Mastodon-documentation/Running-Mastodon/Production-guide.md

Production guide

The following HTTP headers are already set internally and should not be set again:

'Server'                 => 'Mastodon',
'X-Frame-Options'        => 'DENY',
'X-Content-Type-Options' => 'nosniff',
'X-XSS-Protection'       => '1; mode=block',

Nginx

Regardless of whether you go with the Docker approach or not, here is an example Nginx server configuration.

At a minimum, you'll want to replace any occurrence of example.com with your actual hostname, and /home/mastodon/live/public with the location of your actual mastodon public/ directory.

map $http_upgrade $connection_upgrade {
  default upgrade;
  ''      close;
}

server {
  listen 80;
  listen [::]:80;
  server_name example.com;
  # Useful for Let's Encrypt
  location /.well-known/acme-challenge/ { allow all; }
  location / { return 301 https://$host$request_uri; }
}

server {
  listen 443 ssl http2;
  listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
  server_name example.com;

  ssl_protocols TLSv1.2;
  ssl_ciphers HIGH:!MEDIUM:!LOW:!aNULL:!NULL:!SHA;
  ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
  ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m;

  ssl_certificate     /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem;
  ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem;

  keepalive_timeout    70;
  sendfile             on;
  client_max_body_size 0;

  root /home/mastodon/live/public;

  gzip on;
  gzip_disable "msie6";
  gzip_vary on;
  gzip_proxied any;
  gzip_comp_level 6;
  gzip_buffers 16 8k;
  gzip_http_version 1.1;
  gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;

  add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000";

  location / {
    try_files $uri @proxy;
  }

  location ~ ^/(packs|system/media_attachments/files|system/accounts/avatars) {
    add_header Cache-Control "public, max-age=31536000, immutable";
    try_files $uri @proxy;
  }

  location @proxy {
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto https;
    proxy_set_header Proxy "";
    proxy_pass_header Server;

    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000;
    proxy_buffering off;
    proxy_redirect off;
    proxy_http_version 1.1;
    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
    proxy_set_header Connection $connection_upgrade;

    tcp_nodelay on;
  }

  location /api/v1/streaming {
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto https;
    proxy_set_header Proxy "";

    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:4000;
    proxy_buffering off;
    proxy_redirect off;
    proxy_http_version 1.1;
    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
    proxy_set_header Connection $connection_upgrade;

    tcp_nodelay on;
  }

  error_page 500 501 502 503 504 /500.html;
}

Running in production without Docker

It is recommended to create a special user for mastodon on the server (you could call the user mastodon), though remember to disable outside login for it. You should only be able to get into that user through sudo -sHu mastodon.

This command will create the user as needed:

sudo useradd --system --user-group --shell /bin/false --create-home --home /home/mastodon mastodon

home can be changed as needed

General dependencies

Ubuntu / Debian

sudo apt-get install imagemagick ffmpeg libpq-dev libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev file git curl g++ libprotobuf-dev protobuf-compiler pkg-config
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_6.x | sudo bash -
sudo apt-get install nodejs
sudo npm install -g yarn

• NOTE: On Debian you have to first add the Debian Backports repository to install ffmpeg.

CentOS / RHEL

sudo yum install libxml2-devel ImageMagick libxslt-devel git curl file protobuf-compiler protobuf-devel
sudo yum -y install epel-release
sudo rpm --import http://li.nux.ro/download/nux/RPM-GPG-KEY-nux.ro
sudo rpm -Uvh http://li.nux.ro/download/nux/dextop/el7/x86_64/nux-dextop-release-0-5.el7.nux.noarch.rpm
sudo yum -y install ffmpeg ffmpeg-devel

sudo yum group install "Development tools"
curl -sL https://rpm.nodesource.com/setup_6.x | sudo bash -
sudo yum install nodejs
sudo npm install -g yarn

Redis

Ubuntu / Debian

sudo apt-get install redis-server redis-tools

CentOS / RHEL

sudo yum install redis rubygem-redis

Postgres

Ubuntu / Debian

sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib

CentOS / RHEL

sudo yum install postgresql-server postgresql postgresql-contrib postgresql-devel

Initial Setup postgres:

sudo postgresql-setup initdb
sudo systemctl start postgresql
sudo systemctl enable postgresql

All Operating Systems:

Set up a user and database for Mastodon:

sudo -u postgres psql

In the prompt:

