Misskey is an alternative to Mastodon, a decentralized social network that is growing in popularity. In this tutorial, we will be showing you how to install Misskey on nixOS Latest.
Before we begin, ensure your system meets the following pre-requisites:
Follow the steps below to install Misskey:
First, ensure to update your OS by running the below command:
sudo nixos-rebuild switch
Misskey runs on Node.js. Therefore, ensure that Node.js is installed and updated with the following command:
sudo nix-env -iA nixos.nodejs-16_x
Nginx is required to act as a reverse proxy for the Misskey server we will be running. To install Nginx, run the following command:
sudo nix-env -iA nixos.nginx
Create a Unix user named misskey
by running the command:
sudo useradd -d /var/lib/misskey -m misskey
Next, make the user a member of the nethogs
group to provide the capability to monitor all network connections:
sudo usermod -a -G nethogs misskey
Now, we can proceed to configure Misskey.
Run the following nix-shell
command to get the Misskey software:
sudo -i
curl -L https://get.misskey.io/install | bash
This command will install Misskey into /var/lib/misskey
. You can now change into this directory:
cd /var/lib/misskey/current
From the directory, create a config
directory and copy the default configuration files into this directory:
mkdir -p config
cp example-config/env production.env
cp example-config/config.json config
Edit the .env file with your favorite text editor:
vim ~/.bashrc
Add:
export MISSKEY_NODE_ENV=production
Activate:
source ~/.bashrc
Next, edit the Misskey configuration file config.json
to include the correct configuration values. Update the host
, port
, node_env
, appSecret
, and dbUri
fields:
{
"host": "localhost",
"port": 8080,
"node_env": "production",
"appSecret": "insert-your-app-secret-here",
"dbUri": "mongodb://localhost:27017/misskey",
"disableSignUp": false,
"recaptchaPublicKey": "",
"recaptchaPrivateKey": "",
"activityPub": {
"domain": "example.com",
"keyPath": "/path/to/key",
"certPath": "/path/to/cert"
},
"socketio": {
"transports": ["polling", "websocket"],
"cookie": true
}
}
You will need to create an App Secret to run Misskey. Save and exit the file.
To start Misskey, enter the following command:
sudo -u misskey bash -c 'source ~/.bashrc && cd /var/lib/misskey/current && yarn start' &
This command starts Misskey running in the background, and you should be able to access it through a web browser.
We will set up Nginx to act as a reverse proxy for Misskey so that Misskey can be accessed via a domain name, e.g., example.com
. To do that, we need to add the Nginx configuration. Run the following command to create the Nginx configuration file:
sudo vim /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
And add these lines:
http {
upstream misskey {
server localhost:8080;
}
server {
listen 80;
listen [::]:80;
server_name example.com;
location / {
proxy_pass http://misskey;
}
}
}
Restart Nginx,
sudo systemctl restart nginx.service
Now you should be able to access Misskey via a web browser with the domain name described.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Misskey on your nixOS Latest and configured it to be accessed via a domain name. Misskey is now ready for use as a decentralized social network. Happy posting!
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