Pixelfed installation on ubuntu 18.04
This is a guide on how to install #pixelfed on ubuntu 18.04 since that is a distribution most probably to find on cheap VPS's.
Preparation
In most servers this stuff is pre-installed, but when you just install ubuntu server with no extra options they are missing. There's no harm trying, worst that can happen is to get an “already installed” message.
In some cases (minimal default installation) you will need to add the add-apt-repository command. I also had to install the https transport for apt (that is a program that allows apt to download over https instead of http) because some newer repositories require it. Do this now because sometimes an installation might fail halfway through if it's not installed and that's a tough situation to get out of.
sudo apt install software-properties-common apt-transport-https
and the trash command so that you don't actually delete things permanently with rm
sudo apt install trash-cli
Then you can use trash useless-filename-here to delete stuff.
I like the micro editor because it uses the modern GUI editor conventions in the terminal (such as Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V for copy and paste).
The second command adds micro to PATH for all users because for some reason /snap/bin is not in the path for every user.
sudo snap install micro --classic
sudo sed -i 's#"$#:/snap/bin"#' /etc/environment
or if that doesn't work
curl https://getmic.ro | bash
Installation of dependencies
First add php ppa's. This step adds newer php versions to this old ubuntu because pixelfed doesn't run with older ones.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
(The ondrej apache ppa is not required but the ppa maintainer recommends adding it)
Then add mariadb (mysql-equivalent) repositories. The same goes here, pixelfed requires newer versions.
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 0xF1656F24C74CD1D8
sudo add-apt-repository 'deb [arch=amd64,arm64,i386,ppc64el] http://ftp.cc.uoc.gr/mirrors/mariadb/repo/10.2/ubuntu xenial main'
Refresh caches
sudo apt update
Upgrade what can be upgraded
sudo apt upgrade
Answer yes to the prompt
Install nginx
sudo apt install nginx
Install php and mysql
sudo apt install php7.3 mariadb-server
You might need to remove apache.
sudo apt remove apache2
If it says it's not installed don't worry about it, all is well.
Install other required modules
sudo apt install imagemagick composer redis-server jpegoptim optipng pngquant php7.3-xml php7.3-pdo php7.3-json php7.3-ctype php7.3-xml php7.3-mbstring php7.3-gd php7.3-tokenizer php7.3-bcmath php7.3-curl php7.3-zip unzip php7.3-pdo php7.3-mysql php7.3-intl php7.3-fpm
Install mail transport agent so that pixelfed can send confirmation emails.
sudo apt install postfix
In the dialog box that appears press Tab and then Enter to choose Ok and then choose Internet site from the list using the arrow keys on your keyboard and then press Enter to confirm. In the next page enter the name of your instance, e.g. myinstance.name.
At some point you will probably need to monitor processes and free memory so install htop before you actually need it, at which point will probably be impossible to do the installation
sudo apt install htop
Configuring nginx
I prefer to run nginx as a user I can log in to so now we will do that:
Create a new user pixelfed
sudo useradd -m pixelfed
Set his default shell to bash
sudo chsh pixelfed -s /bin/bash
Edit apache nginx config so that it runs using that user
sudo micro /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
Find and replace user nginx; with user pixelfed;. Save (Ctrl+S) and close (Ctrl+Q) the file.
Also we need to change the php-fpm user to pixelfed
sudo micro /etc/php/7.3/fpm/pool.d/www.conf
Find all occurences of www-data and change them to pixelfed (use Ctrl+F). There are two on lines 23 and 24 also two on 47 and 48
Change the web server root directory to the public directory of the pixelfed repository
sudo micro /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
Replace /var/www/html with /home/pixelfed/pixelfed/public.
