Setup

Set up a TLS reverse proxy. honk can listen on TCP or unix sockets, but will not terminate TLS. https is a required component for federation. Also, http signature verification requires accurate time keeping.

Make sure to pass the Host header, if necessary (as for nginx).

proxy_set_header Host $http_host;

Build

Building honk requires a go compiler 1.16 and libsqlite. On OpenBSD this is the go and sqlite3 packages. Other platforms may require additional development libraries or headers to be installed. Run make. Please be patient. Even on fast machines, building from source can take several seconds.

Options

The following options control where honk looks for data.

-datadir dir

The root data directory, where the database and other user data are stored. This directory contains all user data that persists across upgrades. Requires write access. Defaults to ".".

-viewdir dir

The root view directory, where html and other templates are stored. The contents of this directory are generally replaced with each release. Read only. Defaults to ".".

The following options control log output. Acceptable values include "stderr" (the default), "stdout", "null", "syslog", or a file name. syslog messages will be sent to the UUCP facility.

-errorlog log

The error log. Something bad has happened.

-infolog log

The informative messages log. Something has happened, but probably not too bad.

-debuglog log

The debug log. There's probably no reason to care.

-log log

Set all three logs.

Init

Run the init command. This will create the database and ask four questions, as well as creating the initial user. See below about importing existing data.

Operation

Run honk.

Customization

The funzone contains fun flair that users may add to posts and profiles. Add custom memes (stickers) to the memes data directory. Image and video files are supported. Add custom emus (emoji) to the emus data directory. PNG and GIF files are supported.

Site CSS may be overridden by creating a views/local.css file in the data directory. Site JS may similarly be included by creating views/local.js. A restart is required after changes. A site icon.png and favicon.ico will be served from the views directory in the data directory, if present.

Custom HTML messages may be added to select pages by using the admin command. This interface is a little rough. A restart is required after changes.

server

Displayed on the home page.

about

Displayed on the about page.

login

Displayed on the login form.

avatar colors

Four 32-bit hex colors (RGBA).

User Admin

New users can be added with the adduser command. This is discouraged.

Passwords may be reset with the chpass username command.

Users may be deleted with the deluser username command.

Follow and unfollow requests can be sent via command line with follow username url and unfollow username url.

Maintenance

The database may grow large over time. The cleanup [days] command exists to purge old external data, by default 30 days. This removes unreferenced, unsaved posts and attachments. It does not remove any original content.

Backups may be performed by running backup dirname. Backups only include the minimal necessary information, such as user posts and follower information, but not external posts.

Sometimes servers simply disappear, resulting in many errors trying to deliver undeliverable messages. Running unplug hostname will delete all subscriptions and pending deliveries.

Upgrade

Stop the old honk process. Backup the database. Perform the upgrade with the upgrade command. Restart.

The current version of the honk binary may be printed with the version command.

Security

honk is not currently hardened against SSRF, server side request forgery. Be mindful of what other services may be exposed via localhost or the local network.

Development

Development mode may be enabled or disabled by running devel on|off. In devel mode, secure cookies are disabled, TLS certs are not verified, and templates are reloaded every request.

Import

Data may be imported and converted from other services using the import command. Currently supports Mastodon and Twitter exported data. Posts are imported and backdated to appear as old honks. The Mastodon following list is imported, but must be refollowed.

To prepare a Mastodon data archive, extract the archive-longhash.tar.gz file.

To prepare a Twitter data archive, extract the twitter-longhash.zip file. After unzipping the data archive, navigate to the tweet_media directory and unzip any zip files contained within.

Advanced Options

Advanced configuration values may be set by running the setconfig key value command. For example, to increase the fast timeout value from 5 seconds to 10:

To support separate mentions without a subdomain, e.g. @user@example.com and https://honk.example.com/u/user, set config key 'masqname' to 'example.com'. Route /.well-known/webfinger from the top domain to honk.

Custom URL seperators (not "u" and "h") may be specified by adding "usersep" and "honksep" options to the config table. e.g. example.com/users/username/honk/somehonk instead of example.com/u/username/h/somehonk.