Fediverse VMs

This repo is, for now, an attempt to familiarize myself with NixOS options for Fediverse applications, and build up a configuration layer that will set most of the relevant options for you (in a semi-opinionated way) given some high-level configuration. This is in the same vein as nixos-mailserver.

Eventually, this will be tailored to high-throughput multi-machine setups. For now, it's just a small configuration to run in VMs.

Running the VMs

you can build a VM using

nixos-rebuild build-vm --flake .#<vm_name>

where <vm_name> is one of mastodon, peertube, pixelfed, or all

and then run it with

./result/bin/run-nixos-vm

You can then access the apps on your local machine (using the magic of port forwarding) at the following addresses

• Mastodon: http://mastodon.localhost:55001

  • You will have to "accept the security risk"
  • It may take a minute for the webpage to come online. Until then you will see "502 Bad Gateway"
  • (NOTE: currently broken) email sent from the mastodon instance (e.g. for setting up an account) will be accessible at https://mastodon.localhost:55001/letter_opener
  • You can also create accounts on the machine itself by running mastodon-tootctl accounts create <name> --email <email> --confirmed --approve

• PeerTube: http://peertube.localhost:9000

  • The root account can be accessed with username "root". The password can be obtained by running the following command on the VM:

    journalctl -u peertube | perl -ne '/password: (.*)/ && print $1'
    

  • Creating other accounts has to be enabled via the admin interface. Administration > Configuration > Basic > Enable Signup or just add an account directly from Administration > Create user. But functionality can also be tested from the root account.

debugging notes

• it is sometimes useful to cat result/bin/run-nixos-vm to see what's really going on (e.g. which ports are getting forwarded)
• relevant systemd services:
  • mastodon-web.service
  • peertube.service
  • unclear yet which pixelfed services are useful
• you can ssh to the machine using ssh -p 2222 root@localhost

TODOs

• set up a domain name and a DNS service so we can do deploy this to an actual machine
• set up an email service
• add logging
  • errors / logs
  • performance
• switch to garage / s3 storage
  • SEE: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/optional/object-storage/
• decouple the postgres database from this machine
• test with high use / throughput
• configure scaling behaviour
  • SEE: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/scaling/
• remove the need for "accept security risk" dialogue if possible
• development environment does not work seamlessly.
• don't require proxy server
  • either forward 443 directly, or get mastodon to accept connections on a different port (maybe 3000? see development environment documentation)
• get letter_opener working
• share resources (e.g. s3 storage) between the services
• get garage running on another machine
  • get garage replication running (multiple machines)
• some way of declaratively defining users?
• shared users between fediverse services

questions

• what is meant to be shared between instances?
  • this is relevant to the security model. If garage is being shared between instances, we have to be careful having configurations depend on each other.

resources

• Tutorial for setting up better logging: https://krisztianfekete.org/self-hosting-mastodon-on-nixos-a-proof-of-concept/

• Setting up development environment: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/dev/setup/

• Tutorial for PeerTube that doesn't use createLocally: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/PeerTube