Being here, you should also uncomment the php directives
#location ~ \.php$ {
# include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
#
# # With php-fpm (or other unix sockets):
# fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
# # With php-cgi (or other tcp sockets):
# fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
#}
should become
location ~ \.php$ {
include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
# With php-fpm (or other unix sockets):
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.-fpm.sock;
# # With php-cgi (or other tcp sockets):
# fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
}
Notice that two of the # remain and that php7.0 became php7.3
Configuring php
Change php max upload size (how large a file is allowed to be uploaded)
sudo micro /etc/php/7.3/apache2/php.ini
Search the file for upload_max_filesize and post_max_size and change to 80M and 120M respectively. You can go larger and just configure pixelfed to limit the sizes but I think 80M is a reasonable size. You can also increase the memory limit to 512M or maybe half your vps's RAM.
Save and close the file.
Restart nginx and php-fpm
sudo systemctl restart nginx
sudo systemctl restart php7.3-fpm.service
Configuring MariaDB
Log in to mysql as root
sudo mysql
Enter the mysql root password as you entered it above.
Create a pixelfed database and user and give the user permissions. On the prompt that appears
CREATE SCHEMA pixelfed;
CREATE USER 'pixelfed'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'supersecretpassword';
USE pixelfed;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON pixelfed.* TO 'pixelfed'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;
Installing Pixelfed
Log in as pixelfed
sudo su pixelfed
change to the home directory
cd
Get the code
git clone https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed.git
cd pixelfed
Configuration
Copy the default configuration
cp .env.example .env
Edit the configuration
micro .env
Set your instance name and domain as you wish.
APP_NAME="PixelFed Test"
APP_URL=http://myinstance.name
ADMIN_DOMAIN="myinstance.name"
APP_DOMAIN="myinstance.name"
SESSION_DOMAIN="myinstance.name"
Set the username and password of MariaDB as you have configured them above. Find the following lines and complete the values after the =
DB_DATABASE=pixelfed
DB_USERNAME=pixelfed
DB_PASSWORD=supersecretpassword
Set the mail server configuration. Replace myinstance.name with the name of your instance.
MAIL_DRIVER=sendmail
MAIL_HOST=localhost
MAIL_PORT=2525
MAIL_USERNAME=null
MAIL_PASSWORD=null
MAIL_ENCRYPTION=null
MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS="pixelfed@myinstance.name"
MAIL_FROM_NAME="myinstance.name"
Set the federation flags to true if you want
ACTIVITY_PUB=false
REMOTE_FOLLOW=false
Save and close the file.
Deploying
Run the post deployment commands as outlined here
cd /home/pixelfed/pixelfed # Or wherever pixelfed is installed
composer install --no-ansi --no-interaction --no-progress --no-scripts --optimize-autoloader
php artisan key:generate
php artisan config:cache
php artisan route:cache
php artisan migrate --force
php artisan horizon:purge
Link the storage directory
php artisan storage:link
Now we need to make sure horizon is always running.
Systemd setup
Exit the user shell
exit
now create a new systemd service
sudo micro /etc/systemd/system/pixelfed.service
with the following contents
[Unit]
Description=Pixelfed task queueing via Laravel Horizon
After=network.target
Requires=mariadb
Requires=php-fpm
Requires=redis
Requires=nginx
[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/php /home/pixelfed/artisan horizon
User=pixelfed
Restart=on-failure
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
enable the service so that it starts automatically on each boot
sudo systemctl enable pixelfed
and start it
sudo systemctl start pixelfed
Launch!
restart nginx
sudo systemctl restart nginx
Let's encrypt and https
Go to certbot website and follow the instructions there. I copied them here for easy access:
sudo apt-get install certbot python-certbot-nginx
sudo certbot --nginx
Follow the instructions from there.
Certbot comes with a cronjob automating renewal so in theory you shouldn't need to do anything more at this time. Enjoy your pixelfed installation.
Creating your first user and setting as adminstrator
Go to the website (http://myinstance.name) and register a new account Go back to your vps and log on to mysql again
mysql -u pixelfed -p
Give the supersecretpassword In the prompt that appears make yourself adminstrator
use pixelfed;
update users set is_admin=1 where id=1;
If you have trouble seeing the activation email you can activate yourself too
update users set email_verified_at="2019-02-12 10:25:32" where id=1;
Final steps
Now go to the website again and log in. You should be able to administer the instance.
Happy posting!