PDS

Welcome to the repository for the official Bluesky PDS (Personal Data Server). This repository includes container images and documentation designed to assist technical people with self-hosting a Bluesky PDS.

Table of Contents

• FAQ
  • What is Bluesky?
  • What is AT Protocol?
  • How can developers get invite codes?
  • Where is the code?
  • What is the current status of federation?
  • What should I know about running a PDS in the developer sandbox?
• Self-hosting PDS
  • Preparation for self-hosting PDS
  • Open your cloud firewall for HTTP and HTTPS
  • Configure DNS for your domain
  • Check that DNS is working as expected
  • Automatic install on Ubuntu 20.04/22.04 or Debian 11/12
  • Installing manually on Ubuntu 22.04
    • Open ports on your Linux firewall
    • Install Docker
      • Uninstall old versions
      • Set up the repository
      • Install Docker Engine
      • Verify Docker Engine installation
    • Set up the PDS directory
    • Create the Caddyfile
    • Create the PDS env configuration file
    • Start the PDS containers
      • Download the Docker compose file
      • Create the systemd service
      • Start the service
  • Verify your PDS is online
  • Obtain your PDS admin password
  • Generate an invite code for your PDS
  • Connecting to your server
  • Manually updating your PDS
• PDS environment variables

FAQ

What is Bluesky?

Bluesky is a social media application built on AT Protocol.

Please visit the Bluesky website for more information.

What is AT Protocol?

The Authenticated Transfer Protocol, aka atproto, is a protocol for large-scale distributed social applications.

Please visit the AT Protocol docs for additional information.

How can developers get invite codes?

There is no invite required to join the sandbox network. Simply set up your own PDS and generate your own invite codes to create accounts. If you desire an account on the production network (on the official Bluesky PDS) please check out the Bluesky Developer Waitlist which prioritizes access for developers wanting to build software on atproto.

Where is the code?

• Canonical TypeScript code
• Experimental Go code

What is the current status of federation?

We do not currently support PDS federation on the production network but it is now possible to federate in the developer sandbox.

What should I know about running a PDS in the developer sandbox?

Read the SANDBOX.md for an overview of the sandbox network.

Self-hosting PDS

Self-hosting a Bluesky PDS means running your own Personal Data Server that is capable of federating with the wider Bluesky social network.

Preparation for self-hosting PDS

Launch a server on any cloud provider, Digital Ocean and Vultr are two popular choices.

Ensure that you can ssh to your server and have root access.

Server Requirements

• Public IPv4 address
• Public DNS name
• Public inbound internet access permitted on port 80/tcp and 443/tcp

Server Recommendations

Operating System	Ubuntu 22.04
Memory (RAM)	2+ GB
CPU Cores	2+
Storage	40+ GB SSD
Architectures	amd64, arm64

Note: It is a good security practice to restrict inbound ssh access (port 22/tcp) to your own computer's public IP address. You can check your current public IP address using ifconfig.me.

Open your cloud firewall for HTTP and HTTPS

One of the most common sources of misconfiguration is not opening firewall ports correctly. Please be sure to double check this step.

In your cloud provider's console, the following ports should be open to inbound access from the public internet.

• 80/tcp (Used only for TLS certification verification)
• 443/tcp (Used for all application requests)

Note: there is no need to set up TLS or redirect requests from port 80 to 443 because the Caddy web server, included in the Docker compose file, will handle this for you.

Configure DNS for your domain

From your DNS provider's control panel, set up a domain with records pointing to your server.

Name	Type	Value	TTL
example.com	A	12.34.56.78	600
*.example.com	A	12.34.56.78	600

Note:

• Replace example.com with your domain name.
• Replace 12.34.56.78 with your server's IP address.
• Some providers may use the @ symbol to represent the root of your domain.
• The wildcard record is required when allowing users to create new accounts on your PDS.
• The TTL can be anything but 600 (10 minutes) is reasonable

Check that DNS is working as expected

Use a service like DNS Checker to verify that you can resolve domain names.

Examples to check (record type A):

• example.com
• random.example.com
• test123.example.com

These should all return your server's public IP.

