Poddery - Diaspora, Matrix and XMPP

We run a diaspora service at poddery.com

Environment

Username - diaspora
Path - /home/diaspora/diaspora

We use screen to keep the process running. So look for any running instances within screens using screen command.

Stopping - "screen -ls" will list the running screens. Switch to a screen using "screen -x <screen-name>. Press Control + C to stop the diaspora process and press Control + A D to detach screen)

Starting - Make sure Diaspora is not running in any screens. If yes then follow above steps before proceeding. "./script/server" will start Diaspora.

Steps to follow on updating

a rough indicator of the progress when running migrations, compare SELECT COUNT(*) FROM tags; to SELECT COUNT(*) FROM tags WHERE taggings_count > 0;

Note: You can run the update while diaspora is running.

Homepage

Homepage and other static pages are maintained on a github repo here. You can change it directly or send pull requests.

Statistics

live statistics

Coordination

loomio group

Contact

You can contact admins at poddery at autistici.org

Setting up Backup

Backup is setup on a Scaleway C1 VPS (4 core ARM processor with 2GB RAM)

Access: backup.poddery.com (212.47.244.122)

# apt-get install lvm2 cryptsetup

Directly creating luks volume on /dev/nbd1 is not working, so we use a logical volume

# pvcreate /dev/nbd1
# vgcreate data /dev/nbd1
# lvcreate -n diaspora -L 46.5G /dev/data

# cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/data/diaspora
# cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/data/diaspora diaspora

and update /etc/crypttab

# <target name> <source device>         <key file>      <options>
diaspora /dev/data/diaspora none luks

# mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/diaspora
# mkdir /var/lib/diaspora

and update /etc/fstab

# UNCONFIGURED FSTAB FOR BASE SYSTEM
/dev/mapper/diaspora /var/lib/diaspora ext4 defaults 0 2

# mount -a
# apt-get install mysql-server

Move mysql data directory to encrypted volume

# /etc/init.d/mysql stop
# mv /var/lib/mysql /var/lib/diaspora/
# ln -s /var/lib/diaspora/mysql /var/lib/mysql

Follow steps in https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/replication-howto-masterbaseconfig.html for replication

Follow steps in https://www.howtoforge.com/how-to-set-up-mysql-database-replication-with-ssl-encryption-on-centos-5.4 for ssl

Maintenance history

This section holds maintenance/issue history for future tracking.

1. Prosody error - Failed to load private key

certmanager error SSL/TLS: Failed to load '/etc/letsencrypt/live/poddery.com/privkey.pem': Previous error (see logs), or other system error. (for poddery.com)
tls error   Unable to initialize TLS: error loading private key (system lib)
certmanager error SSL/TLS: Failed to load '/etc/letsencrypt/live/poddery.com/privkey.pem': Check that the permissions allow Prosody to read this file.

This error is usually when ssl certificate in freshly installed or renewed. Prosody user is unable to access the key file due to lack of privileges.

Note that Poddery uses Letsencrypt for ssl.

Fix:

Make sure that prosody user is in 'certs' group (this group may also be called ssl-certs as setup by Letencrypt)
/etc/letsencrypt/ is the ssl directory.
Prosody user should have permissions to all folders importantly archive and live folders in /etc/letsencrypt. Permissions to each folder must be 750.
Troubleshoot by checking if you can switch to each folder in /etc/letsencrypt as prosody user and cat the files.

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