takahe/docs/installation.rst

Installation

We recommend running using the Docker/OCI image; this contains all of the necessary dependencies and static file handling preconfigured for you.

All configuration is done via either environment variables, or online through the web interface.

Prerequisites

• SSL support (Takahē requires HTTPS)
• Something that can run Docker/OCI images
• A PostgreSQL 14 (or above) database
• Hosting/reverse proxy that passes the HOST header down to Takahē
• One of these to store uploaded images and media:
  • Amazon S3
  • Google Cloud Storage
  • Writable local directory (must be accessible by all running copies!)

Note that ActivityPub is a chatty protocol that has a lot of background activity, so you will need to run background tasks, in order to fetch profiles, retry delivery of posts, and more.

Ideally, you would choose a platform where you can run our worker process in the background continuously, but for small installations we have a URL you can call periodically instead - see "What To Run", below.

The flagship Takahē instance, takahe.social, runs inside of Kubernetes, with one Deployment for the webserver and one for the Stator runner.

What To Run

You need to run at least one copy of the Docker image with no extra arguments, in order to serve web traffic.

The image has required environment variables before it will boot, and this is the only way to configure it - see below.

You also need to ensure Stator, our background task system, runs regularly. You can do this in one of two ways:

• Run another copy of image with the arguments python manage.py runstator, which will run a background worker continuously.
• Call the URL /.stator/?token=abc periodically (once a minute or more). The token value must be the same as you set in TAKAHE_STATOR_TOKEN.

The background worker will have a lot more throughput, but you can opt for either for a small installation. If Stator gets backed up, you can either run more workers or call the URL more often to ensure it gets more throughput.

While you can run Takahē directly from a checkout if you like (rather than having to use the Docker image), we're not officially supporting that right now, as it increases our support burden by having to deal with lots of OS and library versions. It's a standard Django app, though, so if you know what you're doing, have at it - just expect us to push back if you file tickets about things not working on your OS!

Environment Variables

All of these variables are required for a working installation, and should be provided from the first boot.

• TAKAHE_DATABASE_SERVER should be a database DSN for your database (you can use the standard PGHOST, PGUSER, etc. variables instead if you want)
• TAKAHE_SECRET_KEY must be a fixed, random value (it's used for internal cryptography). Don't change this unless you want to invalidate all sessions.
• TAKAHE_MEDIA_BACKEND must be a URI starting with local://, s3:// or gcs://.
  • If it is set to local://, you must also provide TAKAHE_MEDIA_ROOT, the path to the local media directory, and TAKAHE_MEDIA_URL, a fully-qualified URL prefix that serves that directory.
  • If it is set to gcs://, it must be in the form gcs://bucket-name (note the two slashes if you just want a bucket name). Your bucket must be set to world-readable and have individual object permissions disabled.
  • If it is set to s3://, it must be in the form s3://access-key:secret-key@endpoint-url/bucket-name. Your bucket must permit publically-readable files to be uploaded.
• TAKAHE_MAIN_DOMAIN should be the domain name (without https://) that will be used for default links (such as in emails). It does not need to be the same as any domain you are hosting user accounts on.
• TAKAHE_EMAIL_SERVER should be set to an smtp:// or sendgrid:// URI
  • If you are using SMTP, it is smtp://username:password@host:port/. You can also put ?tls=true or ?ssl=true on the end to enable encryption.
  • If you are using SendGrid, you should set the URI to sendgrid://api-key
• TAKAHE_EMAIL_FROM is the email address that emails from the system will appear to come from.
• TAKAHE_AUTO_ADMIN_EMAIL should be an email address that you would like to be automatically promoted to administrator when it signs up. You only need this for initial setup, and can unset it after that if you like.
• If you don't want to run Stator as a background process but as a view, set TAKAHE_STATOR_TOKEN to a random string that you are using to protect it; you'll use this when setting up the URL to be called.
• If your installation is behind a HTTPS endpoint that is proxying it, set TAKAHE_USE_PROXY_HEADERS to true. (The HTTPS proxy header must be called X-Forwarded-Proto).
• If you want to receive emails about internal site errors, set TAKAHE_ERROR_EMAILS to a valid JSON list of emails, such as ["andrew@aeracode.org"] (if you're doing this via shell, be careful about escaping!)

Migrations

You will have to run manage.py migrate when you first install Takahē in order to create the database tables; how you do this is up to you. You can shell into a running machine, create a one-off task that uses the Docker image, or something else.

You will also have to run this for minor version releases when new migrations are present; the release notes for each release will tell you if one is.

Making An Admin Account

Once the webserver is up and working, go to the "create account" flow and create a new account using the email you specified in TAKAHE_AUTO_ADMIN_EMAIL.

Once you set your password using the link emailed to you, you will have an admin account.

If your email settings have a problem and you don't get the email, don't worry; fix them and then follow the "reset my password" flow on the login screen, and you'll get another password reset email that you can use.

If you have shell access to the Docker image and would rather use that, you can run python3 manage.py createsuperuser instead and follow the prompts.

Adding A Domain

When you login you'll be greeted with the "make an identity" screen, but you won't be able to as you will have no domains yet.

You should select the "Domains" link in the sidebar and create one, and then you will be able to make your first identity.