AodeRelay

A simple and efficient activitypub relay

Installation

Docker

If running docker, you can start the relay with the following command:

$ sudo docker run --rm -it \
    -v "$(pwd):/mnt/" \
    -e ADDR=0.0.0.0 \
    -e SLED_PATH=/mnt/sled/db-0.34 \
    -p 8080:8080 \
    asonix/relay:0.3.83

This will launch the relay with the database stored in "./sled/db-0.34" and listening on port 8080

Cargo

With cargo installed, the relay can be installed to your cargo bin directory with the following command

$ cargo install ap-relay

Then it can be run with this:

$ ADDR=0.0.0.0 relay

This will launch the relay with the database stored in "./sled/db-0.34" and listening on port 8080

Source

The relay can be launched directly from this git repository with the following commands:

$ git clone https://git.asonix.dog/asonix/relay
$ ADDR=0.0.0.0 cargo run --release

Usage

To simply run the server, the command is as follows

$ ./relay

Administration

NOTE: The server must be running in order to update the lists with the following commands

To learn about any other tasks, the --help flag can be passed

An activitypub relay

Usage: relay [OPTIONS]

Options:
  -b <BLOCKS>       A list of domains that should be blocked
  -a <ALLOWED>      A list of domains that should be allowed
  -u, --undo        Undo allowing or blocking domains
  -h, --help        Print help information

To add domains to the blocklist, use the -b flag and pass a list of domains

$ ./relay -b asonix.dog blimps.xyz

To remove domains from the blocklist, simply pass the -u flag along with -b

$ ./relay -ub asonix.dog blimps.xyz

The same rules apply for allowing domains, although domains are allowed with the -a flag

$ ./relay -a asonix.dog blimps.xyz
$ ./relay -ua asonix.dog blimps.xyz

Configuration

By default, all these values are set to development values. These are read from the environment, or from the .env file in the working directory.

HOSTNAME=localhost:8080
ADDR=127.0.0.1
PORT=8080
DEBUG=true
RESTRICTED_MODE=false
VALIDATE_SIGNATURES=false
HTTPS=false
PRETTY_LOG=true
PUBLISH_BLOCKS=false
SLED_PATH=./sled/db-0.34

To run this server in production, you'll likely want to set most of them

HOSTNAME=relay.my.tld
ADDR=0.0.0.0
PORT=8080
DEBUG=false
RESTRICTED_MODE=false
VALIDATE_SIGNATURES=true
HTTPS=true
PRETTY_LOG=false
PUBLISH_BLOCKS=true
SLED_PATH=./sled/db-0.34
RUST_LOG=warn
API_TOKEN=somepasswordishtoken
OPENTELEMETRY_URL=localhost:4317
TELEGRAM_TOKEN=secret
TELEGRAM_ADMIN_HANDLE=your_handle
TLS_KEY=/path/to/key
TLS_CERT=/path/to/cert
FOOTER_BLURB="Contact <a href=\"https://masto.asonix.dog/@asonix\">@asonix</a> for inquiries"
LOCAL_DOMAINS=masto.asonix.dog
LOCAL_BLURB="<p>Welcome to my cool relay where I have cool relay things happening. I hope you enjoy your stay!</p>"
PROMETHEUS_ADDR=0.0.0.0
PROMETHEUS_PORT=9000
CLIENT_POOL_SIZE=20

Descriptions

HOSTNAME

The domain or IP address the relay is hosted on. If you launch the relay on example.com, that would be your HOSTNAME. The default is localhost:8080

ADDR

The address the server binds to. By default, this is 127.0.0.1, so for production cases it should be set to 0.0.0.0 or another public address.

PORT

The port the server binds to, this is 8080 by default but can be changed if needed.

DEBUG

Whether to print incoming activities to the console when requests hit the /inbox route. This defaults to true, but should be set to false in production cases. Since every activity sent to the relay is public anyway, this doesn't represent a security risk.

RESTRICTED_MODE

This setting enables an 'allowlist' setup where only servers that have been explicitly enabled through the relay -a command can join the relay. This is false by default. If RESTRICTED_MODE is not enabled, then manually allowing domains with relay -a has no effect.

VALIDATE_SIGNATURES

This setting enforces checking HTTP signatures on incoming activities. It defaults to true

HTTPS

Whether the current server is running on an HTTPS port or not. This is used for generating URLs to the current running relay. By default it is set to true

PUBLISH_BLOCKS

Whether or not to publish a list of blocked domains in the nodeinfo metadata for the server. It defaults to false.

