grunfink
README.md
snac
A simple, minimalistic ActivityPub instance
Features
- Lightweight, minimal dependencies
- Extensive support of ActivityPub operations, e.g. write public notes, follow users, be followed, reply to the notes of others, admire wonderful content (like or boost), write private messages...
- Multiuser
- Mastodon API support, so Mastodon-compatible apps can be used
- Simple but effective web interface
- Easily-accessed MUTE button to silence morons
- Tested interoperability with related software
- No database needed
- Totally JavaScript-free
- No cookies either
- Not much bullshit
- No AI accepted (already covered by previous point)
About
This program runs as a daemon (proxied by a TLS-enabled real httpd server) and provides the basic services for a Fediverse / ActivityPub instance (sharing messages and stuff from/to other systems like Mastodon, Pleroma, Friendica, etc.).
This is not the manual; man pages snac(1) (user manual), snac(5) (formats) and snac(8) (administrator manual) are what you are looking for.
snac stands for Social Networks Are Crap.
Building and installation
This program is written in highly portable C. It uses the __attribute__((__cleanup__)) GNU extension, that is supported at least by the gcc, clang and tcc C compilers. The only external dependencies are openssl and curl.
The source code is available here. Here are some detailed descriptions on how to build and install snac in a set of operating systems:
Debian/Ubuntu
Requirements:
apt install libssl-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev # as root
Build and install:
make
make install # as root
OpenBSD
Requirements:
pkg_add curl
Build and install:
make
make install # as root
FreeBSD
Requirements:
pkg install curl
Build and install:
make
make install # as root
NetBSD
Requirements:
pkgin install curl
Build and install:
make -f Makefile.NetBSD
make -f Makefile.NetBSD install # as root
Illumos / OpenIndiana (2026.04)
Requirements:
sudo pkg install openssl-3
sudo pkg set-mediator -V 3 openssl
Build and install:
make CC=gcc LDFLAGS=-lsocket
sudo make install-illumos
Conditional compilation
From version 2.27, snac includes support for the Mastodon API; if you are not interested on it, you can compile it out by running
make CFLAGS=-DNO_MASTODON_API
If your compilation process complains about undefined references to shm_open() and shm_unlink() (it happens, for example, on Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS), run it as:
make LDFLAGS=-lrt
If it still gives compilation errors (because your system does not implement the shared memory functions), you can fix it with
make CFLAGS=-DWITHOUT_SHM
From version 2.68, Linux Landlock sandboxing is included (not supported on Linux kernels older than 5.13.0). It's still a bit experimental, so you must compile it in explicitly with
make CFLAGS=-DWITH_LINUX_SANDBOX
From version 2.73, the language of the web UI can be configured; the po/ source subdirectory includes a set of translation files, one per language. After initializing your instance, copy whatever language file you want to use to the lang/ subdirectory of the base directory.
See the administrator manual on how to proceed from here.
Testing via Docker
A docker-compose file is provided for development and testing. To start snac with an nginx HTTPS frontend, run:
docker-compose build && docker-compose up
This will:
- Start snac, storing data in
data/ - Configure snac to listen on port 8001 with a server name of
localhost(seeexamples/docker-entrypoint.sh) - Create a new user
testuserand print the user's generated password on the console (seeexamples/docker-entrypoint.sh) - Start nginx to handle HTTPS, using the certificate pair from
nginx-alpine-ssl/nginx-selfsigned.*(seeexamples/nginx-alpine-ssl/entrypoint.sh)
Links of Interest
- Online snac manuals (user, administrator and data formats).
- How to install snac on OpenBSD without relayd (by @antics@mastodon.nu).
- Setting up Snac in OpenBSD (by Yonle).
- How to run your own social network with snac (by Giacomo Tesio). Includes information on how to run snac as a CGI.
- Improving snac Performance with Nginx Proxy Cache (by Stefano Marinelli).
- Caching Snac Proxied Media With Nginx (by Stefano Marinelli).
- My snac config (activitypub instance) with Caddy (by ffuentes).
- A bit of lore about Susie, snac's default avatar.
Incredibly awesome CSS themes for snac
- A compilation of themes for snac (by Ворон).
- A cool, elegant theme (by Haijo7).
- A terminal-like theme (by Tetra).
License
See the LICENSE file for details.
Contributing
See the CONTRIBUTING.md file for details.
Author
grunfink @grunfink@comam.es with the help of others.
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