Mastodon

Setting up a Masotdon server on Debian is somewhat annoying, due to the node and (to a lesser extent) ruby-based implementation. Most guides involve downloading and installing a large number of sources outside of APT. I hoped to avoid that.

My running install uses the 3.2 branch of Mastodon atop Debian Unstable.

First, determine your domain name. You'll likely be serving Mastodon as a virtual host in your main nginx/apache config, so give it its own, distinct FQDN. It is not trivial to change your server's name later (it will, at a minimum, break existing federations), so choose wisely.

System work

• Via APT, install nodejs, redis-server, ruby-redis, rake, rbenv, ruby-bundler, postgresql-contrib, libpq-dev, libprotobuf-dev, protobuf-compiler, libidn11-dev, and yarnpkg ("yarn").
  • You will now have a PostgreSQL instance running on localhost:tcp/5432, if you didn't before.
  • You will now have a Redis instance running on localhost:tcp/6379, if you didn't before.
• So far as I can tell, you must now symlink /usr/bin/yarnpkg to yarn in some PATH directory:
  • ln -s /usr/bin/yarnpkg /usr/local/bin/yarn
• Prep the database:
  • echo "CREATE USER mastodon CREATEDB;" | sudo -u postgres psql
• Create mastodon user (salt to taste):
  • sudo adduser --disabled-login --gecos "Mastodon service account" mastodon

User work

Remaining work will be done as the mastodon user, in its home directory.

• git clone https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon.git ~/live
• cd live
• bundle config set --local deployment true
• bundle config set --local without development:test
• bundle install
• RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake mastodon:setup
  • Use the same PostgreSQL user name you created earlier.
  • So far as I can tell, use a blank password for PostgresQDL and Redis.
  • I do (n)ot upload files to the "cloud", whatever that even means