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.
The project focus is a clean REST API and a good user interface. Ruby on Rails is used for the back-end, while React.js and Redux are used for the dynamic front-end. A static front-end for public resources (profiles and statuses) is also provided.
If you would like, you can [support the development of this project on Patreon][patreon]. Alternatively, you can donate to this BTC address: `17j2g7vpgHhLuXhN4bueZFCvdxxieyRVWd`
You don't need to mess with dependencies and configuration if you want to try Mastodon, if you have Docker and Docker Compose the deployment is extremely easy
-`LOCAL_DOMAIN` should be the domain/hostname of your instance. This is **absolutely required** as it is used for generating unique IDs for everything federation-related
-`LOCAL_HTTPS` set it to `true` if HTTPS works on your website. This is used to generate canonical URLs, which is also important when generating and parsing federation-related IDs
Consult the example configuration file, `.env.production.sample` for the full list. Among other things you need to set details for the SMTP server you are going to use.
[](https://microbadger.com/images/gargron/mastodon "Get your own version badge on microbadger.com") [](https://microbadger.com/images/gargron/mastodon "Get your own image badge on microbadger.com")
Review the settings in docker-compose.yml. Note that it is not default to store the postgresql database and redis databases in a persistent storage location,
so you may need or want to adjust the settings there.
Before running the first time, you need to build the images:
If you wish to run this as a daemon process instead of monitoring it on console, use instead:
docker-compose up -d
Then you may login to your new Mastodon instance by browsing to http(s)://(yourhost):3000/
Following that, make sure that you read the [production guide](docs/Running-Mastodon/Production-guide.md). You are probably going to want to understand how
to configure NGINX to make your Mastodon instance available to the rest of the world.
The container has two volumes, for the assets and for user uploads, and optionally two more, for the postgresql and redis databases.
The default docker-compose.yml maps them to the repository's `public/assets` and `public/system` directories, you may wish to put them somewhere else. Likewise, the PostgreSQL and Redis images have data containers that you may wish to map somewhere where you know how to find them and back them up.
**Note**: The `--rm` option for docker-compose will remove the container that is created to run a one-off command after it completes. As data is stored in volumes it is not affected by that container clean-up.
### Tasks
-`rake mastodon:media:clear` removes uploads that have not been attached to any status after a while, you would want to run this from a periodic cronjob
-`rake mastodon:push:clear` unsubscribes from PuSH notifications for remote users that have no local followers. You may not want to actually do that, to keep a fuller footprint of the fediverse or in case your users will soon re-follow
-`rake mastodon:push:refresh` re-subscribes PuSH for expiring remote users, this should be run periodically from a cronjob and quite often as the expiration time depends on the particular hub of the remote user
-`rake mastodon:feeds:clear_all` removes all timelines, which forces them to be re-built on the fly next time a user tries to fetch their home/mentions timeline. Only for troubleshooting
-`rake mastodon:feeds:clear` removes timelines of users who haven't signed in lately, which allows to save RAM and improve message distribution. This is required to be run periodically so that when they login again the regeneration process will trigger
This approach makes updating to the latest version a real breeze.
git pull
To pull down the updates, re-run
docker-compose build
And finally,
docker-compose up -d
Which will re-create the updated containers, leaving databases and data as is. Depending on what files have been updated, you might need to re-run migrations and asset compilation.
Docker is great for quickly trying out software, but it has its drawbacks too. If you prefer to run Mastodon without using Docker, refer to the [production guide](https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Running-Mastodon/Production-guide.md) for examples, configuration and instructions.
[](https://my.scalingo.com/deploy?source=https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon#master)
Mastodon can theoretically run indefinitely on a free [Heroku](https://heroku.com) app. [You can view a guide for deployment on Heroku here.](https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Running-Mastodon/Heroku-guide.md)
A quick way to get a development environment up and running is with Vagrant. You will need recent versions of [Vagrant](https://www.vagrantup.com/) and [VirtualBox](https://www.virtualbox.org/) installed.
[You can find the guide for setting up a Vagrant development environment here.](https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Running-Mastodon/Vagrant-guide.md)
You can open issues for bugs you've found or features you think are missing. You can also submit pull requests to this repository. [Here are the guidelines for code contributions](CONTRIBUTING.md)
