The bolha Mastodon · custom.bolha.us

what changes

Feature	Upstream Mastodon	On bolha
Post length	500 characters	1200 characters
Profile bio	500 characters	1200 characters
Profile metadata	4 fields	24 fields
Poll options	4 options of 50 characters	12 options of 60 characters
Short mutes	6 hours and up	10, 30 or 60 minutes
Markdown in posts	not available	headings, lists and highlighted code
Self-destructing posts	not available	from 15 minutes to 24 hours
API rate limits	default	doubled
Theme	default	Tangerine UI, in 5 colors

details

Markdown with highlighted code

The composer gets a button to write in Markdown. Code blocks are highlighted per language (highlight.js, with a set of common languages) and headings from H1 to H6 have distinct sizes. Instances that do not understand Markdown receive the post already converted to HTML.

Self-destructing posts

An hourglass in the composer sets how long the post lives: 15 or 30 minutes, 1, 2, 4, 6, 12 or 24 hours. When the time comes the post is deleted as if its author had deleted it: it is gone for everyone and the deletion is sent to other instances. Each remote instance decides whether to honor it, as with any deletion in the fediverse.

Doubled API limits

The request limits per account, per token, for paging and for media were doubled. People using multi-column clients (the advanced interface, Phanpy, Elk) ran out of the upstream limit within minutes. Login, sign-up and password reset limits are unchanged.

Short mutes

The mute dialog gained 10, 30 and 60 minute options, next to the long durations that already existed.

for client developers

Both new features show up in the post creation API. The instance publishes the accepted durations in configuration.statuses.expirations, in the /api/v2/instance response.

# post that deletes itself in one hour (expires_in in seconds)
curl -X POST https://{domain}/api/v1/statuses \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -d "status=gone in an hour" \
  -d "expires_in=3600"

# markdown post
curl -X POST https://{domain}/api/v1/statuses \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -d "content_type=text/markdown" \
  --data-urlencode $'status=# title\n\n```python\nprint("hi")\n```'

source code

The code is public, under the same AGPL-3.0 license as Mastodon. Each version is a branch with the bolha commits applied on top of the upstream tag, so you can read exactly what changes.

Repositoryopen/custom/mastodon Branch for this versionbolha-4.7.3 What differs from upstreamv4.7.3...v4.7.3-bolha Clonegit clone https://gitlab.gutocarvalho.net/open/custom/mastodon.git

docker images

The images live in a public registry, no login needed. There are two per version, as in upstream Mastodon: web (also used by sidekiq) and streaming. Builds are linux/amd64 only.

# pull the current version
docker pull registry.gutocarvalho.net/images/mastodon:v4.7.3-web-bolha-tangerine-prod-2
docker pull registry.gutocarvalho.net/images/mastodon:v4.7.3-streaming-prod-1

Version	Web image	Streaming image
4.7.3 current	v4.7.3-web-bolha-tangerine-prod-2	v4.7.3-streaming-prod-1
4.7.2	v4.7.2-web-bolha-tangerine-prod-1	v4.7.2-streaming-prod-1
4.7.1	v4.7.1-web-bolha-tangerine-prod-1	v4.7.1-streaming-prod-1
4.7.0	v4.7.0-web-bolha-tangerine-prod-1	v4.7.0-streaming-prod-1
4.6.4	v4.6.4-web-bolha-tangerine-prod-4	—
4.5.3	v4.5.3-web-bolha-tangerine-prod-1	v4.5.3-streaming-prod-1

See every tag in the registry →

docker compose

Start from the upstream Mastodon docker-compose.yml and change only the three image lines. Everything else (database, Redis, .env.production, volumes) stays the same, and no new environment variable is needed.

Back up your database first.

Swap the images in docker-compose.yml:

services:
  web:
    image: registry.gutocarvalho.net/images/mastodon:v4.7.3-web-bolha-tangerine-prod-2
  sidekiq:
    image: registry.gutocarvalho.net/images/mastodon:v4.7.3-web-bolha-tangerine-prod-2
  streaming:
    image: registry.gutocarvalho.net/images/mastodon:v4.7.3-streaming-prod-1

Pull, run the migrations and start:

docker compose pull
docker compose run --rm web bundle exec rails db:migrate
docker compose up -d

Check the version and the limits:

curl -s https://{domain}/api/v2/instance | jq '.version, .configuration.statuses'

Before you switch

Use the image for the same Mastodon version you already run, or follow the upstream upgrade notes for the target version first.
The migrations only add three columns and one index. On a table with 41 million posts, the index took about 100 seconds.
Self-destructing posts depend on sidekiq processing the default and scheduler queues. If you split queues across processes, check both.
To go back to upstream Mastodon, just swap the images back. Long posts and extra metadata stay in the database.

who runs it

Instances running this build:

bolha.us4.7.3

jornalismo.social4.7.3

Does your instance run this build?

Tell @gutocarvalho@bolha.us and we will add you to this list.