How to Deploy Mastodon on the Threefold Grid Today! [Closed]

Mastadon On the Threefold Grid

      I have recently deployed and tested Mastadon on the Threefold Grid and it has been a surprisingly easy experience. I am going to provide basic documentation to the process in this post that I intend to expand upon over the coming days. At this point it is my recommendation that you setup your server using the Ubuntu 20.04 image deployable on the Playground I have prepared this documentation on doing this, read all of this post before you deploy any resources, you’ve been warned, its not fun deleting half your deployments that were done before you read a requirement.

For Mastadon, you will want to deploy the 20.04 image with appropriate resources for the size of the server you intend to host,

  • you can find a break down of what cpu and ram needs are expected here, for this tutorial you will be running without docker.

  • This should be deployed with both Public IPv4 & Public IPv6, planetary is optional but usable for encrypted communication to the server.

SMTP Your mastodon server will require access to a smtp server there is a couple options for this, any way you accomplish this is acceptable but it is possible to host these resources on the grid. if you choose to self host this resource with a full smtp server, expect to face trouble with setting up your email so that it can be received by end users without being blocked or sorted to spam, I have done this successfully, but its not tutorial easy yet. my current recommendation is to follow the setup a smtp relay tutorial.

  • you can host a smtp relay server on the grid by deploying the 20.04 image and following this tutorial

  • you can host a full fledged smtp server on the grid by deploying the 20.04 cloud image and following this tutorial, due to some isps blocking port 25, and the needed reliability I suggest running your smtp server on a reliable gateway farm like those of the foundation, greenedge and dany sing. these can often be identified by their gateway domain addresses on the Threefold Grid Explorer

    • Mail.ThreeFoldCloud.com, is a example of this.
      • if you host your own mail sure you will need to add addition dns records to your domain
        MX: Mail.Threefoldcloud.com
        TXT: "v=spf1 ip4:185.206.122.163 ip6:2a10:b600:1:0:94a1:d5ff:fe9d:3632 include:threefoldcloud.com -all " where you have replaced the ips and domains with your ips and domains. these will be the Ip addresses from your deployment hosting iredmail.

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DNS you need to configure the DNS records for your Mastadon deployment BEFORE you install Mastadon on the server and follow the tutorial as they have to be properly configured to acquire your ssl certs. you will need A, AAAA, NS, and C Name records for your site. I use Go daddy for my records, but you can use any registrar, they should be configured the same way a threefold gateway address is configured, I covered that in this video, these are the records for my deployment,
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and how they relate to the deployments

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If your ready to get started you can

  • Read, a short introduction to the Threefold Playground.

  • Set-up Your Playground

  • Deploy Your Workload

  • And if you run into any problems you can get Support

If your looking for deployment specific guides checkout

There is currently an incompatible ubuntu update, that may or may not be resolved by the time you do this, if you experience a warning about a failed grub installation tell it not to retry, and to continue without installing grub and the issue will not return in further updates. this is documented here, this issue is resolved by not skipping the step of running update & upgrade and handling the warning at the beginning of each deployment. it will break the install scripts in the tutorials if you do not update and upgrade first.

once you have a fully updated vm, restart your vm with

         shutdown -r now 

You will now be able to follow the install Mastadon from source guide

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Once you have that up here some other guides i have validated on the 20.04 image

  • Funkwhale, using the “quick install method”

  • Peertube, using the “any OS method”

and as a teaser, Direct Admin is deployable is on the 22.04 image

  • DirectAdmin, this is really exciting opportunity this company offer full featured web hosting platforms that include the initial setup being done by them, with it being compatible with the grid we only have to teach the company how to use the grid, and it would seamless to their customers offering them the ability for a completely back end integration. you can check them out here directadmin.com
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