Mastodon on a shared server?

stephan0h

Hi,
Just did a quick search for "mastodon" in this here forum - and got zero hits.
So just a quick question: Are there any fundamental reasons why this would not work on a shared server? Has anybody tried?
Thanks,
Stephan

sean

stephan0h I tried to get a working Mastodon install for a customer a couple of years ago but IIRC the RAM usage was too high for any of our shared hosting plans. Maybe things have improved, you're welcome to give it a shot 🙂

stephan0h

Thanks, maybe I will :-)

filipesaraiva

stephan0h pls if you are going to try, share to us how it was! 🙂
I would like to have a personal instance.

querkmachine

I'm interested in how a personal Mastodon instances works out too, especially now Twitter is... definitely going places.

sean

I'm working on this right now, there are a lot of moving parts so thanks for your patience 🙂

sean

sean I'm working on this right now, there are a lot of moving parts so thanks for your patience 🙂

Getting to the last mile on this, hope to have a procedure for you guys in a day or two.

allrite

I have a VPS and would be interested in getting a Mastodon instance working. Could also look at https://docs.microblog.pub/ as an option for self-hosting single instances. Looks much more lightweight and easier to automate an install.

sean

allrite microblog.pub is in fact super-easy to set up here at Opalstack, will put up some instructions soon.

sean

allrite microblog.pub is in fact super-easy to set up here at Opalstack, will put up some instructions soon.

As promised: HOWTO install and run microblog.pub on Opalstack 🙂

sean

Almost there, I wasn't kidding when I said there are a lot of moving parts 🙂

rdelrossi

This is what I love most about Opalstack. Just absolutely outstanding support 😃

sean

Might be another day or two on this, but in the meantime if you've never used Mastodon and would like to give it a try we've started our own instance at opalstack.social!

Feel free to sign up and join the party today 🐘🥳

If you're a current Mastodon user looking for a new home and have questions about migrating then please feel free to ask 🙂

ngkabra

sean At this point, would you be able to give a rough guesstimate of the amount of diskspace and cpu a small Mastodon instance would consume? (Single digit number of users, following maybe a few hundred other accounts total).

I'm just trying to see how much it would cost me to host my own server on Opalstack.

(I understand that this will be wild-assed guessing and that I cannot hold you to these numbers, but your guess would still be helpful.)

sean

ngkabra would you be able to give a rough guesstimate of the amount of diskspace and cpu a small Mastodon instance would consume?

opalstack.social has low double-digit users following a few dozen accounts on a 4GB VPS, the VPS is using around 15GB of storage and 2GB of RAM. CPU usage is single-digit but the instance isn't very busy yet.

My test instance that I'm using as I develop the installation procedure is a single user instance with 1 follow, it's using about 900MB of RAM idle.

I expect that the 2GB Double Stack plan ($25/mo) or 2GB VPS ($20/mo) will be the absolute minimum to a single user instance on shared hosting, and that a 4GB VPS or higher will be needed for larger instance.

YMMV 🙂

bchhun

I was able to run a https://gotosocial.org/ instance if you're looking for a lightweight ActivityPub server 🙂

I followed the steps here to set it up: https://community.opalstack.com/d/695-golang-in-opalstack/10

sean

bchhun I was able to run a https://gotosocial.org/ instance if you're looking for a lightweight ActivityPub server

Thanks for sharing, will check it out!

filipesaraiva

sean I expect that the 2GB Double Stack plan ($25/mo) will be the absolute minimum to a single user instance on shared hosting, and that a 4GB VPS or higher will be needed for larger instance.

Ok, now waiting for tips to install docs.microblog.pub 😂

All the best, Sean!

allrite

After just manually setting up a full Mastodon instance on another service (and having Google almost immediately flag it as a phishing site!?!?!) I would suggest that it isn't the best tool if you just want a personal site with your own domain. Mastodon is better for a defined community, but I expect it to need active maintenance.

Looking forward to trying out some less resource intensive personal tools here.

k4ml

Pleroma might be more viable on shared hosting like opalstack since it only need elixir and postgresql but the install instruction here make it looks like require sudo access.

https://docs-develop.pleroma.social/backend/installation/otp_en/