INSTALL.md

Installation instructions

Debian instructions only. Ubuntu should be similar. Suppose that the user on the server is barkyq.

Installing postgresql

1. Install postgresql by sudo apt install postgresql.

2. Run the following commands to give your user administrative rights, and create a database.

   sudo -u postgres createuser --pwprompt barkyq
   sudo -u postgres createdb -O barkyq nostrdb

   Suppose the password you set is super_secret_password.

3. Check if postgresql is listening at 127.0.0.1:5432 by running sudo netstat -tlpn (install with apt install net-tools)

Building gnost-relay

1. Download a recent version of go from https://go.dev/dl/. Follow the installation instructions.

2. Clone this repository.

3. Build the gnost-relay executable by running go build . in the directory you cloned the repository to.

4. Edit the config.json file. You need to change relay_url field if you want NIP-42 to work. You can also change the nip11_info_document field if you like.

5. Run the executable.

   DATABASE_URL=postgres://barkyq:super_secret_password@localhost:5432/nostrdb ./gnost-relay

   The above command starts a relay listening at localhost:8080 and sets the DATABASE_URL environment variable for the execution of the program.

Installing NGINX and certbot for reverse proxy

1. Install nginx and certbot

   sudo apt install nginx python3-certbot-nginx 

2. Download a SSL certificate (assuming you own foo.bar)

   sudo certbot --nginx certonly -d relay.foo.bar

3. Copy the nginx configuration from nginx.txt to /etc/nginx/sites-available/relay.foo.bar and then make a symlink to this file in /etc/sites-enabled/ by running:

   cd /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
   sudo ln -s ../sites-available/relay.foo.bar .

4. Restart nginx by running sudo nginx -s reload

5. If all went well, you should be able to connect to your relay at wss://relay.foo.bar