The bluesky is a social media application based on the AT protocol.
What is the AT Protocol? Authenticated Transfer Protocol, also known as atproto, (AT Protocol Personal Data Server (PDS) is a protocol for large-scale distributed social applications.
So today the social network that announced Bluesky is merging and opening up in a way that lets you host your own data.
What does this mean?
Your data, like posts, likes and followers, needs to be stored somewhere. In traditional social media, your data is stored by the company whose services you subscribe to. If you ever want to stop useste services of this company, you can do it but you should leave the existing ones in this social network connections you.
An alternative model is the Bluesky. Anyone can create a website on the Internet. You can choose from one of many companies to host your website (or even host it yourself).
The company announced the opening of the federation for data hosting.
Instructions for installing a new sudomain/domain can be found below and also at github.
Recommended servers are Ubuntu/Debian.
Server requirements
Public IPv4 address
Public DNS name
Public internet access with ports 80/tcp and 443/tcp open
Server Recommendations
| Operating System | Ubuntu 22.04 |
| Memory (RAM) | 2+GB |
| CPU Colors | 2+ |
| Storage | 40+ GB SSD |
| Architectures | amd64, arm64 |
Domain with the records needed to point to your server.
| Name | Type | Value | TTL |
|---|---|---|---|
| iguru.gr | A | 12.34.56.78 | 600 |
| *.iguru.gr | A | 12.34.56.78 | 600 |
In our case we used bsk.iguru.gr
Installer on Ubuntu 20.04/22.04 or Debian 11/12
download the script
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bluesky-social/pds/main/installer.sh
and run the installer with bash:
sudo bash installer.sh
Confirm that your PDS is online and accessible
Open https://example.com/xrpc/_health in your browser (or in our case https://bsk.iguru.gr/xrpc/_health). You will see the JSON showing the version.
IMPORTANT: Before you start, you need to register at AT Protocol PDS Admins Discord to enter the name of the host hosting your PDS. In the future, this registration will not be required.
