Installing on Debian Based Distributions¶

OTP releases vs from-source installations¶

There are two ways to install Pleroma. You can use OTP releases or do a from-source installation. OTP releases are as close as you can get to binary releases with Erlang/Elixir. The release is self-contained, and provides everything needed to boot it, it is easily administered via the provided shell script to open up a remote console, start/stop/restart the release, start in the background, send remote commands, and more. With from source installations you install Pleroma from source, meaning you have to install certain dependencies like Erlang+Elixir and compile Pleroma yourself.

This guide covers a from-source installation. To install using OTP releases, please check out the OTP guide.

Installation¶

This guide will assume you are on Debian 11 (“bullseye”) or later. This guide should also work with Ubuntu 18.04 (“Bionic Beaver”) and later. It also assumes that you have administrative rights, either as root or a user with sudo permissions. If you want to run this guide with root, ignore the sudo at the beginning of the lines, unless it calls a user like sudo -Hu pleroma; in this case, use su <username> -s $SHELL -c 'command' instead.

Required dependencies¶

PostgreSQL 9.6+
Elixir 1.9+
Erlang OTP 22.2+
git
file / libmagic
gcc (clang might also work)
GNU make
CMake

Optional dependencies¶

ImageMagick
FFmpeg
exiftool

Prepare the system¶

First update the system, if not already done:

sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade

Install some of the above mentioned programs:

sudo apt install git build-essential postgresql postgresql-contrib cmake libmagic-dev

Install Elixir and Erlang¶

Install Elixir and Erlang (you might need to use backports or asdf on old systems):

sudo apt update
sudo apt install elixir erlang-dev erlang-nox

Optional packages: `docs/installation/optional/media_graphics_packages.md`¶

sudo apt install imagemagick ffmpeg libimage-exiftool-perl

Install PleromaBE¶

Add a new system user for the Pleroma service:

sudo useradd -r -s /bin/false -m -d /var/lib/pleroma -U pleroma

Note: To execute a single command as the Pleroma system user, use sudo -Hu pleroma command. You can also switch to a shell by using sudo -Hu pleroma $SHELL. If you don’t have and want sudo on your system, you can use su as root user (UID 0) for a single command by using su -l pleroma -s $SHELL -c 'command' and su -l pleroma -s $SHELL for starting a shell.

Git clone the PleromaBE repository and make the Pleroma user the owner of the directory:

sudo mkdir -p /opt/pleroma
sudo chown -R pleroma:pleroma /opt/pleroma
sudo -Hu pleroma git clone -b stable https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma /opt/pleroma

Change to the new directory:

cd /opt/pleroma

Install the dependencies for Pleroma and answer with yes if it asks you to install Hex:

sudo -Hu pleroma mix deps.get

Generate the configuration: sudo -Hu pleroma MIX_ENV=prod mix pleroma.instance gen
Answer with yes if it asks you to install rebar3.
This may take some time, because parts of pleroma get compiled first.
After that it will ask you a few questions about your instance and generates a configuration file in config/generated_config.exs.
Check the configuration and if all looks right, rename it, so Pleroma will load it (prod.secret.exs for productive instance, dev.secret.exs for development instances):

sudo -Hu pleroma mv config/{generated_config.exs,prod.secret.exs}

The previous command creates also the file config/setup_db.psql, with which you can create the database:

sudo -Hu postgres psql -f config/setup_db.psql

Now run the database migration:

sudo -Hu pleroma MIX_ENV=prod mix ecto.migrate

Now you can start Pleroma already

sudo -Hu pleroma MIX_ENV=prod mix phx.server

Finalize installation¶

If you want to open your newly installed instance to the world, you should run nginx or some other webserver/proxy in front of Pleroma and you should consider to create a systemd service file for Pleroma.

Nginx¶

Install nginx, if not already done:

sudo apt install nginx

Setup your SSL cert, using your method of choice or certbot. If using certbot, first install it:

sudo apt install certbot

and then set it up:

sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/letsencrypt/
sudo certbot certonly --email <your@emailaddress> -d <yourdomain> --standalone

If that doesn’t work, make sure, that nginx is not already running. If it still doesn’t work, try setting up nginx first (change ssl “on” to “off” and try again).

Copy the example nginx configuration and activate it:

sudo cp /opt/pleroma/installation/pleroma.nginx /etc/nginx/sites-available/pleroma.nginx
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/pleroma.nginx /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/pleroma.nginx

Before starting nginx edit the configuration and change it to your needs (e.g. change servername, change cert paths)
Enable and start nginx:

sudo systemctl enable --now nginx.service

If you need to renew the certificate in the future, uncomment the relevant location block in the nginx config and run:

sudo certbot certonly --email <your@emailaddress> -d <yourdomain> --webroot -w /var/lib/letsencrypt/

Other webserver/proxies¶

You can find example configurations for them in /opt/pleroma/installation/.

Systemd service¶

Copy example service file

sudo cp /opt/pleroma/installation/pleroma.service /etc/systemd/system/pleroma.service

Edit the service file and make sure that all paths fit your installation
Enable and start pleroma.service:

sudo systemctl enable --now pleroma.service

Create your first user¶

If your instance is up and running, you can create your first user with administrative rights with the following task:

sudo -Hu pleroma MIX_ENV=prod mix pleroma.user new <username> <your@emailaddress> --admin

Questions¶

Questions about the installation or didn’t it work as it should be, ask in #pleroma:libera.chat via Matrix or #pleroma on libera.chat via IRC.