Minifedi is entirely self-contained and needs no changes to your system configuration besides installing Nix; you can install it with a git clone, delete it with `rm -rf`, and your system will be exactly the way it was before.
- macOS or Linux (any distribution). Tested on x86_64, aarch64 should work. Other architectues probably won't due to poor Nix support, unfortunately.
- Windows isn't natively supported, but might work under WSL.
- A recent version of [Nix](https://nixos.org).
- This doesn't mean you need to be on NixOS; Nix can be installed on more or less any distribution, and is happy to do its own thing without interfering with your system.
- ~4GB free on disk.
- ~4GB free in /tmp.
- On many Linux distributions, this means you'll need ~8GB of RAM.
- You might be able to get away with less if you disable GoToSocial.
- Ports 80 and 443 free.
- This is required because some (all) fedi software is only willing to federate with servers on the standard ports.
- macOS lets any user listen on these ports. On Linux, Minifedi will use sudo to gain the capability required to listen on these ports, then immediately switch back to your user and relinquish all other capabilties.
## Warnings
Minifedi is very new software. I'm fairly sure it won't break your system (it's designed very specifically to not do anything that possibly could) but it might not work either.
Minifedi is designed for testing only. The assumption is you'll happily throw out everything stored in it when you're done. Don't store anything you care about in an instance run by Minifedi.
1. Install [Nix](https://nixos.org), if you haven't.
- If you install Nix through your OS package manager, you may need to add yourself to the `nix-users` group and/or ensure the `nix-daemon` service is enabled.
2. ```
git clone https://github.com/Gaelan/minifedi.git
cd minifedi
```
3. If you'd like, edit `config.nix` to customize which instances you get. By default, you get one each of Mastodon, Glitch, Akkoma, and GoToSocial, but you're welcome to disable some or run multiple copies of the same type.
4.`./minifedi start`
5. Wait for stuff to build then start up; this should take 20-30 minutes.
6.**Semi-optional:** Run `./minifedi install-cert` in another terminal to add Minifedi's root to your system certificate store.
- This is a change to your system configuration, albeit a small one; as such, we'd like to make it optional. Currently, there are a few caveats if you don't:
- You'll see HTTPS errors in the browser. These can usually be clicked through; if they can't (possible after deleting `data` with software that enforces HSTS, like Mastodon), clear your browser's data for lvh.me and try again.
- GoToSocial won't be able to federate on macOS. (It will on Linux, I think, but I haven't tested this.)
7. Your instances should be running and accessible at INSTANCENAME.lvh.me (e.g. https://mastodon.lvh.me).
### Use Minifedi to test some fedi software I'm hacking on locally?
There isn't a good solution for this yet, but the plan is that you'll run your software locally however you usually do, with Minifedi's nginx running in front to serve it from a domain accessible to the other instances.
