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Configuration.md

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Configuration

Each of these options can be specified (by descending priority):

  • As a command line argument (--example-setting 1)
  • As an environment variable (APPVIEWLITE_EXAMPLE_SETTING=1)
  • As a line in an env file (APPVIEWLITE_EXAMPLE_SETTING=1, use # for comments), whose path can be specified via --configuration example.env

Main settings

  • APPVIEWLITE_DIRECTORY: Where to store the data. Defaults to ~/BskyAppViewLiteData
  • APPVIEWLITE_ADDITIONAL_DIRECTORIES: Optional additional data directories (perhaps stored on different volumes) that complement APPVIEWLITE_DIRECTORY. When AppViewLite needs to read a file, it will first check if it exists in APPVIEWLITE_DIRECTORY, if it doesn't exist there, it will check the corresponding subfolders of each additional directory (if any files are missing altogether, AppViewLite will refuse to start). You can manually move large files or directories from the main APPVIEWLITE_DIRECTORY (for example, stored on fast solid storage) to an additional data directory (for example, stored on larger but slower rotating drives). Moving files requires scheduled downtime.
  • APPVIEWLITE_PLC_DIRECTORY_BUNDLE: Path to an optional parquet file for quick bootstraping of the PLC directory data.
  • APPVIEWLITE_WIKIDATA_VERIFICATION: Path to an optional parquet file with the official websites of the entities on Wikidata.
  • APPVIEWLITE_BADGE_OVERRIDE_PATH: Path to an optional text file with badge overrides (format: didOrHandle,badgeKind[,url[,tooltipDescription]]) where badgeKind can be verified-generic, verified-organization, verified-government or none. Will be live-reloaded if it changes.
  • APPVIEWLITE_FIREHOSES: A comma-separated list of ATProto or JetStream firehoses to listen to. Defaults to jet:jetstream.atproto.tools, alternatively you can use bsky.network. Only use trusted firehoses. For custom PDSes, use instead APPVIEWLITE_DID_DOC_OVERRIDES (see below).
  • APPVIEWLITE_LISTEN_TO_FIREHOSE: Whether to listen to the firehose. Defaults to 1.
  • APPVIEWLITE_LISTEN_TO_PLC_DIRECTORY: Periodically fetches updates to the PLC directory. Defaults to 1.
  • APPVIEWLITE_ALLOW_PUBLIC_READONLY_FAKE_LOGIN: For debugging only, will allow you to "log in" to any account (but obviously you won't be able to perform PDS writes). Defaults to 0.
  • APPVIEWLITE_READONLY: Forbids database writes (useful for debugging data issues without the firehose interfering).
  • APPVIEWLITE_EXTERNAL_PREVIEW_SMALL_THUMBNAIL_DOMAINS: External previews to these domains will be always displayed in compact format (not just when quoted or the post was already seen by the user).
  • APPVIEWLITE_GLOBAL_PERIODIC_FLUSH_SECONDS: Flushes the database to disk every this number of seconds. Defaults to 600 (10 minutes). If you abruptly close the process without using a proper CTRL+C (SIGINT), you will lose at most this amount of recent data. However, consistency is still guaranteeded. Abrupt exits during a flush are also consistency-safe. Fast-growing tables might be flushed to disk earlier (but still consistency-safe).
  • APPVIEWLITE_ADMINISTRATIVE_DIDS: List of DIDs that, when logged in, can perform privileged operations. Defaults to none. You can use * for local development.
  • APPVIEWLITE_CONFIGURATION: Path to an env file that will be loaded into the environment at startup. Prior environment variables take the precendence.
  • APPVIEWLITE_ALLOW_NEW_DATABASE: Allows AppViewLite to start a new database / empty checkpoint, if no checkpoints/*.pb files exist. Defaults to 0. This is a safer default than 1, because if no checkpoints were found for whatever reason, AppViewLite would otherwise start from scratch, and it would soon garbage collect all your previous data slices.
  • APPVIEWLITE_QUICK_REVERSE_BACKFILL_INSTANCE: An appview that can be used to quickly bootstrap the list of followers of a user without first downloading the whole network. Defaults to https://public.api.bsky.app, can be disabled with -

