firefish/docs/install.md

Install Firefish

Firefish depends on the following software.

Runtime dependencies

• At least NodeJS v18.17.0 (v20/v21 recommended)
• At least PostgreSQL v12 (v16 recommended) with PGroonga extension
• At least Redis v7
• Web Proxy (one of the following)
  • Caddy (recommended)
  • Nginx (recommended)
  • Apache
• FFmpeg for video transcoding (optional)
• Caching server (optional, one of the following)
  • DragonflyDB
  • KeyDB
  • Another Redis server

Build dependencies

• At least Rust v1.74
• C/C++ compiler & build tools
  • build-essential on Debian/Ubuntu Linux
  • base-devel on Arch Linux
• Python 3

This document shows an example procedure for installing these dependencies and Firefish on Debian 12. Note that there is much room for customizing the server setup; this document merely demonstrates a simple installation.

If you want to use the pre-built container image, please refer to install-container.md.

If you do not prepare your environment as document, be sure to meet the minimum dependencies given at the bottom of the page.

Make sure that you can use the sudo command before proceeding.

1. Install dependencies

Utilities

sudo apt update
sudo apt install build-essential python3 curl wget git lsb-release

Node.js and pnpm

Instructions can be found at this repository.

NODE_MAJOR=20
curl -fsSL "https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_${NODE_MAJOR}.x" | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt install nodejs

# check version
node --version

You also need to enable pnpm.

sudo corepack enable
corepack prepare pnpm@latest --activate

# check version
pnpm --version

PostgreSQL and PGroonga

PostgreSQL install instructions can be found at this page.

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb https://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt $(lsb_release -cs)-pgdg main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pgdg.list'
wget --quiet -O - https://www.postgresql.org/media/keys/ACCC4CF8.asc | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt update
sudo apt install postgresql-16

sudo systemctl enable --now postgresql

# check version
psql --version

PGroonga install instructions can be found at this page.

wget "https://apache.jfrog.io/artifactory/arrow/$(lsb_release --id --short | tr 'A-Z' 'a-z')/apache-arrow-apt-source-latest-$(lsb_release --codename --short).deb"
sudo apt install "./apache-arrow-apt-source-latest-$(lsb_release --codename --short).deb"
wget "https://packages.groonga.org/debian/groonga-apt-source-latest-$(lsb_release --codename --short).deb"
sudo apt install "./groonga-apt-source-latest-$(lsb_release --codename --short).deb"
sudo apt update
sudo apt install postgresql-16-pgdg-pgroonga

rm "apache-arrow-apt-source-latest-$(lsb_release --codename --short).deb" "groonga-apt-source-latest-$(lsb_release --codename --short).deb"

Redis

Instructions can be found at this page.

curl -fsSL https://packages.redis.io/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/redis-archive-keyring.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/redis-archive-keyring.gpg] https://packages.redis.io/deb $(lsb_release -cs) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/redis.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install redis

sudo systemctl enable --now redis-server

# check version
redis-cli --version

FFmpeg

sudo apt install ffmpeg

2. Set up a database

1. Create a database user

   sudo -u postgres createuser --no-createdb --no-createrole --no-superuser --encrypted --pwprompt firefish
   

   If you forgot the password you typed, you can reset it by executing sudo -u postgres psql -c "ALTER USER firefish PASSWORD 'password';".
2. Create a database

   sudo -u postgres createdb --encoding='UTF8' --owner=firefish firefish_db
   

3. Enable PGronnga extension

   sudo -u postgres psql --command='CREATE EXTENSION pgroonga;' --dbname=firefish_db
   

3. Configure Firefish

1. Create an user for Firefish and switch user

   sudo useradd --create-home --user-group --shell /bin/bash firefish
   sudo su --login firefish
   
   # check the current working directory
   # the result should be /home/firefish
   pwd
   

2. Install Rust toolchain

   Instructions can be found at this page.

   curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
   . "${HOME}/.cargo/env"
   
   # check version
   cargo --version
   

3. Clone the Firefish repository

   git clone --branch=main https://firefish.dev/firefish/firefish.git
   

4. Copy and edit the config file

   cd firefish
   cp .config/example.yml .config/default.yml
   nano .config/default.yml
   

   url: https://your-server-domain.example.com  # change here
   port: 3000
   
   db:
     host: localhost
     port: 5432
     db: firefish_db
     user: firefish
     pass: your-database-password  # and here
   

4. Build Firefish

1. Build

   pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
   NODE_ENV=production NODE_OPTIONS='--max-old-space-size=3072' pnpm run build
   

2. Execute database migrations

   pnpm run migrate
   

3. Logout from firefish user

   exit
   

5. Preparation for publishing a server

1. Set up a firewall

To expose your server securely, you may want to set up a firewall. We use ufw in this instruction.

sudo apt install ufw
# if you use SSH
# SSH_PORT=22
# sudo ufw limit "${SSH_PORT}/tcp"
sudo ufw default deny
sudo ufw allow 80
sudo ufw allow 443
sudo ufw --force enable

# check status
sudo ufw status

2. Set up a reverse proxy

In this instruction, we use Caddy to make the Firefish server accesible from internet. However, you can also use Nginx if you want (example Nginx config file).

