--- name: "snac" section: "1" platform: "linux" package: "snac2" version: "2.75-2" release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)" platforms: ["linux"] url: "https://new.carta.tech/snac" --- # snac(1) A simple, minimalistic ActivityPub instance ## NAME **snac** – A simple, minimalistic ActivityPub instance ## SYNOPSIS **snac** **command** *basedir* \[*option* *...*\] ## DESCRIPTION The **snac** daemon processes messages from other servers in the Fediverse using the ActivityPub protocol. This is the user manual and expects an already running **snac** installation. For the administration manual, see [snac(8)](/snac/8.md). For file and data formats, see [snac(5)](/snac/5.md). ### Web Interface The web interface provided by **snac** is split in two data streams: the public timeline and the private timeline. There are no other feeds like the server-scoped or the federated firehoses provided by other similar ActivityPub implementations like Mastodon or Pleroma. The public timeline, also called the local timeline, is what an external visitor sees about the activity of a **snac** user: that is, only the list of public notes, boosts and likes the user generates or participates into. This is, obviously, read-only, and not very remarkable, unless the user publishes messages of staggering genious. A set of history links, grouped by month, will also be available at the bottom of the page. The private timeline, or simply the timeline, is the private, password-protected area of a **snac** server where the user really interacts with the rest of the Fediverse. The top area of the timeline provides a big text area to write notes for the public (i.e. for the user followers). As this is the second most important activity on the Fediverse, this is located in the most prominent area of the user page. You can enter plain text, @user@host mentions and other things. See the [snac(5)](/snac/5.md) manual for more information on the allowed markup. Other fields immediately below the big text one allow some control about the post to be sent: - Sensitive content If you set this checkbox, your post will be marked with a content warning. The immediately following, optional text box allows you to write a description about why your content is so sensitive. - Only for mentioned people If you set this checkbox, your text will not be public, but only sent to those people you mention in the post body. - Reply to (URL) If you fill this optional text field with the URL of another one's post, your text will be considered as a reply to it, not a standalone one. More options are hidden under a toggle control. They are the following: - Follow (by URL or user@host) Fill the input area with a user 'actor' URL or a user@host Fediverse identifier to follow. - Boost (by URL) Fill the input area with the URL of a Fediverse note to be boosted. - Like (by URL) Fill the input area with the URL of a Fediverse note to be liked. - User setup... This option opens the user setup dialog. - Followed hashtags... Enter here the list of hashtags you want to follow, one per line, with or without the # symbol. - Blocked hashtags... Enter here the list of hashtags you want to block, one per line, with or without the # symbol. The user setup dialog allows some user information to be changed, specifically: - User name Your user name, or not really that. People like to include emojis, flags and strange symbols for some reason. - Avatar URL The URL of a picture to be used as your avatar in timelines around the world. - Bio Enter here a bunch of self-indulgent blurb about yourself. The same markup options available for text notes apply here. - Always show sensitive content By default, **snac** hides content marked as sensitive by their publishers. If you check this option, sensitive content is always shown. - Email address for notifications If this field is not empty, an email message will be sent to this address whenever a post written by you is liked, boosted or replied to. - Telegram notifications To enable notifications via Telegram, fill the two provided fields (Bot API key and Chat id). You need to create both a Telegram channel and a bot for this; the process is rather cumbersome but it's documented everywhere. The Bot API key is a long string of alphanumeric characters and the chat id is a big, negative number. - ntfy notifications To enable notifications via ntfy (both self-hosted or standard ntfy.sh server), fill the two provided fields (ntfy server/topic and, if protected, the token). You need to refer to the https://ntfy.sh web site for more information on this process. - Maximum days to keep posts This numeric value specifies the number of days to pass before posts (yours and others') will be purged. This value overrides what the administrator defined in the global server settings only if it's lesser (i.e. you cannot keep posts for longer than what the admin desires). A value of 0 (the default) means that the global server settings will apply to the posts in your timeline. - Drop direct messages from people you don't follow Just what it says in the tin. This is to mitigate spammers coming from Fediverse instances with lax / open registration processes. Please take note that this also avoids possibly legitimate people trying to contact you. - This account is a bot Set this checkbox if this account behaves like a bot (i.e. posts are automatically generated). - Auto-boost all mentions