Storage (low level configuration)

  • APPVIEWLITE_USE_READONLY_REPLICA: If enabled, most requests will be served from a readonly snapshot of the database (so that we don't have to wait for any current write lock to complete). Defaults to 1.
  • APPVIEWLITE_MAX_READONLY_STALENESS_MS_OPPORTUNISTIC: How many milliseconds can the readonly replica lag behind the primary, ideally. Default: 2000.
  • APPVIEWLITE_MAX_READONLY_STALENESS_MS_EXPLICIT_READ: How many milliseconds can the readonly replica lag behind the primary, at most. Default: 4000.
  • APPVIEWLITE_LONG_LOCK_PRIMARY_MS, APPVIEWLITE_LONG_LOCK_SECONDARY_MS: Log in /debug/requests when a lock is taken for more than this amount of time. Defaults to 30 and 50 ms respectively.
  • APPVIEWLITE_TABLE_WRITE_BUFFER_SIZE: If the buffer of a table grows larger than this amount of bytes, it will be flushed to disk even before the next APPVIEWLITE_GLOBAL_PERIODIC_FLUSH_SECONDS. Defaults to 10485760 (10 MB).
  • APPVIEWLITE_DISABLE_SLICE_GC: If enabled, old slices won't be garbage collected, even after compactation (they will be however ignored and not loaded).
  • APPVIEWLITE_RECENT_CHECKPOINTS_TO_KEEP: How many old checkpoints to keep before garbage collecting old slices. Defaults to 3.
  • APPVIEWLITE_USE_PROBABILISTIC_SETS: Uses a probabilistic cache to reduce disk reads. Defaults to 1, but while developing you might want to set it to 0 since it increases startup time.
  • APPVIEWLITE_FIREHOSE_PROCESSING_LAG_WARN_THRESHOLD: Prints a warning if the backlog of pending records to process is above this threshold. Defaults to 100.
  • APPVIEWLITE_FIREHOSE_PROCESSING_LAG_ERROR_THRESHOLD: Errors out if the backlog of pending records to process is above this threshold. Defaults to 10000.
  • APPVIEWLITE_FIREHOSE_PROCESSING_LAG_ERROR_DROP_EVENTS: Drops firehose events instead of terminating the process if the error threshold is reached. Defaults to 0 (fatal exit).
  • APPVIEWLITE_FIREHOSE_PROCESSING_LAG_WARN_INTERVAL_MS: How often to print lag behind warning messages, at most. Defaults to 500 ms.
  • APPVIEWLITE_CHECK_NUL_FILES: On startup, verifies that none of the slice files start or end with long sequences of NUL bytes, which could indicate corruption. Defaults to 1.
  • APPVIEWLITE_CAR_DOWNLOAD_SEMAPHORE: How many CAR files can be downloaded at once. Defaults to 8.
  • APPVIEWLITE_CAR_SPILL_TO_DISK_BYTES: Amount of memory after which we spill CAR entries to a temporary file on disk. This is necessary because reading a CAR file requires random access to previous parts of the file. Shared across all currently running imports. Defaults to 67108864 (64MB)
  • APPVIEWLITE_CAR_INSERTION_SEMAPHORE_SIZE: How many running CAR imports can perform a database insertion at once. Defaults to 2.
  • APPVIEWLITE_EVENT_CHART_HISTORY_DAYS: How many days of statistics (with 1 second granularity) are preserved, for /debug/event-charts. Defaults to 2.
  • APPVIEWLITE_FIREHOSE_WATCHDOG_SECONDS: If we observe no events from the firehose for this amount of seconds, restart the websocket connection. Defaults to 120.
  • APPVIEWLITE_SET_THREAD_NAMES: Sets the name of the current thread to a description of the current context, every time a database lock is taken, for easier debugging. Slow things down quite a bit.
  • APPVIEWLITE_DIRECT_IO: Uses direct IO (O_DIRECT) instead of memory mapping for some reads that are unlikely to be necessary again in the near future. Defaults to 1.
  • APPVIEWLITE_DIRECT_IO_SECTOR_SIZE: Sets the sector block size for direct reads. Must be a multiple of the disk sector size. If AppViewLite crashes on startup and you have an enterprise disk with 4KB sectors, try changing this to 4096. Defaults to 512.
  • APPVIEWLITE_DIRECT_IO_PRINT_READS: Prints to stderr every time a direct IO read is performed, with path, offset and length.

