Installing a Mastodon Community on Ubuntu Focal Fossa

• messaging
• social-network
• Prework
• Mastodon
• ubuntu

Mastodon is an open-source, self-hosted, social media and social networking service. It allows you to host your Instances which may have their own code of conduct, terms of service, and moderation policies. There is no central server and Mastodon Instances are connected as a federated social network, allowing users from different Instances to interact with each other. The platform provides privacy features allowing users to adjust the privacy settings of each of their posts.

As there is no central server, you can choose whether to join or leave an instance according to its policy without actually leaving Mastodon Social Network. Mastodon is a part of Fediverse, allowing users to interact with users on other platforms that support the same protocol for example: PeerTube, Friendica and GNU Social.

Mastodon provides the possibility of using Amazon S3-compatible Object Storage to store media content uploaded to Instances, making it flexible and scalable.

Before you startLink to this anchor

To complete the actions presented below, you must have:

• A Scaleway account logged into the console
• Owner status or IAM permissions allowing you to perform actions in the intended Organization
• An SSH key
• An Instance running on Ubuntu Focal Fossa
• A domain or subdomain pointed to your Instance
• Enabled the SMTP ports to send out email notifications

Installing preworkLink to this anchor

1. Connect to your Instance via SSH.

2. Update the APT package cache and the software already installed on the Instance.

   apt update && apt upgrade -y
   

3. Install curl on the system and add an external repository for the required version of Node.js. Install it by running the following commands:

   apt install curl -y
   curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_18.x | bash -
   

   Mastodon uses the Yarn package manager.

4. Install the repository for the required version of Yarn by running the following commands:

   curl -sS https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg | apt-key add -
   echo "deb https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/ stable main" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yarn.list
   

5. Add the PostgreSQL repository to your system by running the following command:

   wget -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
   

6. Update the system and install yarn.

   apt-get update && apt-get install -y yarn
   

7. Install the following packages, which Mastodon depends on:

   • Imagemagick for image-related operations
   • FFmpeg for conversion of GIFs to MP4s
   • Protobuf with libprotobuf-dev and protobuf-compiler, used for language detection
   • Nginx as frontend web server
   • Redis for its in-memory data structure store
   • PostgreSQL is used as an SQL database for Mastodon
   • Node.js is used for Mastodon’s streaming API
   • Yarn is a Node.js package manager
   • Certbot is a tool to manage TLS certificates issued by the Let’s Encrypt nonprofit “Certificate Authority” (CA)
   • other -dev packages and g++. These packages are required for the compilation of Ruby using ruby-build.

   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 \
   nginx redis-server redis-tools postgresql postgresql-contrib \
   certbot python3-certbot-nginx libidn11-dev libicu-dev libjemalloc-dev
   

   We are going to use rbenv to manage Ruby versions. The application must be installed for a single Linux user, therefore, we must first create a user under which Mastodon will run.

8. Run the following command. The --disabled-login flag disables direct login to the user account for increased security.

   adduser --disabled-login mastodon
   

9. Log into the mastodon user account and change to the home directory.

   su mastodon
   cd
   

10. Set up rbenv and ruby-build:

    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
    # Restart the user's shell
    exec bash
    # Check if rbenv is correctly installed
    type rbenv
    # Install ruby-build as a rbenv plugin
    git clone https://github.com/rbenv/ruby-build.git ~/.rbenv/plugins/ruby-build
    

11. Install and enable the version of Ruby that is used by Mastodon.

    RUBY_CONFIGURE_OPTS=--with-jemalloc rbenv install 3.1.0
    rbenv global 3.1.0
    

    This step may take up to several minutes to complete.

12. Run the following command to install bundler:

    gem install bundler --no-document
    

13. Switch back into the root account by typing exit.

Configuring PostgreSQLLink to this anchor

Mastodon requires access to a PostgreSQL database to store its configuration and user data.

1. Change into the postgres user account, run psql and create a database:

   sudo -u postgres psql
   

2. Create the database user for Mastodon and exit:

   CREATE USER mastodon CREATEDB;
   \q
   

Downloading MastodonLink to this anchor

1. Switch into the mastodon user account:

   su - mastodon
   

2. Enter the user’s home directory and clone the Mastodon Git repository into the live directory:

   git clone https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon.git live && cd live
   

3. Check out to the latest stable branch.

   git checkout $(git tag -l | grep -v 'rc[0-9]*$' | sort -V | tail -n 1)
   

4. Install the remaining Ruby dependencies:

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

5. Use yarn to install the node.js dependencies:

   yarn install --pure-lockfile
   

6. Type and enter exit to return to the root account.

Requesting a Let’s Encrypt certificateLink to this anchor

1. Install Certbot via Snap:

   snap install --classic certbot
   

2. Stop Nginx before requesting the certificate:

   systemctl stop nginx.service
   

3. Use certbot to request a certificate with TLS SNI validation in standalone mode. Replace example.com with your domain name:

   certbot certonly --standalone -d example.com
   

4. Set up automatic renewal using a cron job:

   • Create a new cron job:

     nano /etc/cron.daily/letsencrypt-renew
     

   • Copy the following content into the file:

     #!/usr/bin/env bash
     certbot renew
     systemctl reload nginx.service
     

   • Save and exit, then make the script executable:

     chmod +x /etc/cron.daily/letsencrypt-renew
     systemctl restart cron.service
     

Configuring NginxLink to this anchor

1. Copy the example configuration file shipped with Mastodon in your Nginx sites-available directory and create a symlink to it in the sites-enabled directory:

   cp /home/mastodon/live/dist/nginx.conf /etc/nginx/sites-available/mastodon
   ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/mastodon /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/mastodon
   

2. Open the configuration file in a text editor, such as nano:

   nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/mastodon
   

3. Update the server_name directive to reflect your domain name.

   server_name example.com;
   

4. Restart Nginx to apply the configuration changes:

   systemctl restart nginx