1. Install Caddy

   sudo apt install debian-keyring debian-archive-keyring apt-transport-https
   curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/caddy/stable/gpg.key' | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/caddy-stable-archive-keyring.gpg
   curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/caddy/stable/debian.deb.txt' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/caddy-stable.list
   sudo apt update
   sudo apt install caddy
   
   # check version
   caddy version
   

2. Replace the config file

   sudo mv /etc/caddy/Caddyfile /etc/caddy/Caddyfile.bak
   sudo nano /etc/caddy/Caddyfile
   

   your-server-domain.example.com {
   	reverse_proxy http://127.0.0.1:3000
   
   	log {
   		output file /var/log/caddy/firefish.log
   	}
   }
   

3. Restart Caddy

   sudo systemctl restart caddy
   

6. Publish your Firefish server

1. Create a service file

   sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/firefish.service
   

   [Unit]
   Description=Firefish daemon
   Requires=redis.service caddy.service postgresql.service
   After=redis.service caddy.service postgresql.service network-online.target
   
   [Service]
   Type=simple
   User=firefish
   Group=firefish
   UMask=0027
   ExecStart=/usr/bin/pnpm run start
   WorkingDirectory=/home/firefish/firefish
   Environment="NODE_ENV=production"
   Environment="npm_config_cache=/tmp"
   Environment="NODE_OPTIONS=--max-old-space-size=3072"
   # uncomment the following line if you use jemalloc (note that the path varies on different environments)
   # Environment="LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libjemalloc.so.2"
   StandardOutput=journal
   StandardError=journal
   SyslogIdentifier=firefish
   TimeoutSec=60
   Restart=always
   
   CapabilityBoundingSet=
   DevicePolicy=closed
   NoNewPrivileges=true
   LockPersonality=true
   PrivateDevices=true
   PrivateIPC=true
   PrivateMounts=true
   PrivateUsers=true
   ProtectClock=true
   ProtectControlGroups=true
   ProtectHostname=true
   ProtectKernelTunables=true
   ProtectKernelModules=true
   ProtectKernelLogs=true
   ProtectProc=invisible
   RestrictNamespaces=true
   RestrictRealtime=true
   RestrictSUIDSGID=true
   SecureBits=noroot-locked
   SystemCallArchitectures=native
   SystemCallFilter=~@chown @clock @cpu-emulation @debug @ipc @keyring @memlock @module @mount @obsolete @privileged @raw-io @reboot @resources @setuid @swap
   SystemCallFilter=capset pipe pipe2 setpriority
   
   [Install]
   WantedBy=multi-user.target
   

2. Start Firefish

   sudo systemctl enable --now firefish
   

Upgrading

Please refer to the upgrade instruction. Be sure to switch to firefish user and go to the Firefish directory before executing the git command:

sudo su --login firefish
cd ~/firefish

Customize

• To add custom CSS for all users, edit ./custom/assets/instance.css.
• To add static assets (such as images for the splash screen), place them in the ./custom/assets/ directory. They'll then be available on https://yourserver.tld/static-assets/filename.ext.
• To add custom locales, place them in the ./custom/locales/ directory. If you name your custom locale the same as an existing locale, it will overwrite it. If you give it a unique name, it will be added to the list. Also make sure that the first part of the filename matches the locale you're basing it on. (Example: en-FOO.yml)
• To add custom error images, place them in the ./custom/assets/badges directory, replacing the files already there.
• To add custom sounds, place only mp3 files in the ./custom/assets/sounds directory.
• To update custom assets without rebuilding, just run pnpm run gulp.
• To block ChatGPT, CommonCrawl, or other crawlers from indexing your instance, uncomment the respective rules in ./custom/robots.txt.

Tips & Tricks

• When editing the config file, please don't fill out the settings at the bottom. They're designed only for managed hosting, not self hosting. Those settings are much better off being set in Firefish's control panel.
• Port 3000 (used in the default config) might be already used on your server for something else. To find an open port for Firefish, run for p in {3000..4000}; do ss -tlnH | tr -s ' ' | cut -d" " -sf4 | grep -q "${p}$" || echo "${p}"; done | head -n 1. Replace 3000 with the minimum port and 4000 with the maximum port if you need it.
• We'd recommend you use a S3 Bucket/CDN for Object Storage, especially if you use containers.
• When using object storage, setting a proper Access-Control-Allow-Origin response header is highly recommended.
• We'd recommend against using CloudFlare, but if you do, make sure to turn code minification off.
• For push notifications, run npx web-push generate-vapid-keys, then put the public and private keys into Control Panel > General > ServiceWorker.
• For translations, make a DeepL account and generate an API key, then put it into Control Panel > General > DeepL Translation.
• To add another admin account:
  • Go to the user's page > 3 Dots > About > Moderation > turn on "Moderator"
  • Go back to Overview > click the clipboard icon next to the ID
  • Run psql -d firefish (or whatever the database name is)
  • Run UPDATE "user" SET "isAdmin" = true WHERE id='999999'; (replace 999999 with the copied ID)
  • Restart your Firefish server