FoundKey/docs/install.md

FoundKey Setup and Installation Guide

This guide will assume that you have administrative rights, either as root or a user with sudo permissions. If you are using a non-root user, prefix the commands with sudo except when you are logged into the foundkey user with su.

This guide will also assume you're using Debian or a derivative like Ubuntu. If you are using another OS, you will need to adapt the comamnds and package names to match those that your OS uses.

Install dependencies

FoundKey requires the following packages to run:

Dependencies 📦

• Node.js (18.x)
• PostgreSQL (12.x minimum; 13.x+ is preferred)
• Redis
• Yarn

The following are needed to compile native npm modules:

• A C/C++ compiler like GCC or Clang
• Build tools like make
• Python (3.x)

Optional

• FFmpeg

To install the dependiencies on Debian (or derivatives like Ubuntu) you can use the following commands:

curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_18.x | bash -
apt install build-essential python3 nodejs postgresql redis
corepack enable # for yarn

# Optional dependencies
apt install ffmpeg

Create FoundKey user

Create a separate non-root user to run FoundKey:

adduser --disabled-password --disabled-login foundkey

The following steps will require logging into the foundkey user, so do that now.

su - foundkey

Install FoundKey

We recommend using a local branch and merging in upstream releases as they get tagged. This allows for easy local customization of your install.

First, clone the FoundKey repo:

git clone https://akkoma.dev/FoundKeyGang/FoundKey
cd FoundKey

Now create your local branch. In this example, we'll be using toast.cafe as the local branch name and release v13.0.0-preview1 as the tag to track. To create that branch:

git checkout tags/v13.0.0-preview1 -b toast.cafe

Updating will be covered in a later section. For now you'll want to install the dependencies using Yarn:

yarn install

Configure FoundKey

1. Copy .config/example.yml to .config/default.yml.

   cp .config/example.yml .config/default.yml

2. Edit default.yml with a text editor

   • Make sure you set the PostgreSQL and Redis settings correctly.
   • Use a strong password for the PostgreSQL user and take note of it since it'll be needed later.

Reverse proxy

For production use and for HTTPS termination you will have to use a reverse proxy. There are instructions for setting up nginx for this purpose.

Changing the default Reaction

You can change the default reaction that is used when an ActivityPub "Like" is received from '👍' to '⭐' by changing the boolean value meta.useStarForReactionFallback in the databse respectively.

Environment variables

There are some behaviour changes which can be accomplished using environment variables.

variable name	meaning
FK_ONLY_QUEUE	If set, only the queue processing will be run. The frontend will not be available. Cannot be combined with FK_ONLY_SERVER or FK_DISABLE_CLUSTERING.
FK_ONLY_SERVER	If set, only the frontend will be run. Queues will not be processed. Cannot be combined with FK_ONLY_QUEUE or FK_DISABLE_CLUSTERING.
FK_NO_DAEMONS	If set, the server statistics and queue statistics will not be run.
FK_DISABLE_CLUSTERING	If set, all work will be done in a single thread instead of different threads for frontend and queue. (not recommended)
FK_WITH_LOG_TIME	If set, a timestamp will be appended to all log messages.
FK_SLOW	If set, all requests will be delayed by 3s. (not recommended, useful for testing)
FK_LOG_LEVEL	Sets the log level. Messages below the set log level will be suppressed. Available log levels are quiet (suppress all), error, warning, success, info, debug.

If the NODE_ENV environment variable is set to testing, then the flags FK_DISABLE_CLUSTERING and FK_NO_DAEMONS will always be set, and the log level will always be quiet.

Build FoundKey

Build foundkey with the following:

NODE_ENV=production yarn build

If your system has at least 4GB of RAM, run NODE_ENV=production yarn build-parallel to speed up build times.

If you're still encountering errors about some modules, use node-gyp:

1. npx node-gyp configure
2. npx node-gyp build
3. NODE_ENV=production yarn build

Setting up the database

Create the appropriate PostgreSQL users with respective passwords, and empty database as named in the configuration file.

Make sure the database connection also works correctly when run from the user that will later run FoundKey, or it could cause problems later. The encoding of the database should be UTF-8.

sudo -u postgres psql

create database foundkey with encoding = 'UTF8';
create user foundkey with encrypted password '{YOUR_PASSWORD}';
grant all privileges on database foundkey to foundkey;
\q

Next, initialize the database: yarn run init

Running FoundKey

You can either run FoundKey manually or use the system service manager to start FoundKey automatically on startup.

Launching manually

Run NODE_ENV=production npm start to launch FoundKey manually. To stop the server, use Ctrl-C.

Launch with systemd

Run systemctl --edit --full --force foundkey.service, and paste the following:

[Unit]
Description=FoundKey daemon

[Service]
Type=simple
User=foundkey
ExecStart=/usr/bin/npm start
WorkingDirectory=/home/foundkey/foundkey
Environment="NODE_ENV=production"
TimeoutSec=60
StandardOutput=syslog
StandardError=syslog
SyslogIdentifier=foundkey
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Save the file, then enable and start FoundKey.

systemctl enable --now foundkey

You can check if the service is running with systemctl status foundkey.

Launch with OpenRC

Copy the following text to /etc/init.d/foundkey:

#!/sbin/openrc-run

name=foundkey
description="FoundKey daemon"

command="/usr/bin/npm"
command_args="start"
command_user="foundkey"

supervisor="supervise-daemon"
supervise_daemon_args=" -d /home/foundkey/foundkey -e NODE_ENV=\"production\""

pidfile="/run/${RC_SVCNAME}.pid"

depend() {
	need net
	use logger

	# alternatively, uncomment if using nginx reverse proxy
	#use logger nginx
}

Mark the script as executable and enable the service to start on boot:

chmod +x /etc/init.d/foundkey
rc-update add foundkey

Start the FoundKey service:

rc-service foundkey start

You can check if the service is running with rc-service foundkey status.

Updating FoundKey

When a new release comes out, simply fetch and merge in the new tag. If you plan on making additional changes on top of that tag, we suggest using the --squash option with git merge.

git fetch -t
git merge tags/v13.0.0-preview2
# you are now on the "next" release

Now you'll want to update your dependencies and rebuild:

yarn install
# Use build-parallel if your system has 4GB or more RAM and want faster builds
NODE_ENV=production yarn build

Next, run the database migrations:

yarn migrate

Then restart FoundKey if it's still running.

# Systemd
systemctl restart foundkey

# OpenRC
rc-service foundkey restart

If you encounter any problems with updating, please try the following:

1. yarn clean or yarn cleanall
2. Retry update (Don't forget yarn install)

Need Help?

If you have any questions or troubles, feel free to contact us on IRC: #foundkey on irc.akkoma.dev, port 6697 with SSL