SLED_PATH

Where to store the on-disk database of connected servers. This defaults to ./sled/db-0.34.

RUST_LOG

The log level to print. Available levels are ERROR, WARN, INFO, DEBUG, and TRACE. You can also specify module paths to enable some logs but not others, such as RUST_LOG=warn,tracing_actix_web=info,relay=info. This defaults to warn

SOURCE_REPO

The URL to the source code for the relay. This defaults to https://git.asonix.dog/asonix/relay, but should be changed if you're running a fork hosted elsewhere.

REPOSITORY_COMMIT_BASE

The base path of the repository commit hash reference. For example, /src/commit/ for Gitea, /tree/ for GitLab.

API_TOKEN

The Secret token used to access the admin APIs. This must be set for the commandline to function

OPENTELEMETRY_URL

A URL for exporting opentelemetry spans. This is mostly useful for debugging. There is no default, since most people probably don't run an opentelemetry collector.

TELEGRAM_TOKEN

A Telegram Bot Token for running the relay administration bot. There is no default.

TELEGRAM_ADMIN_HANDLE

The handle of the telegram user allowed to administer the relay. There is no default.

TLS_KEY

Optional - This is specified if you are running the relay directly on the internet and have a TLS key to provide HTTPS for your relay

TLS_CERT

Optional - This is specified if you are running the relay directly on the internet and have a TLS certificate chain to provide HTTPS for your relay

FOOTER_BLURB

Optional - Add custom notes in the footer of the page

LOCAL_DOMAINS

Optional - domains of mastodon servers run by the same admin as the relay

LOCAL_BLURB

Optional - description for the relay

PROMETHEUS_ADDR

Optional - Address to bind to for serving the prometheus scrape endpoint

PROMETHEUS_PORT

Optional - Port to bind to for serving the prometheus scrape endpoint

CLIENT_POOL_SIZE

Optional - How many connections the relay should maintain per thread. This value will be multiplied by two times the number of cores available to the relay. This defaults to 20, so a 4-core machine will have a maximum of 160 simultaneous outbound connections. If you run into problems related to "Too many open files", you can either decrease this number or increase the ulimit for your system.

Subscribing

Mastodon admins can subscribe to this relay by adding the /inbox route to their relay settings. For example, if the server is https://relay.my.tld, the correct URL would be https://relay.my.tld/inbox.

Pleroma admins can subscribe to this relay by adding the /actor route to their relay settings. For example, if the server is https://relay.my.tld, the correct URL would be https://relay.my.tld/actor.

Supported Activities

• Accept Follow {remote-actor}, this is a no-op
• Reject Follow {remote-actor}, an Undo Follow is sent to {remote-actor}
• Announce {anything}, {anything} is Announced to listening servers
• Create {anything}, {anything} is Announced to listening servers
• Follow {self-actor}, become a listener of the relay, a Follow will be sent back
• Follow Public, become a listener of the relay
• Undo Follow {self-actor}, stop listening on the relay, an Undo Follow will be sent back
• Undo Follow Public, stop listening on the relay
• Delete {anything}, the Delete {anything} is relayed verbatim to listening servers. Note that this activity will likely be rejected by the listening servers unless it has been signed with a JSON-LD signature
• Update {anything}, the Update {anything} is relayed verbatim to listening servers. Note that this activity will likely be rejected by the listening servers unless it has been signed with a JSON-LD signature
• Add {anything}, the Add {anything} is relayed verbatim to listening servers. Note that this activity will likely be rejected by the listening servers unless it has been signed with a JSON-LD signature
• Remove {anything}, the Remove {anything} is relayed verbatim to listening servers. Note that this activity will likely be rejected by the listening servers unless it has been signed with a JSON-LD signature

Supported Discovery Protocols

• Webfinger
• NodeInfo

Known issues

Pleroma and Akkoma do not support validating JSON-LD signatures, meaning many activities such as Delete, Update, Add, and Remove will be rejected with a message similar to WARN: Response from https://example.com/inbox, "Invalid HTTP Signature". This is normal and not an issue with the relay.

Contributing

Feel free to open issues for anything you find an issue with. Please note that any contributed code will be licensed under the AGPLv3.

License

Copyright © 2022 Riley Trautman

AodeRelay is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

AodeRelay is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. This file is part of AodeRelay.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with AodeRelay. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.