PeerTube Instance – LandChad.net

- -

PeerTube is a self-hosted and (optionally) federated video sharing platform that saves bandwith on videos the more people watch. - PeerTube instances can follow each other to share videos and grow the federated network, - but you can always keep your instance to yourself if you choose to.

- -

Note on Bandwidth

- -

- Video sharing is the most bandwidth intensive thing on the internet! - If you plan on just having a small personal site with a few viewers and friends, that won't be a big concern, - but most VPS providers like Vultr have caps on how much bandwidth can be used within a month without being throttled. - This level is far beyond what most sites need, but it might be an issue with a video site! -

- -

- So if you plan on having a big video-sharing PeerTube site, it's a good idea to host it with a provider that offers infinite bandwidth. - I strongly recommend getting a separate VPS with Frantech/BuyVM. - They have unmetered bandwidth, extremely cheap block storage for hosting many, many videos and they even have a good record of being censorship resistant. -

- -

Prerequisites

- -

Most of PeerTube's dependencies can be installed with this command:

- -

apt install -y curl sudo unzip vim ffmpeg postgresql postgresql-contrib g++ make redis-server git python-dev cron wget

- -

It's also important to start all associated daemons:

- -

systemctl start postgresql redis

- -

PeerTube also requires NodeJS 14 and yarn which cannot be installed from the Debian repositories. This means they have to be installed from separate, external repos:

- -

curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_14.x | bash -
-apt install -y nodejs
-npm install --global yarn

- -

Now we create a PeerTube user to run and handle PeerTube with the proper permissions:

- -

useradd -m -d /var/www/peertube -s /bin/bash -p peertube peertube

- -

Database

- -

PeerTube requires a PostgreSQL database to function. To create it, first make a new Postgres user named PeerTube:

- -

su -l postgres
-createuser -P peertube
-createdb -O peertube -E UTF8 -T template0 peertube_prod
-psql -c "CREATE EXTENSION pg_trgm;" peertube_prod
-psql -c "CREATE EXTENSION unaccent;" peertube_prod
-exit

- -

Be sure to make note of your Postgres user password, as it will be needed later when setting up PeerTube.

- -

Installation

- -

Using su -l, we will become the PeerTube user to create the required directories and download and install PeerTube itself with the proper permissions. - First, we create the required directories.

- -

su -l peertube
-mkdir config storage versions
-chmod 750 config

- -

Downloading PeerTube

Still as the PeerTube user, we can now check for the most recent PeerTube versions number, download and install it in the newly created versiond directory.

VERSION=$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/chocobozzz/peertube/releases/latest | grep tag_name | cut -d '"' -f 4)
-cd /var/www/peertube/versions
-wget "https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/releases/download/${VERSION}/peertube-${VERSION}.zip"
-unzip peertube-${VERSION}.zip
-rm peertube-${VERSION}.zip

- -

Installation via Yarn

- -

The downloaded release can then be symbolically linked to /var/www/peertube/peertube-latest and yarn is used to install PeerTube:

- -

cd /var/www/peertube
-ln -s versions/peertube-${VERSION} ./peertube-latest
-cd ./peertube-latest
-yarn install --production --pure-lockfile

- -

Configuration

- -

PeerTube's default config file can be copied over to /var/www/peertube/config/production.yaml so it can actually be used:

- -

Note that we are still running these as the PeerTube user (having run su -l peertube).

- -

cd /var/www/peertube
-cp peertube-latest/config/production.yaml.example config/production.yaml

- -

Now the production.yaml file must be edited in the following ways:

- -

First, add the hostname:

- -

webserver:
-  https: true
-  hostname: 'example.org'
-  port: 443

- -

Then, the database:

- -

database:
-  hostname: 'localhost'
-  port: 5432
-  ssl: false
-  suffix: '_prod'
-  username: 'peertube'
-  password: 'your_password'
-  pool:
-     max: 5

- -

An email to generate the admin user:

- -

admin:
-  # Used to generate the root user at first startup
-  # And to receive emails from the contact form
-  email: 'chad@example.org'

- -

And optionally, email server information:

- -

smtp:
-  # smtp or sendmail
-  transport: smtp
-  # Path to sendmail command. Required if you use sendmail transport
-  sendmail: null
-  hostname: mail.example.org
-  port: 465 # If you use StartTLS: 587
-  username: your_email_username
-  password: your_email_password
-  tls: true # If you use StartTLS: false
-  disable_starttls: false
-  ca_file: null # Used for self signed certificates
-  from_address: 'admin@example.org'

- -

At this point, we have done all we need to do as the PeerTube user. Run exit or press Ctrl-d to log out and return to the root prompt where we will configure Nginx and other system settings.

- -

Certbot

- -

First, we will want a Certbot SSL certificate to encrypt connections to our PeerTube instance. - Just run the following:

- -

certbot --nginx -d peertube.example.org certonly

- -

Nginx

- -

PeerTube includes an Nginx configuration that can be copied over to /etc/nginx/sites-available: - -

cp /var/www/peertube/peertube-latest/support/nginx/peertube /etc/nginx/sites-available/peertube

- -

Because the PeerTube config is so long, it's recommended to use sed to modify the contents of the file, - replacing ${WEBSERVER_HOST} with your hostname, - and $(PEERTUBE_HOST) with your localhost and port, which by default should be 127.0.0.1:9000: - -

sed -i 's/${WEBSERVER_HOST}/example.org/g' /etc/nginx/sites-available/peertube
-sed -i 's/${PEERTUBE_HOST}/127.0.0.1:9000/g' /etc/nginx/sites-available/peertube

- -

Once you're happy with the Nginx config file, link it to sites-enabled to activate it:

- -

ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/peertube /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/peertube

- -

Running PeerTube

- -

A config file for a systemd daemon is included in PeerTube and can be setup and started like so:

- -

cp /var/www/peertube/peertube-latest/support/systemd/peertube.service /etc/systemd/system/
-systemctl daemon-reload
-systemctl start peertube

- -

- PeerTube will take a momemnt to start, but after it does, you can check its status with systemctl status peertube and at this point, your PeerTube site should be live! -

- -

Using PeerTube

- -

To set a password for your admin user, run:

- -

cd /var/www/peertube/peertube-latest
-NODE_CONFIG_DIR=/var/www/peertube/config NODE_ENV=production npm run reset-password -- -u root

- -

Login to your PeerTube instance using the admin email specified in your production.yaml file and the admin password you just set.

- -

Once logged in, it's recommended to create a separate user without admin privileges for uploading videos to PeerTube. - This can be done easily from the users tab in the administration section.

- -

Enjoy your PeerTube instance!

- -

Updating PeerTube

- -

PeerTube is constantly adding new features, so it's a good idea to check for new updates and add them if you wish. Just in the past year, they have added livestreaming and more.

- -

Updating is fairly easy now since an upgrade.sh script has been added. Just run:

- -

cd /var/www/peertube/peertube-latest/scripts && sudo -H -u peertube ./upgrade.sh

- -

- Although check the changelog to see if there are additional manual requirements for particular updates. -

- -

Written by Denshi. Donate Monero here [QR]