Run Mastodon in Centos7 (troubleshoot record)

[fish-404]

Packages:

• imagemagick - ImageMagick
• ffmpeg[^1]
• libxml2-dev - libxml2-devel
• libxslt1-dev - libxslt-devel
• libyaml-dev - libyaml-devel
• libffi-dev - libffi-devel
• g++ gcc autoconf build-essential - group 'Development Tools' [^2][^3]
• redis-server redis-tools - redis [^4]
• libjemalloc-dev - jemalloc-devel [^5]
• libssl-dev - openssl-devel
• pkg-config - pkgconfig
• libprotobuf-dev - protobuf-devel
• libgdbm-dev - gdbm-devel
• libreadline6-dev - readline-devel
• zlib1g-dev - zlib-devel
• libidn11-dev - libidn-devel
• libncurses5-dev - ncurses-devel

Some deploy guide[^6] writes clearly, but miss some packages after mastodon has upgraded to a new version.

About Node.js and Yarn:

• When you read guides for installation, you sometimes find curl https://xxxxxxx/setup_[version].x, be careful with the version.[^7]

• If you have installed Node.js from other source, you will get a warning, follow the installation hint to install Yarn package manager.

  curl -sL https://dl.yarnpkg.com/rpm/yarn.repo | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/yarn.repo
  sudo yum install yarn

Useful websites:

• Packages for Linux and Unix
• Yum Info Search

[^1]: How to Install and Use FFmpeg on CentOS 7 | Linuxize

[^2]: How to install GCC Compiler on CentOS 7 | Linuxize](https://linuxize.com/post/how-to-install-gcc-compiler-on-centos-7/)

[^3]: software installation - Can't Install build-essential on CentOS - Unix & Linux Stack Exchange

[^4]: jemalloc package will also be installed

[^5]: Require jemalloc package

[^6]: Deploying a Mastodon Instance on CentOS7 | by Grant 'Faceman' Foster | Medium

[^7]: According to the NodeSource repository, CentOS 7 (64-bit) BUILD SYSTEM CURRENTLY BROKEN FOR NODEJS 18+

[fish-404]

Certbot https://certbot.eff.org/

Reference: https://github.com/mastodon/documentation/issues/1432

[fish-404]

FATAL ERROR: Reached heap limit Allocation failed - JavaScript heap out of memory

Solution:

export NODE_OPTIONS=--max_old_space_size=4096

Reference: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38558989/node-js-heap-out-of-memory

[fish-404]

PostgresSQL

Don't use yum install postgresql-server to install [^1]. Follow official guide[^2] to install.

Note:

• use console to call pg service, that would be postgresql-14.service (maybe other version instead of 14)
• to install other related packages, remember use postgresql14-xxx (use version number instead of 14)

https://rhel.pkgs.org/7/postgresql-common-x86_64/libpq5-devel-15.0-42.2PGDG.rhel7.x86_64.rpm.html

[^1]: Centos 7 default postgresql is 9.2, mastodon(v3.5.3) dependency is 9.5+ [^2]: PostgreSQL: Linux downloads (Red Hat family)

[fish-404]

To Do: Learn to write a shell script to install these packages, or I have to check them every time if I migrate to a new machine. And the special pg packages installing may need a version check. If I can know the dependency requirement by shell, the whole install process maybe possiable to install automatically.