Mastodon on Barge with Vagrant

Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server.

A decentralized solution to commercial platforms, it avoids the risks of a single company monopolizing your communication. Anyone can run Mastodon and participate in the social network seamlessly.

An alternative implementation of the GNU social project. Based on ActivityStreams, Webfinger, PubsubHubbub and Salmon.

This repo shows how to run a Mastodon instance on Barge with Vagrant instantly.

Note: You may find LOCAL_HTTPS=false in .env.provision here, therefor, it's just for a local test and don't use this setting in the public.

Requirements

• VirtualBox
• Vagrant

Boot up

$ vagrant up

Or you can do the same procedure one by one as below.

Create a VM

$ vagrant up --no-provision

Build a Mastodon Docker image

$ vagrant provision --provision-with build

Configure .env.prodinction with secrets

$ vagrant provision --provision-with config

Set up the database and assets

$ vagrant provision --provision-with setup

Run a new Mastodon instance

$ vagrant provision --provision-with mastodon

Cf.) https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/tree/v1.2#running-with-docker-and-docker-compose

Sign up for the instance

http://localhost:3000/

Login to the instance

You will receive a confirmation email to activate your account and click a link in the email.

http://localhost:1080/

Or you can authorize yourself manually from your local console as below, just in case of missing the email or whatever.

$ vagrant ssh
[bargee@barge ~]$ cd /opt/mastodon
[bargee@barge mastodon]$ docker-compose run --rm web rails mastodon:confirm_email USER_EMAIL=<your email address>

Cf.) https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Running-Mastodon/Administration-guide.md#confirming-users-manually

Make an administrator

[bargee@barge mastodon]$ docker-compose run --rm web rails mastodon:make_admin USERNAME=<your username>

Now you can access to the admin page.

http://localhost:3000/admin/settings

Cf.) https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Running-Mastodon/Administration-guide.md#turning-into-an-admin

Upgrade Mastodon

Stop the instance

$ vagrant ssh
[bargee@barge ~]$ cd /opt/mastodon
[bargee@barge mastodon]$ docker-compose down

Backup

[bargee@barge mastodon]$ cd ..
[bargee@barge opt]$ sudo mv mastodon mastodon.bak

Upgrade this repo

$ git fetch
$ git checkout <new version>

Build a new Mastodon Docker image

$ vagrant provision --provision-with build

Restore configuration files and folders

[bargee@barge ~]$ cd /opt/mastodon
[bargee@barge mastodon]$ sudo cp -pR ../mastodon.bak/public .
[bargee@barge mastodon]$ sudo cp /vagrant/.env.production .

And then you have to copy the secrets from /opt/mastodon.bak/.env.production.

Upgrade the database and assets

Follow an upgrade instruction in the release notes. https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/releases

Restart the Mastodon instance

$ vagrant provision --provision-with mastodon

Cf.) https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Running-Mastodon/Production-guide.md#things-to-look-out-for-when-upgrading-mastodon