Commands

docker exec -it mastodon_web_1 bash

# clean cached media files
tootctl media remove

# emoji CLI
tootctl emoji import ./examplr.tar.gz [--prefix PREFIX] [--suffix SUFFIX] [--overwrite] [--unlisted] [--category CATEGORY]

External Resources

Using the admin CLI: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/tootctl/

The official Docker guide：https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/archive/Running-Mastodon/Docker-Guide.md

Nginx part (Chinese): https://candinya.com/posts/mastodon-first-meet/

Docker configurations

The project now includes a Dockerfile and a docker-compose.yml file (which requires at least docker-compose version 1.10.0).

Prerequisites

  • Working basic (Linux) server with Nginx (or Apache2; not officially supported).
  • Recent stable version of Docker.
  • Recent stable version of Docker-compose.

Setting up

Clone Mastodon's repository.

# Clone mastodon to ~/live directory
git clone https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon.git live
# Change directory to ~/live
cd ~/live
# Checkout to the latest stable branch
git checkout $(git tag -l | grep -v 'rc[0-9]*$' | sort -V | tail -n 1)

Review the settings in docker-compose.yml. Note that it is not default to store the postgresql database and redis databases in a persistent storage location. If you plan on running your instance in production, you must uncomment the volumes directive in docker-compose.yml.

Getting the Mastodon image

Using a prebuilt image

If you're not making any local code changes or customizations on your instance, you can use a prebuilt Docker image to avoid the time and resource consumption of a build. Images are available from Docker Hub: https://hub.docker.com/r/tootsuite/mastodon/

To use the prebuilt images:

  1. Open docker-compose.yml in your favorite text editor.
    1. Comment out the build: . lines for all images (web, streaming, sidekiq).
    2. Edit the image: tootsuite/mastodon lines for all images to include the release you want. The default is latest which is the most recent stable version, however it recommended to explicitly pin a version: If you wanted to use v2.2.0 for example, you would edit the lines to say: image: tootsuite/mastodon:v2.2.0
    3. Save the file and exit the text editor.
  2. Run cp .env.production.sample .env.production to bootstrap the configuration. You will need to edit this file later.
  3. Run docker-compose build. It will now pull the correct image from Docker Hub.
  4. Set correct file-owner with chown -R 991:991 public

Building your own image

You must build your own image if you've made any code modifications. To build your own image:

  1. Open docker-compose.yml in your favorite text editor.
    1. Uncomment the build: . lines for all images (web, streaming, sidekiq) if needed.
    2. Save the file and exit the text editor.
  2. Run cp .env.production.sample .env.production to bootstrap the configuration. You will need to edit this file later.
  3. Run docker-compose build.
  4. Set correct file-owner with chown -R 991:991 public

Building the app

Now the image can be used to generate a configuration with:

docker-compose run --rm web bundle exec rake mastodon:setup

This is an interactive wizard that will guide you through the basic and necessary options and generate new app secrets. At some point it will output your configuration, copy and paste that configuration into the .env.production file.

The wizard will setup the database schema and precompile assets. After it's done, you can launch Mastodon with:

docker-compose up -d

Configuration

Following that, make sure that you read the production guide, beginning with the section that describes how to point Nginx to Mastodon.

The container has two volumes, for the assets and for user uploads, and optionally two more, for the postgresql and redis databases.

The default docker-compose.yml maps them to the repository's public/assets and public/system directories, you may wish to put them somewhere else. Likewise, the PostgreSQL and Redis images have data containers that you may wish to map somewhere where you know how to find them and back them up.

Note: The --rm option for docker-compose will remove the container that is created to run a one-off command after it completes. As data is stored in volumes it is not affected by that container clean-up.

Running tasks

Running any of these tasks via docker-compose would look like this:

docker-compose run --rm web bundle exec rake mastodon:media:clear

Updating

This approach makes updating to the latest version a real breeze.

  1. git fetch to download updates from the repository.
  2. Now you need to tell git to use those updates. You have probably changed your docker-compose.yml file. Check with git status.
  • If the docker-compose.yml file is modified, run git stash to stash your changes.
  1. git checkout TAG_NAME to use the tag code. (If you have committed changes, use git merge TAG_NAME instead, though this isn't likely.)
  2. Only if you ran git stash, now run git stash pop to redo your changes to docker-compose.yml. Double check the contents of this file.
  3. Build the updated Mastodon image.
  • If you are using a prebuilt image: First, edit the image: tootsuite/mastodon lines in docker-compose.yml to include the tag for the new version. E.g. image: tootsuite/mastodon:v2.3.0
  • To pull the prebuilt image, or build your own from the updated code: docker-compose build
  1. (optional) docker-compose run --rm web bundle exec rake db:migrate to perform database migrations. Does nothing if your database is up to date.
  2. (optional) docker-compose run --rm web bundle exec rake assets:precompile to compile new JS and CSS assets.
  3. Follow any other special instructions in the release notes.
  4. docker-compose up -d to re-create (restart) containers and pick up the changes.