Mastodon/Setup

In this case we are using glitch-soc to run a Mastodon server.

• Neuromatch Fork: https://github.com/NeuromatchAcademy/mastodon

We will make:

• One "default" instance at neuromatch.social
• One Dev Instance at dev.neuromatch.social

We will be following the official Mastodon setup docs (except cloning our fork of glitch-soc instead of the base masto repo):

• Prereqs
• Installing from Source
• Configuring Environment
• Setup

Prereqs

https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/prerequisites/

See also: Linode/Setup

• Turn off password SSH access
• Install fail2ban
• Configure iptables to only allow SSH and HTTP/HTTPS

DNS

Set up the domain name!

• Add an A record pointing at the linode's IP Address
• Set up rDNS pointing back at the domain

Installation

https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/install/

• Add apt repositories
• Install apt packages
• Make mastodon user
• Install Ruby
• Configure postgresql
• Configure nginx (config below)
• Get SSL Cert
• Install & Enable systemd services

Variations

• Using Node.js 18.12.1 rather than 16 as per docs

curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_18.x | bash - && \
apt-get install -y nodejs

Configuration

Configure the email server

Create a SendGrid account, go to Settings > API Keys, and generate an API key.

Then set up the config like this:

SMTP_SERVER=smtp.sendgrid.net
SMTP_PORT=587
SMTP_LOGIN=apikey
SMTP_PASSWORD=<your-api-key>
SMTP_FROM_ADDRESS=youremail@gmail.com

(for SMTP_LOGIN literally just use "apikey")