easy execution of the Mastodon services like Postgresql.

mkdir -p ~/mastodon/build-bookworm
cd mastodon
cat >build-bookworm/Containerfile<<EOT
FROM docker.io/library/debian:bookworm
ENV DEBIAN_FRONTEND noninteractive
EXPOSE 80

RUN apt update && apt upgrade -y && \
   apt install -y curl wget gnupg apt-transport-https \
   lsb-release ca-certificates sudo systemd procps
CMD [ "/lib/systemd/systemd" ]
EOT

# build locally
podman build -t mastodon build-bookworm/

# run locally
podman run -p 127.0.0.1:8084:80 --name mastodon -d \
	--security-opt seccomp=unconfined \
	localhost/mastodon /lib/systemd/systemd

# get a shell
podman exec -it mastodon bash

## install nodejs 16
## https://github.com/nodesource/distributions#installation-instructions
mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/gpgkey/nodesource-repo.gpg.key | \
        gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/nodesource.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/nodesource.gpg] https://deb.nodesource.com/node_16.x nodistro main" | \
        tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nodesource.list
apt update
apt install -y nodejs

#### postgresql repo
wget -nv -O /usr/share/keyrings/postgresql.asc https://www.postgresql.org/media/keys/ACCC4CF8.asc
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/postgresql.asc] http://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt $(lsb_release -cs)-pgdg main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/postgresql.list

#### system packages
apt update
apt install -y \
  imagemagick ffmpeg libpq-dev libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev file git-core \
  g++ libprotobuf-dev protobuf-compiler pkg-config nodejs gcc autoconf \
  bison build-essential libssl-dev libyaml-dev libreadline6-dev \
  zlib1g-dev libncurses5-dev libffi-dev libgdbm-dev nvi \
  nginx redis-server redis-tools postgresql postgresql-contrib \
  certbot python3-certbot-nginx libidn11-dev libicu-dev libjemalloc-dev

systemctl start redis postgresql
sudo -u postgres psql
CREATE USER mastodon CREATEDB;
alter user mastodon with password 'mypasswordhere';
\q

#### yarn/corepack
apt install -y npm
npm install -g corepack
corepack enable
yarn set version classic

adduser --disabled-login mastodon
usermod -s /bin/bash mastodon
su - mastodon

git clone https://github.com/rbenv/rbenv.git ~/.rbenv
cd ~/.rbenv && src/configure && make -C src
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'eval "$(rbenv init -)"' >> ~/.bashrc
echo "alias ll='ls -al'" >> ~/.bashrc
exec bash
git clone https://github.com/rbenv/ruby-build.git ~/.rbenv/plugins/ruby-build

RUBY_CONFIGURE_OPTS=--with-jemalloc rbenv install 3.2.3
rbenv global 3.2.3
gem install bundler --no-document

cd /home/mastodon
git clone https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon.git live && cd live
# git checkout $(git tag -l | grep -v 'rc[0-9]*$' | sort -V | tail -n 1)
git tag -l | grep -v 'rc[0-9]*$' | sort -V
git checkout v4.2.1

bundle config deployment 'true'
bundle config without 'development test'
bundle install -j$(getconf _NPROCESSORS_ONLN)
yarn install --pure-lockfile

RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake mastodon:setup
# https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/config/
PostgreSQL host: localhost
PostgreSQL port: 5432
Name of PostgreSQL database: mastodon_production
Name of PostgreSQL user: mastodon
Password of PostgreSQL user: mypasswordhere
Redis host: localhost
Redis port, password: accept defaults

# empty white page, but mastodon favicon
# journalctl -u mastodon-web
# https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/10926
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails assets:clobber
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails assets:precompile

exit

# special nginx config so mastodon works with tcp/80:
# https://blog.vyvojari.dev/mastodon-behind-a-reverse-proxy-without-ssl-https/
cp /home/mastodon/live/dist/nginx.conf /etc/nginx/sites-available/mastodon
ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/mastodon /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/mastodon
chmod go+rx /home/mastodon/
systemctl start nginx
cp /home/mastodon/live/dist/mastodon-*.service /etc/systemd/system/
systemctl start mastodon-sidekiq mastodon-streaming mastodon-web

After that, deploy an nginx config on the host:

cat >/etc/nginx/sites-available/social<<EOT
server {
	listen 443 http2;
	listen [::]:443 http2;

	server_name social.fluxcoil.net;

	access_log /opt/web/logs/social_access.log geoip;
	access_log /opt/web/logs/social_access_combined.log combined;
	error_log /opt/web/logs/social_error.log warn;

	keepalive_timeout 70;
	sendfile on;
	client_max_body_size 80m;

	location / {
		proxy_set_header Host $host;
		proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
		proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
		proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
		proxy_set_header Proxy "";

		proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8084/;
		break;
	}
}
EOT

systemctl restart nginx

With that, you should be able to log in with the browser.

• https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/upgrading/

podman exec -it mastodon bash

apt update
apt dist-upgrade

su - mastodon
cd /home/mastodon/live
git fetch --tags
git tag -l
git checkout v4.2.8

bundle config deployment 'true'
bundle config without 'development test'
bundle install -j$(getconf _NPROCESSORS_ONLN)
yarn install --pure-lockfile

RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails assets:clobber
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails assets:precompile

exit

systemctl restart redis postgresql nginx
systemctl restart mastodon-sidekiq
systemctl restart mastodon-web
systemctl restart mastodon-streaming
 

• Customization: I like to login as admin, go to Administration→Server settings→Appearance, and implement chaos.socials custom side theme from https://github.com/chaossocial/custom/blob/master/themes/custom_wide.scss as “Custom CSS”
• maintenance hints: https://josh.is-cool.dev/running-a-mastodon-instance-entirely-free-forever/