Ubuntu Manpage: snac — message formatting and file format documentation

NAME

       snac — message formatting and file format documentation

DESCRIPTION

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

This manual describes the allowed formatting of note messages and the disk storage layout of snac server
and user data. For the operation manual, see snac(1). For the administration manual, see snac(8).

Message Formatting
Message notes respect the entered new line breaks rigurously. A special subset of Markdown is allowed,
including:

bold **text between two pairs of asterisks**

italic *text between a pair of asterisks*

strikethrough text
~~text between a pair of tildes~~

underlined text
__text between two pairs of underscores__

code Text `between backticks` is formatted as code.

```
/* text between lines with only three backticks is preformatted */
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
return 0;
}

```

links Standalone URLs are converted to links. Also, from version 2.54, markdown-style links in the
form of [link label](url) are also supported.

attached images
Standalone URLs for which the final extension is recognized as an image (.jpg, .gif, .png,
etc), are converted to ActivityPub image attachments. Also, from version 2.57, markdown-style
image links in the form of ![alt text](image url) are also supported.

line separators
Horizonal rules can be inserted by typing three minus symbols alone in a line.

quoted text
Lines starting with >.

headers One, two or three # at the beginning of a line plus a space plus some text are converted to
HTML headers.

user mentions
Strings in the format @user@host are requested using the Webfinger protocol and converted to
links and mentions if something reasonable is found.

emoticons /emojis / smileys / silly symbols
(Note: from version 2.51, these symbols are configurable by the instance administrator, so
the available ones may differ).

The following traditional ASCII emoticons or special strings are converted to related emojis:

:-) :-D X-D ;-) B-) :-( :-* <3 :-/ 8-o
%-) :_( :-| >:-( :facepalm: :shrug: :shrug2:
:eyeroll: :beer: :beers: :munch: :thumb:

Accepted HTML
All HTML tags in entries are neutered except the following ones:

a p br blockquote ul ol li cite small h2 h3
span i b u s pre code em strong hr img del

Disk Layout
This section documents version 2.7 of the disk storage layout.

The base directory contains the following files and folders:

server.json
Server configuration.

user/ Directory holding user subdirectories.

object/ Directory holding the ActivityPub objects. Filenames are hashes of each message Id, stored in
subdirectories starting with the first two letters of the hash.

queue/ This directory contains the global queue of input/output messages as JSON files. File names
contain timestamps that indicate when the message will be sent. Messages not accepted by
their respective servers will be re-enqueued for later retransmission until a maximum number
of retries is reached, then discarded.

inbox/ Directory storing collected inbox URLs from other instances.

archive/ If this directory exists, all input and output messages are logged inside it, including HTTP
headers. Only useful for debugging. May grow to enormous sizes.

error/ If this directory exists, HTTP signature check error headers are logged here. Only useful
for debugging.

log/ If this directory exists, log messages are also stored there in daily files.

app/ This directory stores Mastodon API apps.

token/ This directory stores Mastodon API tokens.

style.css The server-wide CSS. The content of this file is inserted into the HTML output unless a user-
specific one exist in the user's static/ folder.

greeting.html
This file is served when the server base URL is requested from a web browser. See snac(8) for
more information about the customization options.

public.idx This file contains the list of public posts from all users in the server.

filter_reject.txt
This (optional) file contains a list of regular expressions, one per line, to be applied to
the content of all incoming posts; if any of them match, the post is rejected. This brings
the flexibility and destruction power of regular expressions to your Fediverse experience. To
be used wisely (see snac(8) for more information).

announcement.txt
If this file is present, an announcement will be shown to logged in users on every page with
its contents. It is also available through the Mastodon API. Users can dismiss the
announcement, which works by storing the modification time in the "last_announcement" field
of the user.json file. When the file is modified, the announcement will then reappear. It can
contain only text and will be ignored if it has more than 2048 bytes.

Each user directory is a subdirectory of BASEDIR/user/, has the user id as name and contains the
following subdirectories and files:

user.json User configuration file.

user_o.json
User configuration override file. This file is intended for administrators to override some
user preferences. For current version, the fields that can be overridden are 'purge_days' and
'email'.

key.json Secret/public key PEM data.

followers.idx
This file contains the list of followers as a list of hashed object identifiers.

followers/ This directory stores hard links to the actor objects in the object storage.

following/ This directory stores the users being followed as hard links to the 'Follow' or 'Accept'
objects in the object storage. File names are the hashes of each actor Id.

private/ This directory stores hard links to the timeline entries in the object storage.

private.idx
This file contains the list of timeline entries as a list of hashed object identifiers.

public/ This directory stores hard links to the public timeline entries in the object storage.

public.idx This file contains the list of public timeline entries as a list of hashed object
identifiers.

pinned/ This directory stores hard links to pinned posts.

pinned.idx This file contains the list of pinned posts as a list of hashed object identifiers.

bookmark/ This directory stores hard links to bookmarked posts.

bookmark.idx
This file contains the list of pinned posts as a list of hashed object identifiers.

draft/ This directory stores post drafts.

draft.idx This file contains the list of drafts as a list of hashed object identifiers.

muted/ This directory contains files which names are hashes of muted actors. The content is a line
containing the actor URL. Messages from these actors will be ignored on input and not shown
in any timeline.

hidden/ This directory contains references to the hidden timeline entries.

limited/ This directory contains references to the actor URLs for limited users (those being followed
but with their boosts blocked).

queue/ This directory contains the output queue of messages generated by the user as JSON files.
File names contain timestamps that indicate when the message will be sent. Messages not
accepted by their respective servers will be re-enqueued for later retransmission until a
maximum number of retries is reached, then discarded.

static/ Files in this directory are served as-is when requested from the https://HOST/USER/s/... URL
path. A special file named style.css can contain user-specific CSS code to be inserted into
the HTML of the web interface.

history/ This directory contains generated HTML files. They may be snapshots of the local timeline in
previous months or other cached data.

export/ This directory will contain exported data in Mastodon-compatible CSV format after executing
the 'export_csv' command-line operation.

import/ Mastodon-compatible CSV files must be copied into this directory to use any of the importing
functions.

server.pid This file stores the server PID in a single text line.

AUTHORS

       grunfink @grunfink@comam.es: https://comam.es/snac/grunfink

LICENSE

       See the LICENSE file for details.

Debian                                             $Mdocdate$                                            SNAC(5)

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