y

Installing y (production environment)

y comes in two parts: a server and web distribution.

You can download the latest version of y on the releases page.

1. Prerequisites

y does not install anything on your machine, so make sure you have everything required for it to run:

1. A linux machine.
2. PostgreSQL (version 16.0 or higher).
3. A web server (nginx/apache/etc.).

Optional dependencies for the "storage" feature:

1. imagemagick - thumbnail generation.
2. ffmpeg - video transcoding, thumbnail generation.
3. ffprobe (usually comes with ffmpeg).

2. Setting up PostgreSQL

After installing PostgreSQL and initializing your database cluster (see postgresql documentation for your distro), do the following:

1. Launch psql (you might need to log in as the postgres user first - sudo su - postgres)
2. Create a database for y: CREATE DATABASE y;
3. Create a user: CREATE USER y_user WITH PASSWORD 'passw0rd!';
4. Grant required privileges to that user: GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE "y" to y_user;
5. Set that user as the owner of the database: ALTER DATABASE y OWNER TO y_user;

3. Installing y server

Create a new folder, for example, /etc/y, /var/y, etc., and unzip the archive you have downloaded into there. The path is not important, but it's a good idea to treat y as a separate program that has it's own location and does not reside in your user's home folder. If you set up y-server as a service, this path will be written into the service definition, so make sure you choose a path you like and don't move it after you set it up.

Edit the default .env file and update it according to your setup. Make sure that DATABASE_URL is set correctly, everything else should be fine by default. If you have first unzipped y's package somewhere else and only then copied the files into it's intended folder, make sure you also copied the .env file. It's easy to miss it, ls might not show it because its prefixed with a dot.

y's server is, for the most part, just one binary file. You can either just run it from a cli, or you can set it up as a service, which would be a more long-term soultion:

• to set up y-server as a service, run the ./install.sh script (recommended).
• to start the server from a cli, just run ./y-server.

That's it. y's only configuration file is .env, everything else can be configured using the web ui. If you have ran the install script and set y up as a service, it can be started using systemctl start y-server. To make the server start automatically on boot, run systemctl enable y-server.

4. Serving web files

y server does not serve y's web files, so you will have to use a web server for that.

The next section is written for nginx, but you can use any web server you like.

1. Install nginx.
2. Create a new site configuration, based on the default one: cp /etc/nginx/sites-available/default /etc/nginx/sites-available/y
3. Edit /etc/nginx/sites-available/y:

server {
    # y's example server config

    server_name _;
    listen 80 default_server;

    # Replace with the path to your www folder (directly inside your y folder):
    root /var/y/www;

    index index.html;

    location / {
            try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
    }

    location /api/ {
            proxy_pass http://localhost:8080;
            proxy_set_header Host $host;
    }

    # If you are planning on using the "storage" feature,
    # increase max body size to allow clients upload larger files
    client_max_body_size 1000M ; # 1G example
}

4. Enable the site ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/y /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/y
5. Restart nginx

5. Logging in & basic configuration

If you've done everything correctly, you should be able to open y in your browser and log in with the default admin user:

• username: admin
• password: admin

After logging in, don't forget to change admin user's password on the /admin/users page!

Default configuration also comes with a simple admin user group, which is assigned to the admin user. Make sure you update that group's rights on the /admin/user-groups page according to your needs. Also, don't forget to assign the "Toggle features" right, otherwise you won't be able to enable any of y's features, such as "storage".

Trying out y (development environment)

1. Install PostgreSQL and set it up like explained in the "Installing y (production environment)" section.

2. Install NodeJS, pnpm and Rust.

3. Clone the repo: git clone https://github.com/sk-m/y.git

4. (optional) Switch to the branch you are interested in (ex. git checkout development).

5. Start the server:

   1. cd y/y-server
   2. cp .env.example .env
   3. update .env according to your setup
   4. cargo run

6. Start up the frontend:

   1. cd y/y-web
   2. pnpm install
   3. pnpm run dev

Footnotes

Support Ukraine