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Running Mastodon on FreeBSD

Install the packages

# pkg install nginx postgresql95-server postgresql95-contrib mastodon

Enable and start required services

# sysrc redis_enable="YES"
# service redis start
# sysrc postgresql_enable="YES"
# service postgresql initdb
# service postgresql start

The Mastodon port ships with two sample nginx configuration files, a complete nginx.conf and nginx-include.conf, which mostly just includes the server block. If the web server is going to be dedicated to Mastodon, you can create a new nginx profile.

# sysrc nginx_profiles=mastodon
# sysrc nginx_mastodon_configfile="/usr/local/www/mastodon/nginx.conf"

If you prefer to continue using your current nginx.conf, you can add the line below to it. Make sure you put it inside the http block.

include /usr/local/www/mastodon/nginx-include.conf;

In either case, you need to customize nginx-include.conf. At minimum, you will have to change all instances of example.com. Once you are satisfied with its configuration, start nginx.

# sysrc nginx_enable="YES"
# service nginx start

Create mastodon database user

# psql -d template1 -U pgsql -c "CREATE USER mastodon CREATEDB;"

Switch to the mastodon user

# su - mastodon

Customize .env.production

Customize .env.production to suit your needs, but you must at least set values for LOCAL_DOMAIN and SMTP_FROM_ADDRESS. You also have to generate secrets for PAPERCLIP_SECRET, SECRET_KEY_BASE, and OTP_SECRET. Generate a different secret for each of these fields by running the command below three time. Save .env.production before moving on to the next step.

% RAILS_ENV=production rake secret

If you are installing version 1.5.0 or later, to enable Web Push notifications, you need to generate a few extra secrets and put them in .env.production.

% RAILS_ENV=production rake mastodon:webpush:generate_vapid_key

Set up the database for the first time

% RAILS_ENV=production rails db:setup

Start the Mastodon daemons

Run the following commands with root privileges.

# sysrc mastodon_web_enable="YES"
# sysrc mastodon_workers_enable="YES"
# sysrc mastodon_stream_enable="YES"
# service mastodon_web start
# service mastodon_workers start
# service mastodon_stream start

Optional Configuration in /etc/rc.conf

As of version 2.0.0, values for some options can be read from /etc/rc.conf instead of .env.production. See the comments in Mastodon's three rc scripts, mastodon_web, mastodon_workers, and mastodon_stream for details.

Give users administration rights

After the user alice has created an account through the web interface, you can give her administration rights by using the command below.

# sudo su - mastodon
% RAILS_ENV=production rails mastodon:make_admin USERNAME=alice