freeradical-dot-zone / freeradical-ansible

Ansible setup for deploying and maintaining the freeradical.zone Mastodon instance

Free Radical Mastodon adminstration stuff

These are the moving parts that go into hosting the Free Radical Mastodon instance.

Ansible

Use these Ansible playbooks to go from bare metal to a configured Mastodon instance in a few minutes.

Before you start

The playbooks configure a Ubuntu 16.04 server. It may be compatible with newer versions. They certainly won't be compatible with other distros, except perhaps Debian (which isn't tested).

first_run.yml assumes you can SSH into your server as root using publickey authentication. This is normal on Digital Ocean when you create a new server.

The playbook will overwrite your Nginx and PostgreSQL configurations. If you have local customizations you need to keep, either comment out those parts of the roles/*/tasks/main.yml files, or update the files and templates to include your changes. If your changes are awesome and useful to others, please submit a pull request so we can all use them!

If you're running install_mastodon.yml against an existing server, consider editing it to comment out all but the first role. Run that. When it's finished and you've made any necessary system tweaks, add one more role and repeat the process. That will keep the number of changes at one time to a manageable minimum.

It's always a good idea to run ansible-playbook --check ... first to see what changes it would make without actually making them.

Preparing to run

1. Edit host_vars/mastodon to suit.

Installing

Once you're ready:

1. Run make firstrun. This installs Python, creates an admin user, and disables SSH as root.
2. Run make install to do All The Things:
   • Installs required packages and configures them
   • Clones a Mastodon git repo
   • Builds Mastodon
   • If the git repo contains a .env.production file, e.g. you cloned your own forked Mastodon instead of the main release:
     • Runs database migrations and compiles assets
     • Starts the Mastodon service
   • Configures Nginx with a valid SSL cert, courtesy of Let's Encrypt

If the winds are blowing right and our friends in Witches Town have said the right incantations, you should be able to log into your new Mastodon instance. Congratulations!

Notes

The first_run.yml playbook can only be run one time, because it logs in as root and then disables root logins. You only need to run those steps once ever per server anyway.

The install_mastodon.yml playbook is idempotent. It describes the expected state of the running system and only takes the actions necessary to make your Mastodon installation look that way. If neither it nor the state of your server have changed, running it again won't alter your server at all.

About

This was cobbled together by Kirk Strauser, who is too lazy to look this stuff up each time. If this helps you, please write to say hi!