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JuanjoSalvador / wafrn-backend

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WAFRN backend - Node.js REST API

Wafrn is an opensource social network that connects with the fediverse. The frontend (not included in this repo) is tumblr-inspired. The "official" wafrn server is app.wafrn.net but you can host your own if you're unhappy with my moderation style or simply and more probable, you would like to host your own stuff.

What will you need

Before trying to host your own wafrn, we advice you to please, very please, join our matrix channel to get support, questions to the team and all those stuffs. Wafrn is an alpha software. kinda. And you WILL find bugs. Either during the use or while trying to follow this manual. So yet again, please join our matrix chatroom. We recomend the client element if you're new to this. Ok let's get started, this is what you will need

  • A few hours
  • A linux machine with root access. This tutorial will asume debian or derivates
  • A domain where you can create subdomains
  • We currently are using a strong free tier oracle vps with 24 gb of ram, but with our huge database we are using "only" 6gb of ram. I would advice for 4 or 8gb of ram.
  • A domain for the frontend, a subdomain for the media, and another subdomain for the cache.
  • We will install mysql/mariadb, redis, apache and certbot. Feel free to skip what you know, but take a look to the apache config file, it's important

The domains

The frontend domain is the domain that people will use to find you in the fedi. In the prod instance, its app.wafrn.net. Then refering to the media url, we have media.wafrn.net, and finally for cache we have cache.wafrn.net

First steps: update and install stuff

with the root user, do this command:

apt update && apt dist-upgrade
apt install curl mysql-server mysql apache2 certbot python3-certbot-apache build-essential redis ffmpeg webp graphicsmagick tmux

Create a database

With the root user, we log in into the database with the command mysql. Then we create a db, and an user and a password:

mysql
CREATE DATABASE WAFRN;
CREATE USER 'wafrn'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'SAFE_PASSWORD';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wafrn.* TO 'wafrn'@'localhost';

Create a user for wafrn and prepare node for the user

You could install nodejs on the system level, but we do not recomend that. Instead, we advice for using nvm both in your machine if you ever do something, and in the server. Create a new system user. In this case, we are going to call it wafrn

adduser wafrn

Now we will add the wafrn user to the apache group so we can use apache to serve the image files and the static frontend

usermod -aG www-data wafrn
systemctl restart apache2

Configuring apache

We first have to enable some apache modules first, and change some details in the config file

a2enmod proxy
a2enmod headers
a2enmod rewrite
systemctl restart apache2

Then we will edit the file /etc/apache/apache2.conf and we will edit this:

<Directory /var/www/>
        ......
</Directory>
# AFTER THIS WE WILL ADD THE NEW STUFF:
# this directory will point to the uploads folder inside thebackend
<Directory /home/wafrn/wafrn-backend/uploads>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
        Require all granted
</Directory>
# this directory will point towards the angular app compiled. We recomend doing this to avoid downtime when updating the front
# this directory will also be configured in the backend config later
<Directory /home/wafrn/front>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
</Directory>

The fediverse does A LOT of petitions, and before wafrn starts lagging, apache defaults will be a bigger issue for us! Edit the file /etc/apache2/mods_avaiable/mpm_worker.conf and add this config

<IfModule mpm_worker_module>
ServerLimit 250
StartServers 10
MinSpareThreads 75
MaxSpareThreads 250
ThreadLimit 64
ThreadsPerChild 32
MaxRequestWorkers 8000 # like seriously wafrn would go slow because too many connections open for apache. This is where the fix was :D
MaxConnectionsPerChild 10000
</IfModule>

Now we will create the fediverse media cacher apache config

We will create the file /etc/apache2/sites-avaiable/YOUR-CACHE-DOMAIN.conf with this content. The cacher by default will run in the port 3002, if you need another port, change it

<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
        ServerName cache.wafrn.net #CHANGE THIS FOR YOUR CACHE DOMAIN
        RewriteEngine     on
        ProxyRequests off
        ProxyPreserveHost on
        ProxyPass / http://localhost:3002/ # we will assume port 3002
        ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:3002/ #we will assume port 3002
        Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*"

