Tutorial Install Pleroma on Ubuntu 20.04

Pleroma is a social networking microblogging server based on the open OStatus and ActivityPub standards. Servers that use Pleroma server software can exchange user messages and posts with other servers in accordance with these standards. In this article, we are going to teach you about Tutorial Install Pleroma on Ubuntu 20.04, step by step. You can visit the packages available in Eldernode if you wish to purchase an Ubuntu VPS server.

How to Install Pleroma on Ubuntu 20.04

Pleroma is a federal social networking platform that is compatible with Mastodon and other ActivityPub implementations. In the first part of this article, we are going to mention the prerequisites for Install Pleroma on Ubuntu 20.04. Then we want to teach you how to configure the firewall. After performing these steps, we will reach the main part, that is, how to Install Pleroma. After you have completed Install Pleroma, we will configure it and in the final step, we will teach you how to setup Pleroma step by step. Please stay tuned for the rest of this article.

Prerequisites to Install Pleroma on Ubuntu 20.04

Before installing Pleroma on Ubuntu 20.04 you need to provide the following prerequisites:

_ Ubuntu VPS Server

_ A non-root Sudo user

Then you need to use the following commands to make sure everything is up to date:

sudo apt update

sudo apt upgrade

You also need to use the following commands and install some packages and dependencies:

sudo apt install wget curl gnupg2 ca-certificates lsb-release gnupg zip libncurses5 libmagic-dev -y

In the next step, you need to install PostgreSQL. So you can add the official PostgreSQL repository to the Ubuntu resource list by running the following command:

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt $(lsb_release -cs)-pgdg main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pgdg.list'

Then you need to add the repository GPG key:

wget --quiet -O - https://www.postgresql.org/media/keys/ACCC4CF8.asc | sudo apt-key add -

Now you need to update the list of system packages by running the following command:

sudo apt update

The last prerequisite that must be installed before installing Pleroma is Nginx. You can install Nginx using the following command:

sudo apt install nginx

How to Configure Firewall to Install Pleroma on Ubuntu 20.04

After preparing the Preroma installation prerequisites, the second step is to configure the firewall. It should be noted that Ubuntu comes with UFW by default. So you should run the following command to check if the firewall is running:

sudo ufw status

Output:

Status: inactive

The next step is to run the following command to allow the SSH port so that the firewall doesn’t break the current connection by enabling it:

sudo ufw allow OpenSSH

You also need to do the same for the HTTP and HTTPS ports:

sudo ufw allow 80

sudo ufw allow 443

Finally, you can enable the firewall using the following command:

sudo ufw enable

Command may disrupt existing ssh connections. Proceed with operation (y|n)? y

You can now check the status of the firewall by running the following command:

sudo ufw status

Install Pleroma on Ubuntu 20.04 | Ubuntu 18.04

After successfully completing the previous steps, now we come to how to install Pleroma. Just follow the steps below step by step. In this article, we are going to install Pleroma from the OTP version. So in the first step, you have to create a Pleroma user without the ability to log in. It should also be noted that the following command creates a home directory in /opt/pleroma.

sudo adduser --system --shell /bin/false --home /opt/pleroma pleroma

Before going to the Pleroma user, you need to go to the root user by executing the following commands:

sudo su

su pleroma -s $SHELL -l

Now it’s time to download Pleroma to a temporary location using the following command

curl "https://git.pleroma.social/api/v4/projects/2/jobs/artifacts/stable/download?job=amd64" -o /tmp/pleroma_amd64.zip

Then you have to extract the downloaded file with the following command:

unzip /tmp/pleroma_amd64.zip -d /tmp/

Now you can easily install Pleroma:

mv /tmp/release/* /opt/pleroma

In the next step after installing Pleroma, you need to delete the temporary files:

rm -rf /tmp/pleroma_amd64.zip /tmp/release

You can now switch to the root user by executing the exit command:

exit

Another important point is that in the next step you need to create a directory for the uploads and public files:

mkdir -p /var/lib/pleroma/{uploads,static}

You can create a Pleroma configuration list using the following command:

mkdir -p /etc/pleroma

Finally, you can change the ownership of Pleroma directories to Pleroma users by running the following command:

chown -R pleroma /var/lib/pleroma /etc/pleroma

How to Configure Pleroma on Ubuntu 20.04

After you are fully acquainted with how to install Pleroma in the previous section, we now want to configure it. You must first return to the Pleroma user using the following command:

su pleroma -s /bin/bash -l

Use the following command to generate a Pleroma sample configuration file:

./bin/pleroma_ctl instance gen --output /etc/pleroma/config.exs --output-psql /tmp/setup_db.psql

You will be asked questions. You can ignore these questions if no error occurs. Note that you need to choose a strong password for your database. If you want to configure your instance from the admin panel, select “y” for the configuration storage question in the database.

In this step, you must go to the default PostgreSQL user created when installing PostgreSQL by executing the following commands:

exit

su postgres -s /bin/bash -l

You can then create a database using the SQL file:

psql -f /tmp/setup_db.psql

After you have successfully created the database, you need to return to the Pleroma user by executing the following commands:

exit

su pleroma -s /bin/bash -l

Finally, you can run the following commands to initialize the database we just created and go to the root user:

./bin/pleroma_ctl migrate

exit

How to Setup roma on Linux Ubuntu 20.04

In this section, you need to configure Nginx before launching Pleroma. You can install Nginx by moving it to the /etc/nginx/sites-available directory.

mv /opt/pleroma/installation/pleroma.nginx /etc/nginx/sites-available/pleroma.conf

Then you need to replace all the example.tld events with your domain in the next step using the following command:

sed -i 's/example\.tld/example.com/g' /etc/nginx/sites-available/pleroma.conf

Now you need to open the configuration file for editing using a text editor like nano:

nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/pleroma.conf

Now you should uncomment the location ~ /\.well-known/acme-challenge block. The server block of your configuration file should look like the following:

server {  server_name example.com;    listen 80;  listen [::]:80;    location ~ /\.well-known/acme-challenge {  root /var/lib/letsencrypt/;  }    location / {  return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri;  }  }

After making the changes, you can use the Ctrl+X key combination to save the file and exit it.

It’s time to enable the Pleroma Nginx configuration by running the following command:

ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/pleroma.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/pleroma.conf

You must also enable the Nginx server with the following command to start it at boot time:

systemctl enable nginx

systemctl start nginx

Note that you need to install the Pleroma systemd service unit file in the distribution. To do this, use the following command:

mv /opt/pleroma/installation/pleroma.service /etc/systemd/system/pleroma.service

Finally, you can enable and start the Pleroma service by executing the following commands:

systemctl enable pleroma

systemctl start pleroma

After completing all the steps mentioned in this tutorial, you can now open https://example.com in your web browser to visit Pleroma.

Conclusion

In this article, we tried to introduce you to Pleroma first. Then we mentioned the prerequisites for installing Pleroma. We also configured the firewall. After completing all these steps, we taught you to step by step how to Install Pleroma on Ubuntu 20.04. Finally, how to configure and setup Pleroma was taught. If you have any questions about this training, you can leave a comment below this post or in the community section.