Automatic install on Ubuntu 20.04/22.04 or Debian 11/12

On your server via ssh, run the installer script:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bluesky-social/pds/main/installer.sh

sudo bash installer.sh

Installing manually on Ubuntu 22.04

Open ports on your Linux firewall

If your server is running a Linux firewall managed with ufw, you will need to open these ports:

$ sudo ufw allow 80/tcp
$ sudo ufw allow 443/tcp

Install Docker

On your server, install Docker CE (Community Edition), using the the following instructions. For other operating systems you may reference the official Docker install guides.

Note: All of the following commands should be run on your server via ssh.

Uninstall old versions

sudo apt-get remove docker docker-engine docker.io containerd runc

Set up the repository

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install \
    ca-certificates \
    curl \
    gnupg

sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg

echo \
  "deb [arch="$(dpkg --print-architecture)" signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
  "$(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME")" stable" | \
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

Install Docker Engine

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin

Verify Docker Engine installation

sudo docker run hello-world

Set up the PDS directory

sudo mkdir /pds
sudo mkdir --parents /pds/caddy/data
sudo mkdir --parents /pds/caddy/etc/caddy

Create the Caddyfile

Be sure to replace example.com with your own domain.

cat <<CADDYFILE | sudo tee /pds/caddy/etc/caddy/Caddyfile
{
  email [email protected]
  on_demand_tls {
    ask http://localhost:3000
  }
}

*.example.com, example.com {
  tls {
    on_demand
  }
  reverse_proxy http://localhost:3000
}
CADDYFILE

Create the PDS env configuration file

You should fill in the first 5 values, but leave the rest untouched unless you have good reason to change it.

See the PDS environment variables section at the end of this README for explanations of each value

Your PDS will need two secp256k1 private keys provided as hex strings. You can securely generate these keys using openssl with the following command:

Note:

• Replace example.com with your domain name.

PDS_HOSTNAME="example.com"
PDS_JWT_SECRET="$(openssl rand --hex 16)"
PDS_ADMIN_PASSWORD="$(openssl rand --hex 16)"
PDS_REPO_SIGNING_KEY_K256_PRIVATE_KEY_HEX="$(openssl ecparam --name secp256k1 --genkey --noout --outform DER | tail --bytes=+8 | head --bytes=32 | xxd --plain --cols 32)"
PDS_PLC_ROTATION_KEY_K256_PRIVATE_KEY_HEX="$(openssl ecparam --name secp256k1 --genkey --noout --outform DER | tail --bytes=+8 | head --bytes=32 | xxd --plain --cols 32)"

cat <<PDS_CONFIG | sudo tee /pds/pds.env
PDS_HOSTNAME=${PDS_HOSTNAME}
PDS_JWT_SECRET=${PDS_JWT_SECRET}
PDS_ADMIN_PASSWORD=${PDS_ADMIN_PASSWORD}
PDS_REPO_SIGNING_KEY_K256_PRIVATE_KEY_HEX=${PDS_REPO_SIGNING_KEY_K256_PRIVATE_KEY_HEX}
PDS_PLC_ROTATION_KEY_K256_PRIVATE_KEY_HEX=${PDS_PLC_ROTATION_KEY_K256_PRIVATE_KEY_HEX}
PDS_DB_SQLITE_LOCATION=/pds/pds.sqlite
PDS_BLOBSTORE_DISK_LOCATION=/pds/blocks
PDS_DID_PLC_URL=https://plc.bsky-sandbox.dev
PDS_BSKY_APP_VIEW_URL=https://api.bsky-sandbox.dev
PDS_BSKY_APP_VIEW_DID=did:web:api.bsky-sandbox.dev
PDS_CRAWLERS=https://bgs.bsky-sandbox.dev
PDS_CONFIG

Start the PDS containers

Download the Docker compose file

Download the compose.yaml to run your PDS, which includes the following containers:

• pds Node PDS server running on http://localhost:3000
• caddy HTTP reverse proxy handling TLS and proxying requests to the PDS server
• watchtower Daemon responsible for auto-updating containers to keep the server secure and federating

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bluesky-social/pds/main/compose.yaml | sudo tee /pds/compose.yaml

Create the systemd service

  cat <<SYSTEMD_UNIT_FILE >/etc/systemd/system/pds.service
[Unit]
Description=Bluesky PDS Service
Documentation=https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds
Requires=docker.service
After=docker.service

