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SNAC(1) General Commands Manual SNAC(1)

NAME

snac — A simple, minimalistic ActivityPub instance

SYNOPSIS

snac command basedir [option ...]

DESCRIPTION

The snac daemon processes messages from other servers in the Fediverse using the ActivityPub protocol.

This is the user manual and expects an already running snac installation. For the administration manual, see snac(8). For file and data formats, see snac(5).

Web Interface

The web interface provided by snac is split in two data streams: the public timeline and the private timeline. There are no other feeds like the server-scoped or the federated firehoses provided by other similar ActivityPub implementations like Mastodon or Pleroma.

The public timeline, also called the local timeline, is what an external visitor sees about the activity of a snac user: that is, only the list of public notes, boosts and likes the user generates or participates into. This is, obviously, read-only, and not very remarkable, unless the user publishes messages of staggering genious. A set of history links, grouped by month, will also be available at the bottom of the page.

The private timeline, or simply the timeline, is the private, password-protected area of a snac server where the user really interacts with the rest of the Fediverse.

The top area of the timeline provides a big text area to write notes for the public (i.e. for the user followers). As this is the second most important activity on the Fediverse, this is located in the most prominent area of the user page. You can enter plain text, @user@host mentions and other things. See the snac(5) manual for more information on the allowed markup.

More options are hidden under a toggle control. They are the following:

Follow (by URL or user@host)
Fill the input area with a user 'actor' URL or a user@host Fediverse identifier to follow.
Boost (by URL)
Fill the input area with the URL of a Fediverse note to be boosted.
User setup...
This option opens the user setup dialog.

The user setup dialog allows some user information to be changed, specifically:

User name
Your user name, or not really that. People like to include emojis, flags and strange symbols for some reason.
Avatar URL
The URL of a picture to be used as your avatar in timelines around the world.
Bio
Enter here a bunch of self-indulgent blurb about yourself. The same markup options available for text notes apply here.
Always show sensitive content
By default, snac hides content marked as sensitive by their publishers. If you check this option, sensitive content is always shown.
Email address for notifications
If this field is not empty, an email message will be sent to this address whenever a post written by you is liked, boosted or replied to.
Telegram notifications
To enable notifications via Telegram, fill the two provided fields (Bot API key and Chat id). You need to create both a Telegram channel and a bot for this; the process is rather cumbersome but it's documented everywhere. The Bot API key is a long string of alphanumeric characters and the chat id is a big, negative number.
Maximum days to keep posts
This numeric value specifies the number of days to pass before posts (yours and others') will be purged. This value overrides what the administrator defined in the global server settings only if it's lesser (i.e. you cannot keep posts for longer than what the admin desires). A value of 0 (the default) means that the global server settings will apply to the posts in your timeline.
Password
Write the same string in these two fields to change your password. Don't write anything if you don't want to do this.

The rest of the page contains your timeline in reverse chronological order (i.e., newest interactions first). snac shows the conversations as nested trees, unlike other Fediverse software; everytime you contribute something to a conversation, the full thread is bumped up, so new interactions are shown always at the top of the page while the forgotten ones languish at the bottom.

Private notes (a.k.a. direct messages) are also shown in the timeline as normal messages, but marked with a cute lock to mark them as non-public. Replies to direct messages are also private and cannot be liked nor boosted.

For each entry in the timeline, a set of reasonable actions in the form of buttons will be shown. These can be:

Reply
Unveils a text area to write your intelligent and acute comment to an uninformed fellow. This note is sent to the original author as well as to your followers. The note can include mentions in the @user@format; these people will also become recipients of the message. If you reply to a boost or like, you are really replying to the note, not to the admirer of it.
Like
Click this if you admire this post. The poster and your followers will be informed.
Boost
Click this if you want to propagate this post to all your followers. The original author will also be informed.
Follow
Click here if you want to start receiving all the shenanigans the original author of the post will write in the future.
Unfollow
Click here if you are fed up of this fellow's activities.
Delete
Click here to send this post to the bin. If it's an activity written by you, the appropriate message is sent to the rest of involved parts telling them that you no longer want your thing in their servers (not all implementations really obey this kind of requirements, though).
MUTE
This is the most important button in snac and the Fediverse in general. Click it if you don't want to read crap from this user again in the forseeable future.
Hide
If a conversation is getting long and annoying but not enough to MUTE its author forever, click this button to avoid seeing the post and its children anymore.
Edit
Posts written by you on snac version 2.19 and later can be edited and resent to their recipients.

Command-line options

The command-line tool provide the following commands:

[basedir]
Initializes the data storage. This is an interactive command; necessary information will be prompted for. The basedir directory must not exist.
basedir
Upgrades the data storage after installing a new version. Only necessary if snac complains and demands it.
basedir
Starts the daemon.
basedir
Purges old data from the timeline of all users.
basedir [uid]
Adds a new user to the server. This is an interactive command; necessary information will be prompted for. Also, a copy of the server style.css is installed in the user's static/ directory.
basedir uid
Resets a user's password to a new, random one.
basedir uid
Processes the output queue of the specied user, sending all enqueued messages and re-enqueing the failing ones. This command must not be executed if the server is running.
basedir uid actor
Sends a Follow message for the specified actor URL.
basedir uid url
Requests an object and dumps it to stdout. This is a very low level command that is not very useful to you.
basedir uid text
Enqueues a Create + Note message to all followers. If the text argument is -e, the external editor defined by the EDITOR environment variable will be invoked to prepare a message; if it's - (a lonely hyphen), the post content will be read from stdin.

Migrating from Mastodon

See snac(8) for details.

ENVIRONMENT

Overrides the debugging level from the server 'dbglevel' configuration variable. Set it to an integer value. The higher, the deeper in meaningless verbiage you'll find yourself into.
The user-preferred interactive text editor to prepare messages.

SEE ALSO

snac(5), snac(8)

AUTHORS

grunfink @grunfink@comam.es

LICENSE

See the LICENSE file for details.

CAVEATS

Use the Fediverse sparingly. Don't fear the MUTE button.

BUGS

Probably plenty. Some issues may be even documented in the TODO.md file.

March 29, 2023 Debian