to this account If this toggle is set, all mentions to this account are boosted to all followers. This can be used to create groups. - This account is private If this toggle is set, posts are not published via the public web interface, only via the ActivityPub protocol. - Collapse top threads by default If this toggle is set, the private timeline will always show conversations collapsed by default. This allows easier navigation through long threads. - Follow requests must be approved If this toggle is set, follow requests are not automatically accepted, but notified and stored for later review. Pending follow requests will be shown in the people page to be approved or discarded. - Publish follower and following metrics If this toggle is set, the number of followers and following accounts are made public (this is only the number; the specific lists of accounts are never published). - Web interface language If the administrator has installed any language file, it can be selected here. - Time zone The time zone the user is on (default: UTC). Only used for scheduled posts. - Password Write the same string in these two fields to change your password. Don't write anything if you don't want to do this. The rest of the page contains your timeline in reverse chronological order (i.e., newest interactions first). **snac** shows the conversations as nested trees, unlike other Fediverse software; every time you contribute something to a conversation, the full thread is bumped up, so new interactions are shown always at the top of the page while the forgotten ones languish at the bottom. Private notes (a.k.a. direct messages) are also shown in the timeline as normal messages, but marked with a cute lock to mark them as non-public. Replies to direct messages are also private and cannot be liked nor boosted. For each entry in the timeline, a set of reasonable actions in the form of buttons will be shown. These can be: - Reply Unveils a text area to write your intelligent and acute comment to an uninformed fellow. This note is sent to the original author as well as to your followers. The note can include mentions in the @user@format; these people will also become recipients of the message. If you reply to a boost or like, you are really replying to the note, not to the admirer of it. - Like Click this if you admire this post. The poster and your followers will be informed. - Boost Click this if you want to propagate this post to all your followers. The original author will also be informed. - Bookmark Click this to bookmark a post. - Follow Click here if you want to start receiving all the shenanigans the original author of the post will write in the future. - Unfollow Click here if you are fed up of this fellow's activities. - Delete Click here to send this post to the bin. If it's an activity written by you, the appropriate message is sent to the rest of involved parts telling them that you no longer want your thing in their servers (not all implementations really obey this kind of requirements, though). - MUTE This is the most important button in **snac** and the Fediverse in general. Click it if you don't want to read crap from this user again in the foreseeable future. - Hide If a conversation is getting long and annoying but not enough to MUTE its author forever, click this button to avoid seeing the post and its children anymore. - Edit Posts written by you on **snac** version 2.19 and later can be edited and resent to their recipients. ### Command-line options The command-line tool provide the following commands: - **init** \[basedir\] Initializes the data storage. This is an interactive command; necessary information will be prompted for. The *basedir* directory must not exist. - **upgrade** *basedir* Upgrades the data storage after installing a new version. Only necessary if **snac** complains and demands it. - **httpd** *basedir* Starts the daemon. - **purge** *basedir* Purges old data from the timeline of all users. - **adduser** *basedir* \[uid\] Adds a new user to the server. This is an interactive command; necessary information will be prompted for. - **deluser** *basedir* *uid* Deletes a user, unfollowing all accounts first. - **resetpwd** *basedir* *uid* Resets a user's password to a new, random one. - **queue** *basedir* *uid* Processes the output queue of the specified user, sending all enqueued messages and re-enqueing the failing ones. This command must not be executed if the server is running. - **follow** *basedir* *uid* *actor* Sends a Follow message for the specified actor URL. - **request** *basedir* *uid* *url* Requests an object and dumps it to stdout. This is a very low level command that is not very useful to you. - **announce** *basedir* *uid* *url* Announces (boosts) a post via its URL. - **note** *basedir* *uid* *text* \[file file ...\] Enqueues a Create + Note message to all followers. If the *text* argument is -e, the external editor defined by the EDITOR environment variable will be invoked to prepare a message; if it's - (a lonely hyphen), the post content will be read from stdin. The rest of command line arguments are treated as media files to be attached to the post. The LANG environment variable (if defined) is used as the post language. - **note\_unlisted** *basedir* *uid* *text* \[file file ...\] Like the previous one, but creates an "unlisted" (or "quiet public") post. - **note\_mention** *basedir* *uid* *text* \[file file ...