Pleroma

About Pleroma

Pleroma is an OStatus-compatible social networking server written in Elixir, compatible with GNU Social and Mastodon. It is high-performance and can run on small devices like a Raspberry Pi.

For clients it supports both the GNU Social API with Qvitter extensions and the Mastodon client API.

Mobile clients that are known to work:

• Twidere
• Tusky
• Pawoo (Android)
• Subway Tooter

No release has been made yet, but several servers have been online for months already. If you want to run your own server, feel free to contact us at @lain@pleroma.soykaf.com or in our dev chat at https://matrix.heldscal.la/#/room/#pleromafe:matrix.heldscal.la.

Installation

Dependencies

• Postgresql version 9.6 or newer
• Elixir version 1.4 or newer
• Build-essential tools

Installing dependencies on Debian system

PostgreSQL 9.6 should be available on Debian stable (Jessie) from "main" area. Install it using apt: apt install postgresql-9.6. Make sure that older versions are not installed since Debian allows multiple versions to coexist but still runs only one version.

You must install elixir 1.4+ from elixir-lang.org, because Debian repos only have 1.3.x version. You will need to add apt repo to sources.list(.d) and import GPG key. Follow instructions here: https://elixir-lang.org/install.html#unix-and-unix-like (See "Ubuntu or Debian 7"). This should be valid until Debian updates elixir in their repositories. Package you want is named elixir, so install it using apt install elixir

Elixir will also require make and probably other related software for building dependencies - in case you don't have them, get them via apt install build-essential

Preparation

• You probably want application to run as separte user - so create a new one: adduser pleroma, you can login as it via su pleroma
• Clone the git repository into new user's dir (clone as the pleroma user to avoid permissions errors)
• Again, as new user, install dependencies with mix deps.get if it asks you to install "hex" - agree to that.

Database setup

• Create a database user and database for pleroma

  • Open psql shell as postgres user: (as root) su postgres -c psql
  • Create a new PostgreSQL user:

  \c pleroma_dev
  CREATE user pleroma;
  ALTER user pleroma with encrypted password '<your password>';
  GRANT ALL ON ALL tables IN SCHEMA public TO pleroma;
  GRANT ALL ON ALL sequences IN SCHEMA public TO pleroma;
  

  • Create config/dev.secret.exs and copy the database settings from dev.exs there.
  • Change password in config/dev.secret.exs, and change user to "pleroma" (line like username: "postgres")
  • Create and update your database with mix ecto.create && mix ecto.migrate. If it gives errors, try running again, this is a known issue.

Some additional configuration

• You will need to let pleroma instance to know what hostname/url it's running on. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP. GET THIS WRONG AND YOU'LL HAVE TO RESET YOUR DATABASE.

  Create the file config/dev.secret.exs, add these lines at the end of the file:

  config :pleroma, Pleroma.Web.Endpoint,
  url: [host: "example.tld", scheme: "https", port: 443]
  

  replacing example.tld with your (sub)domain

• You should also setup your site name and admin email address. Look at config.exs for more available options.

  config :pleroma, :instance,
    name: "My great instance",
    email: "someone@example.com"
  

• The common and convenient way for adding HTTPS is by using Nginx as a reverse proxy. You can look at example Nginx configuration in installation/pleroma.nginx. If you need TLS/SSL certificates for HTTPS, you can look get some for free with letsencrypt: https://letsencrypt.org/ On Debian you can use certbot package and command to manage letsencrypt certificates.

• [Not tested with system reboot yet!] You'll also want to set up Pleroma to be run as a systemd service. Example .service file can be found in installation/pleroma.service you can put it in /etc/systemd/system/.

Running

By default, it listens on port 4000 (TCP), so you can access it on http://localhost:4000/ (if you are on the same machine). In case of an error it will restart automatically.

As systemd service (with provided .service file)

Running service pleroma start Logs can be watched by using journalctl -fu pleroma.service

Standalone/run by other means

Run mix phx.server in repository's root, it will output log into stdout/stderr