Release¶

Pre-requisites¶

• A Linux machine (amd64 or arm64) with root access.
• A domain name (or subdomain) for the Mobilizon server, e.g. your-mobilizon-domain.com
• An SMTP server to deliver emails

Dependencies¶

Mobilizon only requires the PostgreSQL database engine and a few libraries:

• curl (to download the release build archive)
• tar (to extract the release from the archive)
• PostgreSQL and PostGIS
• nginx (other reverse proxies may work but we only support this one)
• certbot (for Let's Encrypt certificates, but any ACME client could work)
• ImageMagick to process uploaded pictures
• file to get MIME information about files

sudo apt install curl tar postgresql postgresql-contrib nginx certbot imagemagick file
sudo apt install --install-recommends postgis

sudo -iu postgres
initdb -D /var/lib/postgres/data

The following dependencies are optional, but will be used to optimize your users uploaded pictures if available:

sudo apt install gifsicle jpegoptim optipng pngquant

Setup¶

We're going to use a dedicated mobilizon user:

sudo adduser --group --system --shell /bin/false --home /opt/mobilizon mobilizon

Download and install release¶

• Download the latest release build and unzip it:
  

  curl -L 'https://joinmobilizon.org/latest-package' -o /tmp/mobilizon.tar.gz
  tar xzf /tmp/mobilizon.tar.gz -C /tmp/
  

• Move the release to the install folder:
  

  mv /tmp/mobilizon /opt/
  rm /tmp/mobilizon.tar.gz
  

• Set the proper owner to /opt/mobilizon

  chown -R mobilizon:mobilizon /opt/mobilizon
  

• Create config directory

  mkdir -p /etc/mobilizon
  chown -R mobilizon /etc/mobilizon
  

• Create directories for user uploads and the GeoIP database

  mkdir -p /var/lib/mobilizon/uploads /var/lib/mobilizon/uploads/exports/csv /var/lib/mobilizon/data
  chown -R mobilizon /var/lib/mobilizon
  

Configuration¶

Mobilizon provides a command line tool to generate configuration

cd /opt/mobilizon
sudo -u mobilizon ./bin/mobilizon_ctl instance gen  --output /etc/mobilizon/config.exs --output-psql /tmp/setup_db.psql

This will ask you questions about your setup and your instance to generate a config.exs file in the /etc/mobilizon/ folder, and a /tmp/setup_db.psql file to setup the database.

Database setup¶

The setup_db.psql file contains SQL instructions to create a PostgreSQL user and database with the chosen credentials and add the required extensions to the Mobilizon database.

sudo -u postgres psql -f /tmp/setup_db.psql

It should output something like:

CREATE ROLE
CREATE DATABASE
You are now connected to database "mobilizon_prod" as user "postgres".
CREATE EXTENSION
CREATE EXTENSION
CREATE EXTENSION

If is successeds, we can remove the file:

sudo rm /tmp/setup_db.psql

Database Migration¶

Run database migrations:

sudo -u mobilizon ./bin/mobilizon_ctl migrate

You will have to do this again after most updates.

Services¶

Systemd¶

Copy the support/systemd/mobilizon-release.service to /etc/systemd/system/mobilizon.service.

sudo cp support/systemd/mobilizon-release.service /etc/systemd/system/mobilizon.service

Reload Systemd to detect your new file

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

And enable the service

sudo systemctl enable --now mobilizon.service

It will run Mobilizon and enable startup on boot. You can follow the logs with

sudo journalctl -fu mobilizon.service

You should see something like this:

Running Mobilizon.Web.Endpoint with cowboy 2.8.0 at :::4000 (http)
Access Mobilizon.Web.Endpoint at https://your-mobilizon-domain.com

The Mobilizon server runs on port 4000 on the local interface only, so you need to add a reverse-proxy.

Reverse proxy¶

Nginx¶

Copy the file from support/nginx/mobilizon.conf to /etc/nginx/sites-available/mobilizon.conf.

sudo cp support/nginx/mobilizon-release.conf /etc/nginx/sites-available/mobilizon.conf

Then symlink the file into the /etc/nginx/sites-enabled directory.

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/mobilizon.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

Edit the file /etc/nginx/sites-available/mobilizon.conf and adapt it to your own configuration.

Test the configuration with sudo nginx -t and reload nginx with sudo systemctl reload nginx.

Let's Encrypt¶

The nginx configuration template handles the HTTP-01 challenge with the webroot plugin:

sudo mkdir /var/www/certbot

Run certbot with (don't forget to adapt the command)

sudo certbot certonly --rsa-key-size 4096 --webroot -w /var/www/certbot/ --email your@email.com --agree-tos --text --renew-hook "/usr/sbin/nginx -s reload" -d your-mobilizon-domain.com

Then adapt the nginx configuration /etc/nginx/sites-available/mobilizon.conf by uncommenting certificate paths and removing obsolete blocks.

Finish by testing the configuration with sudo nginx -t and reloading nginx with sudo systemctl reload nginx.

You should now be able to load https://your-mobilizon-domain.com inside your browser.

Creating your first user¶

Create a new Mobilizon user with the role admin:

 sudo -u mobilizon ./bin/mobilizon_ctl users.new "your@email.com" --admin --password "Y0urP4ssw0rd"

See the full documentation for this command.

You may now login with your credentials and discover Mobilizon. Feel free to explore configuration documentation as well.

Suggested tasks¶

Configure emails¶

The default Mobilizon configuration assumes a local SMTP server is available on the same server. To tweak this for your own setup, see this page.

Configure 3^rd-party auth¶

Mobilizon can use LDAP or OAuth-based login providers (Facebook, Google, etc.) to help register or login users. Configuration can be found here.

Configure geocoders¶

This will allow the address autocomplete field to provide addresses when editing an event. The default value uses OpenStreetMap's Nominatim provider but you can change it to the provider of your choice.

Geolocation databases¶

Mobilizon can use geolocation from MMDB format data from sources like MaxMind GeoIP databases or db-ip.com databases. This allows showing events happening near the user's location.

You will need to download the City database and put it into /var/lib/mobilizon/geo/GeoLite2-City.mmdb. You may also customize the location with the following setting:

config :geolix,
  databases: [
    %{
      id: :city,
      adapter: Geolix.Adapter.MMDB2,
      source: "/var/lib/mobilizon/geo/GeoLite2-City.mmdb"
    }
  ]

• Download the database file and rename it to GeoLite2-City.mmdb.

• Create the GeoIP directory

  mkdir -p /var/lib/mobilizon/geo
  

• Move the database inside the folder

  mv GeoLite2-City.mmdb /var/lib/mobilizon/geo/
  

• Make sure the GeoIP database has the proper owner. Mobilizon only needs read access to this GeoIP database file.

  chown -R mobilizon:mobilizon /var/lib/mobilizon/geo
  

Finish by restarting the mobilizon service.

Mobilizon will only show a warning at startup if the database is missing, but it isn't required.