\] Like the previous one, but creates a post only for accounts mentioned in the post body. - **block** *basedir* *instance\_url* Blocks a full instance, given its URL or domain name. All subsequent incoming activities with identifiers from that instance will be immediately blocked without further inspection. - **unblock** *basedir* *instance\_url* Unblocks a previously blocked instance. - **verify\_links** *basedir* *uid* Verifies all links stored as metadata for the given user. This verification is done by downloading the link content and searching for a link back to the **snac** user url that also contains a rel="me" attribute. These links are specially marked as verified in the user's public timeline and also via the Mastodon API. - **export\_csv** *basedir* *uid* Exports some account data as Mastodon-compatible CSV files. After executing this command, the following files will be written to the *export/* subdirectory inside the user directory: *bookmarks.csv*, *blocked\_accounts.csv*, *lists.csv*, *and* *following\_accounts.csv*. - **alias** *basedir* *uid* *@account@remotehost* Sets an account as an alias of this one. This is a necessary step to migrate an account to a remote Mastodon instance (see [snac(8)](/snac/8.md), section 'Migrating from snac to Mastodon'). - **migrate** *basedir* *uid* Starts a migration from this account to the one set as an alias (see [snac(8)](/snac/8.md), section 'Migrating from snac to Mastodon'). - **import\_csv** *basedir* *uid* Imports CSV data files from a Mastodon export. This command expects the following files to be inside the *import/* subdirectory of a user's directory inside the server base directory: *bookmarks.csv*, *blocked\_accounts.csv*, *lists.csv*, *and* *following\_accounts.csv*. - **state** *basedir* Dumps the current state of the server and its threads. For example: ``` server: comam.es (snac/2.45-dev) uptime: 0:03:09:52 job fifo size (cur): 45 job fifo size (peak): 1532 thread #0 state: input thread #1 state: input thread #2 state: waiting thread #3 state: waiting thread #4 state: output thread #5 state: output thread #6 state: output thread #7 state: waiting ``` The job fifo size values show the current and peak sizes of the in-memory job queue. The thread state can be: waiting (idle waiting for a job to be assigned), input or output (processing I/O packets) or stopped (not running, only to be seen while starting or stopping the server). - **import\_list** *basedir* *uid* *file* Imports a Mastodon list in CSV format. The file must be stored inside the *import/* subdirectory of a user's directory inside the server base directory. This option can be used to import "Mastodon Follow Packs". - **import\_block\_list** *basedir* *uid* *file* Imports a Mastodon list of accounts to be blocked in CSV format. The file must be stored inside the *import/* subdirectory of a user's directory inside the server base directory. ### Migrating an account to/from Mastodon See [snac(8)](/snac/8.md) for details. ### Using Mastodon-compatible apps Since version 2.27, **snac** includes support for the Mastodon API, so you can use Mastodon-compatible mobile and desktop applications to access your account. Given a correctly configured server, the usage of these programs should be straightforward. Please take note that they will show your timeline in a 'Mastodon fashion' (i.e., as a plain list of posts), so you will lose the fancy, nested thread post display with the most active threads at the top that the web interface of **snac** provides. ### Implementing post bots **snac** makes very easy to post messages in a non-interactive manner. This example posts a string: ``` uptime | snac note $SNAC_BASEDIR $SNAC_USER - ``` You can setup a line like this from a [crontab(5)](/crontab/5.md) or similar. Take note that you need a) command-line access to the same machine that hosts the **snac** instance, and b) write permissions to the storage directories and files. You can also post non-interactively using the Mastodon API and a command-line http tool like [curl(1)](/curl/1.md) or similar. This has the advantage that you can do it remotely from any host, anywhere; the only thing you need is an API Token. This is an example: ``` curl -X POST https://$SNAC_HOST/api/v1/statuses \ --header "Authorization: Bearer ${TOKEN}" -d "status=$(uptime)" ``` You can obtain an API Token by connecting to the following URL: ``` https://$SNAC_HOST/oauth/x-snac-get-token ``` ## ENVIRONMENT - SNAC\_BASEDIR This optional environment variable can be set to the base directory of your installation; if set, you don't have to add the base directory as an argument to command-line operations. This may prove useful if you only have one **snac** instance in you system (which is probably your case). - DEBUG Overrides the debugging level from the server 'dbglevel' configuration variable. Set it to an integer value. The higher, the deeper in meaningless verbiage you'll find yourself into. - EDITOR The user-preferred interactive text editor to prepare messages. - LANG The language of the post when sending messages. ## SEE ALSO [snac(5)](/snac/5.md), [snac(8)](/snac/8.md) ## AUTHORS grunfink *@grunfink@comam.es:* **https://comam.es/snac/grunfink** ## LICENSE See the LICENSE file for details. ## CAVEATS Use the Fediverse sparingly. Don't fear the MUTE button. ## BUGS Probably many. Some issues may be even documented in the TODO.md file.