Moving GetMoarFediverse over to my own Infrastructure - Mastodon

Intro

I wrote two days ago about moving FediFetcher over to my own infrastructure (away from GitHub Actions and over to my Synology NAS at home).

Since it has been going well, I decided to do the same with GetMoarFediverse. (I’ll still rely on the remote FakeRelay service as detailed in this post, at least for the time being.)

Set Up

Getting this onto my Synology is actually pretty darn easy,

From my FediFetcher post, I will be using the ~/Mastodon folder to hold everything.

First, I need to download the executable from the project’s GitHub repo. I don’t have much patience to compile it myself, and I trust the developer.

• Repo: https://github.com/g3rv4/GetMoarFediverse
• Executibles: https://github.com/g3rv4/GetMoarFediverse/releases

At the time of writing, I downloaded version 1.0.54, the latest version.

1
2
3

cd ~/Mastodon
wget https://github.com/g3rv4/GetMoarFediverse/releases/download/v1.0.54/GetMoarFediverse_linux-x64.tgz
tar -xvzf GetMoarFediverse_linux-x64.tgz 

This places the executable GetMoarFediverse in the folder ~/Mastodon/GetMoarFediverse-v1.0.54.

I do a simple simlink so I don’t need to worry about paths in the future when I upgrade.

1
2

cd ~/Mastodon
ln -s GetMoarFediverse-v1.0.54/ GetMoarFediverse

This allows me to run the executable from the path /var/services/homes/cdrum/Mastodon/GetMoarFediverse (Your paths may be different depending on how your Synology DSM is set up, and the username, etc.)

Next, the confguraton. I took the config I had from my GitHub Action repo (that was cloned from GMFActionDemo):

 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13

{
    "FakeRelayUrl": "https://fakerelay.gervas.io",
    "Tags": [ "china", "singapore", "asean",
             "mastoadmin", "fediadmin", "mastohost", "singleuserinstance", "fedifetcher",
             "apple", "mackbook",
             "pilot", "ppl"
             
            ],
    "Instances": [ "hachyderm.io", "mastodon.social", "infosec.exchange", 
                  "mstdn.social", "mas.to", "mastodon.online", "mastodon.world", 
                  "fosstodon.org", "techhub.social", "indieweb.social"
                 ]
}

And I pasted the contents into a new json file I put in /var/services/homes/cdrum/Mastodon that I called getmoarfediverse-config.json (a bit long, I know).

I then need to add another entry "FakeRelayApiKey": and use the FakeRelay api key I got earlier, so the file now looks like:

 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13
14

{
    "FakeRelayUrl": "https://fakerelay.gervas.io",
    "FakeRelayApiKey": "blahblahblah",
    "Tags": [ "china", "singapore", "asean",
             "mastoadmin", "fediadmin", "mastohost", "singleuserinstance", "fedifetcher",
             "apple", "mackbook",
             "pilot", "ppl"
             
            ],
    "Instances": [ "hachyderm.io", "mastodon.social", "infosec.exchange", 
                  "mstdn.social", "mas.to", "mastodon.online", "mastodon.world", 
                  "fosstodon.org", "techhub.social", "indieweb.social"
                 ]
}

(replace “blahblahblah” with your key!)

Then, I can simply run it one time manually by running the following:

/var/services/homes/cdrum/Mastodon/GetMoarFediverse/GetMoarFediverse /var/services/homes/cdrum/Mastodon/getmoarfediverse-config.json

If all goes well, you’ll see a lot of output pulling in toots that match your settings. Example:

 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10

...
Fetching tag #china from mastodon.social
Fetching tag #china from infosec.exchange
Fetching tag #china from mstdn.social
Retrieved 0 new statuses from mastodon.online with hashtag #apple
Fetching tag #singapore from mas.to
Retrieved 1 new statuses from mas.to with hashtag #singapore
Fetching tag #singleuserinstance from indieweb.social
Retrieved 1 new statuses from fosstodon.org with hashtag #singapore
...

Setting up the Cron

Going back to the Synology DSM Interface, go to the Task Scheduler

Click Create

Then fill out the various pages. give it a name:

Configure the schedule (I chose every 5 minutes)

And finally configure the taks settings it self. Paste in the following string in the User-defined script field:

/var/services/homes/cdrum/Mastodon/GetMoarFediverse/GetMoarFediverse /var/services/homes/cdrum/Mastodon/getmoarfediverse-config.json >> /var/services/homes/cdrum/Mastodon/getmoarfediverse-cron.log 2>&1

Notice I added the >> /path_to_log so I can check the log from time to time to make sure it runs. (Note: do check on the file size from time to time. It will grow quite large.)

Click OK and let’s see if it works!

You sholuld be able to tail the log file to make sure all is working correctly.

tail -f getmoarfediverse-cron.log

Then as you want to make changes to your hashtags and/or mastodon instances, simply edit the ..config.json file, and the next cron run should pick up the changes.

Hope this helps!