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!