[Service]
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes
WorkingDirectory=/pds
ExecStart=/usr/bin/docker compose --file /pds/compose.yaml up --detach
ExecStop=/usr/bin/docker compose --file /pds/compose.yaml down

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
SYSTEMD_UNIT_FILE

Start the service

Reload the systemd daemon to create the new service:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Enable the systemd service:

sudo systemctl enable pds

Start the pds systemd service:

sudo systemctl start pds

Ensure that containers are running

There should be a caddy, pds, and watchtower container running.

sudo systemctl status pds

sudo docker ps

Verify your PDS is online

You can check if your server is online and healthy by requesting the healthcheck endpoint.

curl https://example.com/xrpc/_health
{"version":"0.2.2-beta.2"}

Obtain your PDS admin password

Your PDS admin password should be in your pds.env file if you used the installer script.

For example:

$ source /pds/pds.env
$ echo $PDS_ADMIN_PASSWORD
a7b5970b6a5077bb41fc68a26d30adda

Generate an invite code for your PDS

By default, your PDS will require an invite code to create an account.

You can generate a new invite code with the following command:

PDS_HOSTNAME="example.com"
PDS_ADMIN_PASSWORD="<YOUR PDS ADMIN PASSWORD>"

curl --silent \
  --show-error \
  --request POST \
  --user "admin:${PDS_ADMIN_PASSWORD}" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data '{"useCount": 1}' \
  https://${PDS_HOSTNAME}/xrpc/com.atproto.server.createInviteCode

Note: the useCount field specifies how many times an invite code can be used

Connecting to your server

You can use the Bluesky app to connect to your server to create an account.

1. Get the Bluesky app
   • Bluesky for Web (sandbox)
   • Bluesky for iPhone
   • Bluesky for Android
2. Enter the URL of your PDS (e.g. https://example.com/)
3. Create an account using the generated invite code
4. Create a post

Note: because we use on-the-fly TLS certs, it may take 10-30s for your handle to be accessible. If you aren't seeing your first post/profile, wait 30s and try to make another post.

Checkout SANDBOX.md for an overview of participating in the sandbox network.

Manually updating your PDS

If you use use Docker compose.yaml file in this repo, your PDS will automatically update nightly. To manually update to the latest version use the following commands.

Pull the latest PDS container image:

sudo docker pull ghcr.io/bluesky-social/pds:latest

Restart PDS with the new container image:

sudo systemctl restart pds

PDS environment variables

You will need to customize various settings configured through the PDS environment variables. See the below table to find the variables you'll need to set.

Environment Variable	Value	Should update?	Notes
PDS_HOSTNAME	example.com	✅	Public domain you intend to deploy your service at
PDS_JWT_SECRET	jwt-secret	✅	Use a secure high-entropy string that is 32 characters in length
PDS_ADMIN_PASSWORD	admin-pass	✅	Use a secure high-entropy string that is 32 characters in length
PDS_REPO_SIGNING_KEY_K256_PRIVATE_KEY_HEX	3ee68...	✅	See above Generate Keys section - once set, do not change
PDS_PLC_ROTATION_KEY_K256_PRIVATE_KEY_HEX	e049f...	✅	See above Generate Keys section - once set, do not change
PDS_DB_SQLITE_LOCATION	/pds/pds.sqlite	❌	Or use PDS_DB_POSTGRES_URL depending on which database you intend to use
PDS_BLOBSTORE_DISK_LOCATION	/pds/blocks	❌	Only update if you update the mounted volume for your docker image as well
PDS_DID_PLC_URL	https://plc.bsky-sandbox.dev	❌	Do not adjust if you intend to federate with the Bluesky federation sandbox
PDS_BSKY_APP_VIEW_URL	https://api.bsky-sandbox.dev	❌	Do not adjust if you intend to federate with the Bluesky federation sandbox
PDS_BSKY_APP_VIEW_DID	did:web:api.bsky-sandbox.dev	❌	Do not adjust if you intend to federate with the Bluesky federation sandbox
PDS_CRAWLERS	https://bgs.bsky-sandbox.dev	❌	Do not adjust if you intend to federate with the Bluesky federation sandbox

There are additional environment variables that can be tweaked depending on how you're running your service. For instance, storing blobs in AWS S3, keys in AWS KMS, or setting up an email service.

Feel free to explore those Here. However, we will not be providing support for more advanced configurations.