Setting up your new instance
Things to do after installing Mastodon
Creating an admin account
In the browser
After signing up in the browser, you will need to use the command line to give your newly created account admin privileges. Assuming your username is alice:
RAILS_ENV=production bin/tootctl accounts modify alice --role admin
From the command line
You can create a new account using the command-line interface.
RAILS_ENV=production bin/tootctl accounts create \
alice \
--email alice@example.com \
--confirmed \
--role admin
A randomly generated password will be shown in the terminal.
Filling in server information
After logging in, navigate to the Site settings page. While there are no technical requirements for filling in this information, it is considered crucial for operating a server for humans.
| Setting | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Contact username | Your username so people know who owns the server |
| Business e-mail | An e-mail address so people locked out of their accounts, or people without accounts, can contact you |
| Instance description | Why did you start this server? Who is it for? What makes it different? |
| Custom extended information | You can put all sorts of information in here but a code of conduct is recommended |
After you fill these in, simply hit “Save changes”.
Running periodic cleanup tasks
Mastodon generates some temporary files that are worth cleaning up after a certain amount of time (e.g. to save money on hosting). In general, you want to set up cron jobs (or another mechanism) to run these periodic cleanup tasks.
Typically you want to run tootctl media remove and tootctl preview_cards remove periodically. These will clean up remote media (e.g. images, videos, audio) and preview cards (e.g. preview images for links) after a certain number of days. (Check the docs for those commands if you want to tweak how old something has to be before it's cleaned up.)
First, run crontab -e to edit the cronfile for the mastodon user. (If you get a prompt asking which editor to use, choose your favorite editor.)
Next, add something like the following to the bottom of the file:
@weekly RAILS_ENV=production /home/mastodon/live/bin/tootctl media remove
@weekly RAILS_ENV=production /home/mastodon/live/bin/tootctl preview_cards remove
This will run these two commands on a weekly basis.
Finally, save the file. You can use crontab -l to verify the configuration.
Last updated September 27, 2020 · Improve this page
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