Nostr relays need to be deployed on machines with Internet-accessible IP addresses.
Generally these are servers in data centres, but you might be able to make a port available to the Internet on a home machine if your ISP doesn't use CGNAT and you know how to configure your firewall/router for this. We leave this up to you.
Chorus was developed on and for linux. It might work on other operating systems, but I won't spend any time getting it working on non-linux systems.
In particular, I wrote mmap-append to use linux specific mmap functionality. Ashkan Kiani came later and generalized the code but I haven't tried it elsewhere and so I can't vouch for it elsewhere.
You'll want to create a chorus
user. Here is an example for debian based systems:
sudo useradd -r -d /opt/chorus -s /bin/bash chorus
You'll want to make the following directories
sudo mkdir -p /opt/chorus/{etc,src,var,sbin,lib}
sudo mkdir -p /opt/chorus/var/{chorus,www}
sudo mkdir -p /opt/chorus/lib/systemd/system
sudo chown -R chorus /opt/chorus
Now we need to clone the chorus source code. We presume you will do this as yourself, but
we will put it under /opt/chorus/src
sudo chown $(id -u) /opt/chorus/src
cd /opt/chorus/src
git clone https://github.com/mikedilger/chorus
cd chorus
git checkout latest
Check if you have rustc
and cargo
installed. If so, you can skip this part.
This step comes from https://rustup.rs
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
If you are coming back here after some time, you may wish to update rust instead:
rustup update
Now let's continue by building chorus:
cargo build --release
Ok now let's install that (along with the utility binaries):
sudo install --mode=0700 --owner=chorus ./target/release/{chorus,chorus_compress,chorus_dump,chorus_dump_approvals,chorus_moderate,chorus_cmd} /opt/chorus/sbin/
Now let's create our config file
sudo -u chorus cp /opt/chorus/src/chorus/contrib/chorus.toml /opt/chorus/etc/
Go ahead and edit that file to your liking. In particular:
- Change the
ip_address
to your internet-accessible IP address (if you are running directly) or to 127.0.0.1 with a local port like 8080 (if you are proxying behind nginx) - Change the port if necessary
- Change the name, description, icon_url and contact (e.g. your email address) as desired
- Set your public_key_hex (it is an option, so use
Some()
) - Set hex keys of users for which this relay will act as a personal relay
We describe two options for setting up the service. The first is to run chorus directly. The second is to run chorus behind an nginx proxy.
If you want chorus to respond on port 443, and you host other virtual servers on the machine, you'll need to run chorus behind an nginx proxy.
But you can run it on a different port (e.g. 444) too. Remember to open up your firewall for this if necessary.
Copy the systemd service file from the source code to the install location:
sudo -u chorus cp /opt/chorus/src/chorus/contrib/chorus-direct.service /opt/chorus/lib/systemd/system/chorus.service
Edit this file to change the letsencrypt
paths to include your actual domain (replace the
chorus.example.com
part).
NOTE ON TLS CERTIFICATES: We will presume that you manage TLS certificates for your server
with letsencrypt and certbot, and that certificates can be found (as root) under the
/etc/letsencrypt/
directory. Our systemd service file will copy those certificates
into /opt/chorus/etc/tls each time it starts so it has access to them (it doesn't run as
root so it needs copies that are owned by chorus that it can access).
Make the directory for certificate copies:
sudo -u chorus mkdir -p --mode=0700 /opt/chorus/etc/tls
As root, enable the service and start the service:
sudo systemctl enable /opt/chorus/lib/systemd/system/chorus.service
sudo systemctl start chorus.service
Copy the systemd service file from the source code to the install location:
sudo -u chorus cp /opt/chorus/src/chorus/contrib/chorus-proxied.service /opt/chorus/lib/systemd/system/chorus.service
Copy the nginx config file to the install location:
sudo -u chorus cp /opt/chorus/src/chorus/contrib/chorus.nginx.conf /opt/chorus/etc/chorus.nginx.conf
Change the port on the proxy_pass
line if you are running chorus on a different port.
As root, enable the service and start the service:
sudo systemctl enable /opt/chorus/lib/systemd/system/chorus.service
sudo systemctl start chorus.service
Link the nginx config file
sudo ln -s /opt/chorus/etc/chorus.nginx.conf /etc/nginx/sites-available/chorus.nginx.conf
sudo ln -s ../sites-available/chorus.nginx.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/chorus.nginx.conf
Restart nginx
sudo systemctl restart nginx.service
You can watch the logs with a command like this
sudo journalctl -f -u chorus.service
cd /opt/chorus/src/chorus
git pull
cargo build --release
sudo install --mode=0700 --owner=chorus ./target/release/{chorus,chorus_compress,chorus_dump,chorus_dump_approvals,chorus_moderate,chorus_cmd} /opt/chorus/sbin/
sudo systemctl restart chorus.service
sudo systemctl disable chorus.service
sudo rm -f /etc/nginx/sites-available/chorus.nginx.conf
sudo rm -f /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/chorus.nginx.conf
sudo systemctl restart nginx.service
sudo rm -rf /opt/chorus
sudo userdel chorus