Introduction

This is a Helm chart for installing Mastodon into a Kubernetes cluster. The basic usage is:

1. edit values.yaml or create a separate yaml file for custom values
2. helm dep install
3. helm install --namespace mastodon --create-namespace my-mastodon ./ -f path/to/additional/values.yaml

This chart is tested with k8s 1.21+ and helm 3.8.0+.

NOTICE: Future Deprecation

We have plans in the very near future to deprecate this chart in favor of a new git repo, which has proper helm repository support (e.g. helm repo add), and will contain multiple charts, both for mastodon and for supplementary components that we make use of.

We still encourage suggestions and PRs to help make this chart better, and this repository will remain available after the new charts are ready to give users time to migrate. However, we will not be approving large PRs, or PRs that change fundamental chart functions, as those changes should be directed to the new charts.

Please see the pinned GitHub issue for more info & discussion.

Configuration

The variables that must be configured are:

• password and keys in the mastodon.secrets, postgresql, and redis groups; if left blank, some of those values will be autogenerated, but will not persist across upgrades.

• SMTP settings for your mailer in the mastodon.smtp group.

If your PersistentVolumeClaim is ReadWriteOnce and you're unable to use a S3-compatible service or run a self-hosted compatible service like Minio then you need to set the pod affinity so the web and sidekiq pods are scheduled to the same node.

Example configuration:

podAffinity:
  requiredDuringSchedulingIgnoredDuringExecution:
    - labelSelector:
        matchExpressions:
          - key: app.kubernetes.io/part-of
            operator: In
            values:
              - rails
      topologyKey: kubernetes.io/hostname

Administration

You can run admin CLI commands in the web deployment.

kubectl -n mastodon exec -it deployment/mastodon-web -- bash
tootctl accounts modify admin --reset-password

or

kubectl -n mastodon exec -it deployment/mastodon-web -- tootctl accounts modify admin --reset-password

Missing features

Currently this chart does not support:

• Hidden services
• Swift

Upgrading

Because database migrations are managed as a Job separate from the Rails and Sidekiq deployments, it’s possible they will occur in the wrong order. After upgrading Mastodon versions, it may sometimes be necessary to manually delete the Rails and Sidekiq pods so that they are recreated against the latest migration.