CREATE USER mastodon CREATEDB;
\q

Ubuntu 16.04

Under Ubuntu 16.04, you will need to explicitly enable ident authentication so that local users can connect to the database without a password:

    sudo sed -i '/^local.*postgres.*peer$/a host    all     all     127.0.0.1/32    ident' /etc/postgresql/9.?/main/pg_hba.conf

and install an ident daemon, which does not come installed by default:

sudo apt-get install pidentd
sudo systemctl enable pidentd
sudo systemctl start pidentd
sudo systemctl restart postgresql

Debian 8

Under Debian 8, the default version of nginx available is too old to work with the above configuration file (as it uses http2). To install a newer version of nginx that supports http2 (v1.9.5+), you have to add the jessie-backports repo to your sources.list.d:

$ echo "deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ jessie-backports main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/backports.list
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install -t jessie-backports nginx

Rbenv

It is recommended to use rbenv (exclusively from the mastodon user) to install the desired Ruby version. Follow the guides to install rbenv and rbenv-build (I recommend checking the prerequisites for your system on the rbenv-build project and installing them beforehand, obviously outside the unprivileged mastodon user)

Then once rbenv is ready, install and enable the Ruby version for Mastodon using:

rbenv install 2.4.1
rbenv global 2.4.1

Git

You need the git-core package installed on your system. If it is so, run the shell from the mastodon user:

sudo -sHu mastodon

And enter the following commands:

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon.git live
cd live
git checkout $(git tag -l | sort -V | tail -n 1)

Then you can proceed to install project dependencies:

gem install bundler
bundle install --deployment --without development test
yarn install --pure-lockfile

Configuration

Then you have to configure your instance:

cp .env.production.sample .env.production
nano .env.production

Fill in the important data, like host/port of the redis database, host/port/username/password of the postgres database, your domain name, SMTP details (e.g. from Mailgun or equivalent transactional e-mail service, many have free tiers), whether you intend to use SSL, etc. If you need to generate secrets, you can use:

RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake secret

To get a random string. If you are setting up on one single server (most likely), then REDIS_HOST is localhost and DB_HOST is /var/run/postgresql, DB_USER is mastodon and DB_NAME is mastodon_production while DB_PASS is empty because this setup will use the ident authentication method (system user "mastodon" maps to postgres user "mastodon").

Configuring the instance hostname:

• 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.

Setup

And set up the database for the first time, this will create the tables and basic data:

RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails db:setup

Finally, pre-compile all CSS and JavaScript files:

RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails assets:precompile

Systemd

Example systemd configuration for the web workers, to be placed in /etc/systemd/system/mastodon-web.service:

[Unit]
Description=mastodon-web
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=mastodon
WorkingDirectory=/home/mastodon/live
Environment="RAILS_ENV=production"
Environment="PORT=3000"
ExecStart=/home/mastodon/.rbenv/shims/bundle exec puma -C config/puma.rb
TimeoutSec=15
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Example systemd configuration for the background workers, to be placed in /etc/systemd/system/mastodon-sidekiq.service:

[Unit]
Description=mastodon-sidekiq
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=mastodon
WorkingDirectory=/home/mastodon/live
Environment="RAILS_ENV=production"
Environment="DB_POOL=5"
ExecStart=/home/mastodon/.rbenv/shims/bundle exec sidekiq -c 5 -q default -q mailers -q pull -q push
TimeoutSec=15
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Example systemd configuration file for the streaming API, to be placed in /etc/systemd/system/mastodon-streaming.service:

[Unit]
Description=mastodon-streaming
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=mastodon
WorkingDirectory=/home/mastodon/live
Environment="NODE_ENV=production"
Environment="PORT=4000"
ExecStart=/usr/bin/npm run start
TimeoutSec=15
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

This allows you to sudo systemctl enable /etc/systemd/system/mastodon-*.service and sudo systemctl start mastodon-web.service mastodon-sidekiq.service mastodon-streaming.service to get things going.

Things to look out for when upgrading Mastodon

If you want a stable release for production use, you should use tagged releases. To checkout the latest available tagged version:

    cd ~mastodon/live/
    git fetch
    git checkout $(git tag -l | sort -V | tail -n 1)

As part of your deploy, you may need to run:

• RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails db:migrate

if anything in the /db/ directory has changed, and/or

• yarn install --pure-lockfile
• RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails assets:precompile

if anything in the /app/assets directory changed.

Please read the release notes when you upgrade, they might contain specific instructions about how to update (and they always include information about which new features the release has, and which bugs are fixed).

Also, Mastodon runs in memory, so you need to restart it before you see any changes (including new precompiled assets). If you're using systemd, that would be:

    sudo systemctl restart mastodon-*.service