Handle and DID doc resolution

  • APPVIEWLITE_DNS_SERVER: DNS server for TXT resolutions. Defaults to 1.1.1.1
  • APPVIEWLITE_USE_DNS_OVER_HTTPS: Whether the DNS server supports DNS Over HTTPS. Defaults to 1.
  • APPVIEWLITE_HANDLE_TO_DID_MAX_STALE_HOURS: For how many hours we cache handle resolutions. Defaults to 10 days.
  • APPVIEWLITE_DID_DOC_MAX_STALE_HOURS: For how many hours we cache DID docs. If the PLC directory is up to date (by this amount), we cache indefinitely. Defaults to 2 days.
  • APPVIEWLITE_PLC_DIRECTORY: Alternate PLC directory prefix. Defaults to https://plc.directory
  • APPVIEWLITE_DID_DOC_OVERRIDES: Path to an optional text file, where each line is did:plc:example pds.example handle.example. Will be reloaded dynamically if it changes. The listed PDSes will be listened from directly, without relying on the main firehose.

Administrative rules

  • APPVIEWLITE_BLOCKLIST_PATH: path to an .ini file whose sections can be [noingest], [nodisplay], [nooutboundconnect] (or combinations, like [noingest,nodisplay]) to block specific DIDs or domains (and all their subdomains) of all types (PDSes, Mastodon instances, handles, Mastodon external media...)

    • [noingest] ignores all the posts coming from the various firehoses for the specified DIDs or domains. By default, it includes various cross-protocol mirrors (AppViewLite is already multi-protocol)
    • [nodisplay] prevents post and profile data for the specified DIDs or domains from being displayed.
    • [nooutboundconnect] prevents outbound HTTP traffic to the specified DIDs or domains. Image thumbnails and profile pictures won't be available.
    • [blockall] is a shorthand for [noingest,nodisplay,nooutboundconnect]
    • [allowall] allows you to override the default rules for the specified domains.

You can also use regular expressions (e.g. regex:^example$), but for best performance you should minimize the number of such rules (you can use the | regex operator to consolidate them). You can use # for comments (whole line, or partial). It will be live-reloaded if it changes.

Additional protocols

By default, only ATProto/Bluesky and RSS are enabled.
You can however enable additional protocols:

ActivityPub (Fediverse)

  • APPVIEWLITE_LISTEN_ACTIVITYPUB_RELAYS: listens to the specified ActivityPub relays. Example: fedi.buzz. Defaults to none.

Yotsuba (Imageboards)

  • APPVIEWLITE_YOTSUBA_HOSTS: retrieves threads from the specified imageboards. It's a comma-separated list of imageboards, each one composed of +-separated parameters: HOST+CATALOG_URL_TEMPLATE+THREAD_URL_TEMPLATE+THUMB_URL_TEMPLATE+BOARDS_JSON_URL_OR_HARDCODED_BOARDS where:
    • HOST is the domain of the imageboard
    • CATALOG_URL_TEMPLATE is the URL (even relative) of catalog.json (with {0} board placeholder). Defaults to /{0}/catalog.json
    • THREAD_URL_TEMPLATE is the URL (even relative) of a thread (with {0} board placeholder and {1} thread ID placeholder). Defaults to /{0}/res/{1}.html
    • THUMB_URL_TEMPLATE is the URL (even relative) of thumbnails (with {0} board placeholder and {1} image ID placeholder). Defaults to /{0}/thumb/{1}.png
    • BOARDS_JSON_URL_OR_HARDCODED_BOARDS is either the URL (even relative) of /boards.json, or a /-separated list of boards, optionally specifying a display name within brackets. Defaults to /boards.json, but be aware that many ViChan boards don't support this API endpoint, so you'll have to hardcode the list of boards as shown below. Make sure not to add combined virtual boards that aggregate from multiple boards, because images won'work.

