mastodon

Table of Contents

Nginx
Running in production without Docker
General dependencies
Redis
Postgres
Rbenv
Git
Configuration
Setup
Systemd
Cronjobs
Things to look out for when upgrading Mastodon

Nginx

Regardless of whether you go with the Docker approach or not, here is an example Nginx server configuration:

map $http_upgrade $connection_upgrade {
  default upgrade;
  ''      close;
}

server {
  listen 443 ssl;
  server_name example.com;

  ssl_certificate     /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem;
  ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem;

  keepalive_timeout    70;
  sendfile             on;
  client_max_body_size 0;
  gzip off;

  root /home/mastodon/live/public;

  add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains";

  location / {
    try_files $uri @proxy;
  }

  location @proxy {
    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 https;

    proxy_pass_header Server;

    proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
    proxy_buffering off;
    proxy_redirect off;
    proxy_http_version 1.1;
    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
    proxy_set_header Connection $connection_upgrade;

    tcp_nodelay on;
  }

  error_page 500 501 502 503 504 /500.html;
}

Running in production without Docker

It is recommended to create a special user for mastodon on the server (you could call the user mastodon), though remember to disable outside login for it. You should only be able to get into that user through sudo su - mastodon.

General dependencies

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_4.x | sudo bash -
sudo apt-get install imagemagick ffmpeg libpq-dev libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev nodejs
sudo npm install -g yarn

Redis

sudo apt-get install redis-server redis-tools

Postgres

sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib

Rbenv

It is recommended to use rbenv (exclusively from the mastodon user) to install the desired Ruby version. Follow the guides to install rbenv and rbenv-build (I recommend checking the prerequisites for your system on the rbenv-build project and installing them beforehand, obviously outside the unprivileged mastodon user)

Then once rbenv is ready, run rbenv install 2.3.1 to install the Ruby version for Mastodon.

Git

You need the git-core package installed on your system. If it is so, from the mastodon user:

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/Gargron/mastodon.git live
cd live

Then you can proceed to install project dependencies:

gem install bundler
bundle install --deployment --without development test
yarn install

Configuration

Then you have to configure your instance:

cp .env.production.sample .env.production
nano .env.production

Fill in the important data, like host/port of the redis database, host/port/username/password of the postgres database, your domain name, SMTP details (e.g. from Mailgun or equivalent transactional e-mail service, many have free tiers), whether you intend to use SSL, etc. If you need to generate secrets, you can use:

rake secret

To get a random string.

Setup

And setup the database for the first time, this will create the tables and basic data:

RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails db:setup

Finally, pre-compile all CSS and JavaScript files:

RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails assets:precompile

Systemd

Example systemd configuration for the web workers, to be placed in /etc/systemd/system/mastodon-web.service:

[Unit]
Description=mastodon-web
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=mastodon
WorkingDirectory=/home/mastodon/live
Environment="RAILS_ENV=production"
Environment="PORT=3000"
ExecStart=/home/mastodon/.rbenv/shims/bundle exec puma -C config/puma.rb
TimeoutSec=15
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Example systemd configuration for the background workers, to be placed in /etc/systemd/system/mastodon-sidekiq.service:

[Unit]
Description=mastodon-sidekiq
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=mastodon
WorkingDirectory=/home/mastodon/live
Environment="RAILS_ENV=production"
Environment="DB_POOL=5"
ExecStart=/home/mastodon/.rbenv/shims/bundle exec sidekiq -c 5 -q default -q mailers -q push
TimeoutSec=15
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

This allows you to sudo systemctl enable mastodon-*.service and sudo systemctl start mastodon-*.service to get things going.

Cronjobs

I recommend creating a couple cronjobs for the following tasks:

RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake mastodon:media:clear
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake mastodon:push:refresh
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake mastodon:feeds:clear

You may want to run which bundle first and copypaste that full path instead of simply bundle in the above commands because cronjobs usually don't have all the paths set. The time and intervals of when to run these jobs are up to you, but once every day should be enough for all.

You can edit the cronjob file for the mastodon user by running sudo crontab -e mastodon (outside of the mastodon user).

Things to look out for when upgrading Mastodon

You can upgrade Mastodon with a git pull from the repository directory. You may need to run:

RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails db:migrate
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails assets:precompile

Depending on which files changed, e.g. if anything in the /db/ or /app/assets directory changed, respectively. Also, Mastodon runs in memory, so you need to restart it before you see any changes. If you're using systemd, that would be:

sudo systemctl restart mastodon-*.service