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Installing Akkoma

 

This page makes the following assumptions:

  • You have a running VPS, prepared according to the instructions in Preparing Your VPS.
  • You have a domain name that's pointed to your VPS.

If either of these aren't true, please read through the last three pages.

We're now going to download, install, and configure Akkoma, as well as some dependencies and a few other services we'll need to make this work: specifically, Caddy and PostgreSQL.

PostgreSQL is used to store information, such as account details, user posts, and the like. Caddy is something called a "reverse proxy" - think of it like opening a portal from the outside world into a specific application within your VPS. Caddy also does some other heavy lifting for us, such as getting SSL certificates (which allow folks and other servers to securely connect to your instance).

We are doing this install withfrom thesource. Installing from OTP release.as Thisbroken, isas a simplernecessary waydependency tohas gobeen about installing Akkoma, as you don't need to install as many dependencies independently. If you'd like to installremoved from source,Ubuntu you24.04. may want to instead refer to the upstream documents: Installing on Debian Based Distributions

This guide is written based off,off of, and uses a lotmuch of the same commands,commands asas, the upstream documentation: Installing on LinuxDebian usingBased OTP releasesDistributions

Installing Dependencies

We have a few things we need to install - namely, PostgreSQL, Caddy, and a fewhandful of dependencies needed- some required to run Akkomabuild and somerun ofAkkoma, itsand a few required to enable useful features:

sudo apt install git build-essential postgresql postgresql-contrib cmake libmagic-dev elixir erlang-dev erlang-nox imagemagick ffmpeg libimage-exiftool-perl caddy

Before we continue, let's create the Akkoma system user - we'll need it eventually, but we may need it very soon:

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

Run the following command, and ensure you have at least OTP 25 and Elixir 1.14:

elixir --version

If you at least meet those versions, skip directly to Tuning Postgres. If not, uninstall Elixir and Erlang, then proceed with the next section, Installing asdf:

sudo apt remove elixir erlang-dev erlang-nox
sudo apt autoremove
Installing Elixir and Erlang with asdf

asdf is an application that effectively manages versions of different applications available to a given project. We will be using it to install a recent version of Erlang and Elixir.

You're first going to need a few more dependencies:

sudo apt install -y curl unzip libncurses6build-essential postgresqlautoconf postgresql-contribm4 caddy libmagic-libncurses5-dev imagemagicklibssh-dev ffmpegunixodbc-dev libimage-exiftool-perlxsltproc libxml2-utils libncurses-dev

NoteNext, thatlet's change to the akkoma user, then download asdf.

sudo su -l akkoma -s $SHELL
git clone https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf.git /var/lib/akkoma/.asdf --branch v0.11.3

From now until Tuning Postgres, you will run all of these commands as the akkoma user.

Next, we'rell add a few lines to the end of .bashrc, and then restart your akkoma shell.

cat <<EOT >> ~/.bashrc
. "$HOME/.asdf/asdf.sh"
# asdf completions
. "$HOME/.asdf/completions/asdf.bash"
EOT
exec $SHELL

Let's start compiling and installing libncurses6Erlang, insteadand then installing Elixir. Compiling Erlang will take a few moments!

asdf plugin add erlang https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf-erlang.git
export KERL_CONFIGURE_OPTIONS="--disable-debug --without-javac"
asdf install erlang 25.3.2.5
asdf global erlang 25.3.2.5
asdf plugin-add elixir https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf-elixir.git
asdf install elixir 1.15.4-otp-25
asdf global elixir 1.15.4-otp-25

Finally, check the elixir version once again, to make sure you now have the right version:

elixir --version

If it is indeed correct, go ahead and exit your akkoma shell back into root.

exit

Tuning Postgres

We're going to take a slight detour from the install documentation to tune PostgreSQL a little bit. This will help tweak the performance to work better with our kind of libncurses5.setup.

libncurses5

The following tune was consideredcreated obsoleteusing PGTune, and removed.was Whilecreated I'massuming a VPS with 4 GB of memory and 2 CPU cores (and I told the tune to only use 3 GB of memory.) If your specs are different, you may want to create your own tune. If you create your own tune, I also selected "Web Application" for database type, 100 max connections, and SSD storage.

Open postgresql.conf in nano:

sudo nano /etc/postgresql/16/main/postgresql.conf

Find the following settings in the processfile, ofand writingchange thisthem document,to Iread cannotthe guaranteefollowing that(including thisun-commenting substitutionthem willif workthey're alright.commented Ifout):

you
max_connections proceed= from100
beyondshared_buffers here,= do768MB
soeffective_cache_size with= caution.
2304MB
maintenance_work_mem = 192MB
checkpoint_completion_target = 0.9
wal_buffers = 16MB
default_statistics_target = 100
random_page_cost = 1.1
effective_io_concurrency = 200
work_mem = 3932kB
huge_pages = off
min_wal_size = 1GB
max_wal_size = 4GB

You can press Ctrl+W in Nano to run a search.

Then, enable and restart postgresql:

sudo systemctl enable postgresql
sudo systemctl restart postgresql

Installing and Configuring Akkoma

 

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