🦣 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

# override default environment variables if necessary:
cp .env.example .env

# 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 nvm/rbenv and set consistent environment variables.
  • Optional: The default values of each config variable can be seen in .env.example. Create a new file named .env in the root of this repository (probably at /home/mastodon/utils/.env) to override any or all of them.
  • 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: A quick and easy way to test init.sh and .env by printing the version numbers 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 $MASTODON_ROOT/backups. Useful for a daily cronjob.
  • Keeps archives for the last 5 days, last 4 weeks, and every month
  • Optionally uploads to S3 with s3cmd
• purge.sh: Runs Mastodon's built-in cleanup commands, designed for a weekly cronjob.
  • Keeps 14 days of media
  • Keeps 90 days of profile avatars, headers, and link 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 .env first (see .env.example) 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 all customizations. Get the far less dangerous version of upgrade.sh here instead.
• customize.sh: Applies every Git patch below, sets defaults (mostly for logged-out visitors) and removes unused files.

Patches

Vanilla only:

• increase-sidekiq-timeout.patch: Small bump in Sidekiq's timeout before it decides a remote instance isn't available. Use this one very carefully!

Vanilla and glitch-soc:

• 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: Hides the list of rules on the About page (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:

• mastodon-logo.patch: Restore the Mastodon logo in the non-advanced sidebar
• 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?!?

License

MIT