Snac: A simple, minimalistic ActivityPub instance

Development
1

snac2 is now in bookworm backports. At a glance it is an activity pub server, that uses extremely minimal resources, it is lightweight, without JS and thus it is a perfect fit for running in low power hardware (like the pioneer).
You can find a nice presentation here.

It is simple to install in freedombox. here is what I did:

  • Install:
    sudo apt install snac2/bookworm-backports

  • Change the domain in /var/lib/snac2/server.json from localhost → myfreedombox.domain.com and, restart the service:
    sudo nano /var/lib/snac2/server.json
    sudo systemctl restart snac2

  • Add snac user
    sudo -u debian-snac -- snac adduser /var/lib/snac2

Then I could access the interface in:
myfreedombox.domain.com/social

In my case, the web interface wasn’t accessible every time I got a like/boost/reply.

I solved it by adding
"disable_email_notifications": true
in
/var/lib/snac2/server.json (and restart the service)

I hope someone finds it useful.

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2

Thanks for trying out snac2 and sharing your experience with the community.

I have been following some people on the Fediverse using snac2 for about an year, including @jvalleroy. I have some concerns about adding it to FreedomBox.

snac2 is written in C and it is not popular yet. That makes it an obscure software with possible memory-safety issues. Debian has a security team, but are they looking at this?

People have complained about TT-RSS lead developer’s use of careless and offensive language in their forums. I see symptoms of a similar pattern with the snac2 developer (see the description of MUTE feature and the abbreviation of snac), though there aren’t forums yet.

I also have a question. snac2 claims to be compatible with Mastodon API clients. Did somebody check this yet?

There is an ActivityPub server implementation in Rust called Rustodon which seems to have been discontinued.

GotoSocial is an active ActivityPub implementation in Golang, also made to run on low-power single board computers. There is no Debian package available yet, so FreedomBox cannot have it in the near term, unlike snac2.

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