How to build your own instance of Nitter.
-
libpcre
-
libsass
-
redis
To compile Nitter you need a Nim installation, see nim-lang.org for details. It is possible to install it system-wide or in the user directory you create below.
To compile the scss files, you need to install libsass
. On Ubuntu and Debian,
you can use libsass-dev
.
Redis is required for caching and in the future for account info. It should be
available on most distros as redis
or redis-server
(Ubuntu/Debian).
Running it with the default config is fine, Nitter's default config is set to
use the default Redis port and localhost.
Here's how to create a nitter
user, clone the repo, and build the project
along with the scss and md files.
# useradd -m nitter
# su nitter
git clone https://github.com/zedeus/nitter
cd nitter
nimble build -d:release
nimble scss
nimble md
cp nitter.example.conf nitter.conf
Set your hostname, port, HMAC key, https (must be correct for cookies), and
Redis info in nitter.conf
. To run Redis, either run
redis-server --daemonize yes
, or systemctl enable --now redis
(or
redis-server depending on the distro). Run Nitter by executing ./nitter
or
using the systemd service below. You should run Nitter behind a reverse proxy
such as Nginx or Apache for security and
performance reasons.
NOTE: For ARM64/ARM support, please use unixfox's image, more info here
To run Nitter with Docker, you'll need to install and run Redis separately before you can run the container. See below for how to also run Redis using Docker.
To build and run Nitter in Docker:
docker build -t nitter:latest .
docker run -v $(pwd)/nitter.conf:/src/nitter.conf -d --network host nitter:latest
A prebuilt Docker image is provided as well:
docker run -v $(pwd)/nitter.conf:/src/nitter.conf -d --network host zedeus/nitter:latest
Using docker-compose to run both Nitter and Redis as different containers:
Change redisHost
from localhost
to nitter-redis
in nitter.conf
, then run:
docker-compose up -d
Note the Docker commands expect a nitter.conf
file in the directory you run
them.
To run Nitter via systemd you can use this service file:
[Unit]
Description=Nitter (An alternative Twitter front-end)
After=syslog.target
After=network.target
[Service]
Type=simple
# set user and group
User=nitter
Group=nitter
# configure location
WorkingDirectory=/home/nitter/nitter
ExecStart=/home/nitter/nitter/nitter
Restart=always
RestartSec=15
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Then enable and run the service:
systemctl enable \
--now \
nitter.service
Nitter currently prints some errors to stdout, and there is no real logging
implemented. If you're running Nitter with systemd, you can check stdout like
this: journalctl -u nitter.service
(add --follow
to see just the last 15
lines). If you're running the Docker image, you can do this:
docker logs --follow *nitter container id*