PIxelfed

The easiest way to describe Pixelfed is to say it's a federated version of Instagram. There's no big bad company behind it, your data is on your server and you can easily run your own at home if you want too. This can connect to any other Pixelfed instance in the Fediverse as it's called.







The image-sharing platform defines itself as “A free and ethical photo-sharing platform” with no ads, third-party analytics, or tracking.

You can find more on pixelfed.org

What Pixelfed does need is more servers to spread the load, I've put this guide together based on some notes from the Pixelfed website itself and another website that I can't for the life of me find to give credit to.

You will need an install of Ubuntu Server 22.04 to run this using these instructions.

Let us begin

Change to root user

sudo -i

Install latest updates

apt update

apt upgrade -y

reboot now

Then install the required software

apt -y install redis-server mariadb-server ffmpeg jpegoptim optipng pngquant gifsicle unzip zip php-fpm php-cli php-bcmath php-curl php-gd php-intl php-mbstring php-redis php-xml php-zip php-mysql nginx certbot python3-certbot-nginx mc php-json php-tokenizer php-imagick

Make some changes to the php config files

nano /etc/php/8.1/fpm/php.ini

Edit these lines, I've set the max size and max filesize to 100M , max file uploads is 50

post_max_size (default 8M, set this around or slightly greater than your desired post size limit)

file_uploads (default On, which it needs to be)

upload_max_filesize (default 2M, set this <= post_max_size)

max_file_uploads (default 20, but make sure it is >= your desired attachment limit)

max_execution_time (default 30, consider raising this to 600 or more so that longer tasks arent interrupted)

And change the line that says

;date.timezone =

to

date.timezone = Europe/London

or wherever your timezone is.

Enable some of the services

systemctl enable redis-server

systemctl enable mariadb

Setup the database

mysql_secure_installation

mysql -u root -p

create database pixelfed;

grant all privileges on pixelfed.* to 'pixelfed'@'localhost' identified by 'yourpassword';

flush privileges;

exit;


Install Composer

curl -sS <https://getcomposer.org/installer -o /tmp/composer-setup.php>

php /tmp/composer-setup.php --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer


Get the software downloaded

cd /var/www

git clone -b dev https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed.git pixelfed

cd pixelfed

composer install --no-ansi --no-interaction --optimize-autoloader

cp .env.example .env

nano .env

Edit these lines to your requirements

# Instance Configuration

OPEN_REGISTRATION="true"

ENFORCE_EMAIL_VERIFICATION="false"

PF_MAX_USERS="1000"

OAUTH_ENABLED="true"



# Instance URL Configuration

APP_URL="https://pixelfed.yourdomain"

APP_DOMAIN="pixelfed.yourdomain"

ADMIN_DOMAIN="pixelfed.yourdomain"

SESSION_DOMAIN="pixelfed.yourdomain"

TRUST_PROXIES="*"



# Database Configuration

DB_CONNECTION="mysql"

DB_HOST="127.0.0.1"

DB_PORT="3306"

DB_DATABASE="pixelfed"

DB_USERNAME="pixelfed"

DB_PASSWORD="yourpassword"



# ActivityPub Configuration

ACTIVITY_PUB="true"

AP_REMOTE_FOLLOW="true"

AP_INBOX="true"

AP_OUTBOX="true"

AP_SHAREDINBOX="true"


Setup the permissions

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/pixelfed

sudo find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \; # set all directories to rwx by user/group

sudo find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \; # set all files to rw by user/group

Generate the secret APP_KEY:

php artisan key:generate

Storage/ directory must be linked to the application:

php artisan storage:link

Database migrations must be run:

php artisan migrate --force

If you want to enable support for location data:

php artisan import:cities

If you enabled ActivityPub federation:

php artisan instance:actor

If you enabled OAuth:

php artisan passport:keys

Routes should be cached whenever the source code changes or whenever you change routes:

php artisan route:cache

php artisan view:cache


Every time you edit your .env file, you must run this command to have the changes take effect:

php artisan config:cache

Setup Laravel Horizon - Job queueing

php artisan horizon:install

php artisan horizon:publish


Let's make a startup service for Pixelfed with

nano /etc/systemd/system/pixelfed.service

Paste this in

[Unit]

Description=Pixelfed task queueing via Laravel Horizon

After=network.target

Requires=mariadb

Requires=php8.1-fpm

Requires=redis

Requires=nginx



[Service]

Type=simple

ExecStart=/usr/bin/php artisan horizon --environment=production

ExecStop=/usr/bin/php artisan horizon:terminate --wait

User=www-data

WorkingDirectory=/var/www/pixelfed/

Restart=on-failure



KillSignal=SIGCONT

TimeoutStopSec=3600



[Install]

WantedBy=multi-user.target


Save and exit then run the following to get the services activated

systemctl daemon-reload

systemctl enable pixelfed

systemctl status pixelfed

Create a cron task to do some tidying up

crontab -e

Paste this in

* * * * * /usr/bin/php /var/www/pixelfed/artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

Enable nginx

systemctl enable nginx

Disable the default site

unlink /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

Create the pixelfed website

cp /var/www/pixelfed/contrib/nginx.conf /etc/nginx/sites-available/pixelfed.conf

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

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

Change the server name and the path to your chosen ones and amend the line that says

fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php-fpm/php-fpm.sock; # make sure this is correct

to

fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php-fpm.sock; # make sure this is correct

Setup an initial ssl connection, it doesn't need to be done but it's easier.

sudo mkdir /etc/nginx/ssl

sudo openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout /etc/nginx/ssl/server.key -out /etc/nginx/ssl/server.crt

systemctl reload nginx

service php8.1-fpm restart

service nginx restart

service pixelfed restart

Install proper ssl certificates

certbot

Create the first user and make admin,

php artisan user:create

And that is it so far, you can now go to https://pixelfed.yourdomain and have some fun.


Once that's all done, I have added a few extra lines to the bottom of the .env file

ENABLE_CONFIG_CACHE=true

MAX_BIO_LENGTH=500

IMPORT_INSTAGRAM=true

MAX_PHOTO_SIZE=100000

IMAGE_DRIVER=imagick

LIMIT_ACCOUNT_SIZE=false

Make sure you run the following to activate the changes.


php artisan config:cache


You really should also setup a firewall to allow only the required connections, you can do this with.


sudo ufw allow http
sudo ufw allow https


You should also setup a port for connection by ssh, the default port is 22 so you would run
sudo ufw allow 22


It would be a good idea to change the port from the default.


Run sudo ufw enable
To enable the firewall, that's it people.


Feel free to look me up on pixelfed @paulholt@pixelfed.travelsoftux.co.uk and look up the man behind it all, @dansup@pixelfed.social.