        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error_cache.log
        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/wafrn_cache.log combined
        # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
        # alert, emerg.
        LogLevel warn
</VirtualHost>

And now we will create the apache config file for multimedia files. We recomend doing this instead of using the wafrn integrated one, because it can be affected by wafrn cpu usage. We create the file /etc/apache2/sites-avaiable/YOUR-MEDIA-DOMAIN.conf with this content:

<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName media.wafrn.net # CHANGE THIS
        ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
        DocumentRoot /home/wafrn/wafrn-backend/uploads # make sure the uploads folder exist after downloading the backend.
        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/media_error.log
        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/media_access.log combined
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} =media.wafrn.net
RewriteRule ^ https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [END,NE,R=permanent]
</VirtualHost>

Finally, the big one: we create the file to serve both the frontend and the backend:

We create the file /etc/apache2/sites-avaiable/YOUR-FRONTEND-DOMAIN.conf with this content. TAKE A LOOK TO THE FILE, IT HAS IMPORTANT COMMENTS IN IT. This might change in the future to something more user friendly but for now, we have this.

<VirtualHost *:80>
                ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
        ServerName app.wafrn.net # CHANGE THIS
        RewriteEngine     on
        ProxyRequests off
        ProxyPreserveHost on
				#this will redirect all the /api/ petitions to the backend
        ProxyPass /api/ http://localhost:5000/api/
        ProxyPassReverse /api/ http://localhost:5000/api/
				#this will redirect all the /fediverse petitions to the fedi
        ProxyPass /fediverse/ http://localhost:5000/fediverse/
        ProxyPassReverse / /fediverse http://localhost:5000/fediverse/
				#this is another fedi redirect
        ProxyPass /.well-known/ http://localhost:5000/.well-known/
        ProxyPassReverse /.well-known/ http://localhost:5000/.well-known
				# another fedi things redirect
        ProxyPass /contexts/ http://localhost:5000/contexts/
        ProxyPassReverse /contexts/ http://localhost:5000/contexts/
				# this one is for the posts preview. Currently a bit wonky
        ProxyPass /post/ http://localhost:5000/post/
        ProxyPassReverse /post/ http://localhost:5000/post/
        Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*"
        # TAKE ATENTION TO THIS LINE. This line has some domains multiple times. make sure you edit them properly or images wont load
        Header set Content-Security-Policy "default-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline' 'unsafe-eval'  https://app.wafrn.net  ; img-src blob: https://media.wafrn.net cache.wafrn.net https://app.wafrn.net; media-src  blob: https://media.wafrn.net cache.wafrn.net https://app.wafrn.net;"
        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error_wafrn.log
        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/wafrn_app.log combined
        # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
        # alert, emerg.
        LogLevel warn
        # this one are the static frontend files so they dont go through the backend
        DocumentRoot /home/wafrn/front/
</VirtualHost>

Getting started with node and copying the code

Log in as the wafrn user. Once you're there, time to install nvm.

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/master/install.sh | bash
source ~/.profile
nvm install node 18 #You could use 20 in theory.

Once you have installed nvm and node 18 in the wafrn user of your server, we will install the angular cli on the user, then clone the repositories

npm install -g @angular/cli

Now we will clone the repos that we need, and create the folder where the frontend will be served:

mkdir front
git clone https://github.com/gabboman/fediversemediacacher.git # the media cacher. its basically a proxy
git clone https://github.com/gabboman/wafrn.git #this is the frontend
git clone https://github.com/gabboman/wafrn-backend.git # the backend.

Now we have to get into each of the folders and install the dependencies. Just go into each of the folders and do

npm install

Configuring the frontend

In the frontend folder, copy the environment file to environment.custom.ts

cp src/environment/environment.prod src/environment/environment.custom.ts

Now we will edit the file. The file has anotations,


npm start

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