Examples:

  • 4chan: boards.4chan.org+https://a.4cdn.org/{0}/catalog.json+https://boards.4chan.org/{0}/thread/{1}+https://i.4cdn.org/{0}/{1}s.jpg+https://a.4cdn.org/boards.json
  • LainChan (ViChan): lainchan.org++++λ(Programming)/Δ(Do It Yourself)/sec(Security)/r(Random)

Nostr

  • APPVIEWLITE_LISTEN_NOSTR_RELAYS: Listens to the specified Nostr relays. Example: nos.lol,bostr.bitcointxoko.com. Defaults to none.
  • APPVIEWLITE_NOSTR_IGNORE_REGEX: Don't ingest posts matching the specified regex.

RSS

RSS is enabled by default, and provides support for Tumblr and Reddit as well. Feeds are refreshed periodically as long as at least one user subscribes to them, or when the corresponding profile page is opened.

Image proxying and caching

  • APPVIEWLITE_SERVE_IMAGES: Enables image serving, instead of relying on an external CDN.
  • APPVIEWLITE_CDN: Image CDN domain. Defaults to cdn.bsky.app (unless APPVIEWLITE_SERVE_IMAGES is set, or the image is from a non-ATProto protocol)
  • APPVIEWLITE_IMAGE_CACHE_DIRECTORY: Where to cache the thumbnails. Defaults to $APPVIEWLITE_DIRECTORY/image-cache
  • APPVIEWLITE_CACHE_AVATARS: Whether avatar thumbnails should be cached to disk. Defaults to 1.
  • APPVIEWLITE_CACHE_FEED_THUMBS: Whether feed image thumbnails and profile banners should be cached to disk. Defaults to 0.

You can also add a domain to the [nooutboundconnect] section of APPVIEWLITE_BLOCKLIST_PATH (see above).

Pruning

Pruning can be used to free up disk space, by splitting each slice into a preserved and a pruned part. The preserved part will contain all recent Firehose posts, plus all historical posts from users that have ever used the current AppViewLite instance, and the users they frequently interact with or follow. Pruned slices can be deleted or moved to offline storage.

Pruning does not run in the background, it requires temporary maintanance downtime.

There's currently no way of merging preserved and pruned slices back together, or to load pruned slices anyways, so make sure you run a backup first.

  • APPVIEWLITE_RUN_PRUNING: Performs any pending pruning on startup (defaults to 0).
  • APPVIEWLITE_PRUNE_OLD_DAYS: Content older than this number of days might be pruned. Content newer than this is always preserved, no matter who it is from. Defaults to 30 days.
  • APPVIEWLITE_PRUNE_NEIGHBORHOOD_SIZE: Preserves all the content that involves this number of users with the highest neighborhood score. Pluggable protocol profiles are always preserved and don't count against this threshold. Defaults to 1000000 (one million).
  • APPVIEWLITE_PRUNE_MIN_SIZE: Only slices larger than this amount of bytes will be considered for pruning. Smaller ones will be preserved in full. Defaults to 1073741824 (1GB)
  • APPVIEWLITE_PRUNE_INTERVAL_DAYS: Only slices that were last pruned or written this amount of days ago will be considered for pruning. Defaults to 10.

Preserved slices have names in the format

  • startTime-endTime.col*.dat or
  • startTime-endTime-pruneId.col*.dat (where pruneId is even),

Pruned slices have names in the format

  • startTime-endTime-pruneId.col*.dat (where pruneId is odd).

AppViewLite will refuse to start if the file of any preserved slice is missing, but will work fine if pruned slices are missing (in fact, they wouldn't be loaded even if they existed).

The neighborhood score for a user is the sum of:

  • Follows

    • Infinity if they're followed by an AppViewLite user
    • 9 for each follow from a followee of an AppViewLite user
    • Infinity if they follow an AppViewLite user
    • 3 if they follow a followee of an AppViewLite user

  • Likes

    • 12 for each like from an AppViewLite user
    • 3 for each like from a followee of an AppViewLite user
    • 3 for each like they send to an AppViewLite user
    • 1 for each like they send to a followee of an AppViewLite user