Changelog's Mastodon on fly.io

Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub.

The Mastodon server is implemented a rails app, which relies on postgres and redis. It uses sidekiq for background jobs, along with a separate nodejs http streaming server.

Docker images: https://hub.docker.com/r/tootsuite/mastodon/

Dockerfile: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/blob/main/Dockerfile

docker-compose.yml: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/blob/main/docker-compose.yml

Setup

App

$ fly apps create --region iad --name changelog-social
$ fly scale memory 1024 # rails needs more than 256mb

Secrets

$ SECRET_KEY_BASE=$(docker run --rm -it tootsuite/mastodon:latest bin/rake secret)
$ OTP_SECRET=$(docker run --rm -it tootsuite/mastodon:latest bin/rake secret)
$ fly secrets set OTP_SECRET=$OTP_SECRET SECRET_KEY_BASE=$SECRET_KEY_BASE
$ docker run --rm -e OTP_SECRET=$OTP_SECRET -e SECRET_KEY_BASE=$SECRET_KEY_BASE -it tootsuite/mastodon:latest bin/rake mastodon:webpush:generate_vapid_key | fly secrets import

Redis server

Redis is used to store the home/list feeds, along with the sidekiq queue information. The feeds can be regenerated using tootctl, so persistence is not strictly necessary.

$ fly apps create --name changelog-social-redis
$ fly volumes create -c fly.redis.toml mastodon_redis
$ fly deploy --config fly.redis.toml --build-target redis-server

Storage (user uploaded photos and videos)

The fly.toml uses a [mounts] section to connect the /opt/mastodon/public/system folder to a persistent volume.

Create that volume below, or remove the [mounts] section and uncomment [env] > S3_ENABLED for S3 storage.

Option 1: Local volume

$ fly volumes create mastodon_uploads

Option 2: S3, etc

$ fly secrets set AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=xxx AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=yyy

See lib/tasks/mastodon.rake for how to change your [env] section for Wasabi, Minio or Google Cloud Storage.

Postgres database

$ fly pg create --name changelog-social-pg
$ fly pg attach changelog-social-pg
$ fly deploy -c fly.setup.toml # run `rails db:setup`

Deploy

$ fly deploy

Upgrade

1. Update Dockerfile with the new version reference
2. Run fly deploy