mastodon-utils/README.md

🦣 Mastodon utilities

Random opinionated helper scripts & front-end customizations for my personal Mastodon instance (running on glitch-soc).

⚠️ You definitely don't want to use any of this as-is. Check out my more general-purpose scripts instead.

Notes

The wiki of this repo and the /etc folder are simply my way of not forgetting how I did something, which I do quite a bit. Refer there for random notes on PgBouncer, Grafana, etc. but DO NOT BLINDLY COPY & PASTE anything there without doing your own research!

• Grafana & Prometheus
• ElasticSearch
• PgBouncer
• S3 for media storage
• Maintenance cronjobs
• nginx tweaks

Usage

AGAIN, DEFINITELY DO NOT JUST RUN THIS IF YOU'RE NOT ME!!! 😊

mkdir -p /home/mastodon
git clone https://github.com/jakejarvis/mastodon-utils.git /home/mastodon/utils
cd /home/mastodon/utils

# install Mastodon on fresh Ubuntu box:
./scripts/install.sh

# back up Postgres, Redis, and secrets:
./scripts/backup.sh

# pull latest Mastodon (vanilla or glitch-soc) and apply patches from this repo:
./scripts/upgrade.sh

Scripts

• init.sh: A small helper that runs at the very beginning of each script below to initialize rbenv and set consistent environment variables.
  • Optional: To make your life easier, you can also source this script from the .bashrc of the mastodon user and/or whichever user you regularly SSH in as:

[ -s /home/mastodon/utils/init.sh ] && \. /home/mastodon/utils/init.sh >/dev/null 2>&1

• version.sh: Tests init.sh by printing version of Mastodon, rbenv, nvm, Ruby, Node, and Yarn.

Periodic tasks

• backup.sh: Backs up Postgres, Redis, and .env.production secrets to a .tar.gz file in /home/mastodon/backups — useful for a periodic cronjob.
• weekly_cleanup.sh: Runs Mastodon's built-in cleanup commands, designed for a weekly cronjob.
  • Keeps 7 days of media (in object storage)
  • Keeps 90 days of generated preview cards

Dangerous

The following scripts are highly opinionated, catastrophically destructive, and very specific to me. Check them out line-by-line instead of running them.

• install.sh: Assumes an absolutely clean install of Ubuntu and installs Mastodon with all of the quirks from this repo. Configure MASTODON_USER and other paths in init.sh first if necessary. Get the far less dangerous version of install.sh here instead.
• upgrade.sh: Upgrades Mastodon server (latest version if vanilla Mastodon, latest commit if glitch-soc) and re-applies every patch listed below. Get the far less dangerous version of upgrade.sh here instead.

Patches

Vanilla and glitch-soc:

• robots.patch: Disallow search engines for all of Mastodon
• increase-sidekiq-timeout.patch: Small bump in Sidekiq's timeout before it decides a remote instance isn't available. Use this one very carefully!
• system-font.patch: Use the system's default sans-serif font stack instead of Roboto
  • glitch/system-font.patch
• hide-contact-email.patch: Hides the mailto: link on the About page
  • glitch/hide-contact-email.patch
• hide-rules.patch: Applies just to homepage, meant only for single-user instances
  • glitch/hide-rules.patch
• hide-signup.patch: Hide the "create account" button (for aesthetics, not security!)
  • glitch/hide-signup.patch

glitch-soc only:

• custom-glitch-defaults.patch: Sets default Glitch appearance settings for logged-out users
• settings-sidebar-cleanup.patch: Why is the most frequently used admin page listed under a link that takes you to another page to open a submenu in the sidebar to finally be able to click on it to go to the page?!?
• remove-glitch-cruft.patch: Removes a bunch of junk no longer used by glitch-soc
• sidebar-logo.patch: Restore Mastodon logo in logged-out sidebar

License

MIT