documentation/docs/community-installation-guide.md

Community Installation Guide

After installation take a look at the Post-install steps.

Podman (rootless container)

Podman is usually pre-installed in Fedora, CentOS, RHEL and derivatives. But if this is not the case, the instruction below will install all necessary packages.

RHEL based and RHEL-like systems

sudo dnf install podman

Download the configuration files from Invidious' repository

Note: Currently the repository has to be cloned, this is because the init-invidious-db.sh file and the config/sql directory have to be mounted to the postgres container (See the volumes section in the postgres' container). This "problem" will be solved in the future.

<INV-PATH> Absolute path in your home directory where invidious will be downloaded (e.i. /home/johnsmith/.inv)

cd <INV-PATH>
git clone https://github.com/iv-org/invidious.git

Create Pod - videos

podman pod create --name videos -p 3000:3000

Create Container - postgres

podman create --rm \
--pod videos \
--name postgres \
--label "io.containers.autoupdate=registry" \
--health-cmd='pg_isready -U $POSTGRES_USER -d $POSTGRES_DB' \
-v postgresdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data \
-v <INV-PATH>/invidious/config/sql:/config/sql:z \
-v <INV-PATH>/invidious/docker/init-invidious-db.sh:/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/init-invidious-db.sh:z \
-e POSTGRES_DB=invidious \
-e POSTGRES_USER=kemal \
-e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=kemal \
docker.io/library/postgres:14

Create Container - invidious

Copy <INV-PATH>/invidious/config/config.example.yml to <INV-PATH>/config.yml and update parameters as required.

podman create --rm \
--pod videos \
--name invidious \
--label "io.containers.autoupdate=registry" \
--health-cmd="wget -nv --tries=1 --spider http://127.0.0.1:3000/api/v1/trending || exit 1" \
--health-interval=30s \
--health-timeout=5s \
--health-retries=2 \
-v <INV-PATH>/config.yml:/invidious/config/config.yml:z,U \
quay.io/invidious/invidious:latest

Create systemd services to manage the Pod

Podman can generate systemd services to handle the life cycle of pods and containers. The instructions below will create 3 service units, and they will be placed in the correct location ready to be used.

cd ~
cp $(podman generate systemd --new --files --name videos) .config/systemd/user

Start Pod

Despite the existance of 3 services, only the one related to the Pod must be used. The life cycle for the 2 containers implementing postgres and invidious will be handled by the pod.

systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now pod-videos.service

And similarly, the instruction below will re-start the service:

systemctl --user restart pod-videos.service

If this service runs on a server, it will stop as soon as you logout, because it is running in user space. To ensure it is persistent and remains active after logging out, you will need to enable user lingering.

loginctl enable-linger

Updating to the latest release

podman auto-update
podman image prune -f

Podman via systemd

This method is suitable for systems which come with Podman version 5.x or higher and systemd (e.g. Fedora, CentOS Stream 9 or clones). Instructions are written for root-less mode, do not run the commands as root since paths are different. Ensure that SELinux is in enforcing mode for maximum security.

Create a new volume for database:

podman volume create invidious-db

Start a temporary container:

podman run --rm -it --name invidious-init -v invidious-db:/var/lib/postgresql/data:Z -p 5432:5432 -e POSTGRES_DB=invidious -e POSTGRES_USER=kemal -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=kemal docker.io/library/postgres:14

In another terminal, migrate the database:

export PGPASSWORD=kemal
for F in channels videos channel_videos users session_ids nonces annotations playlists playlist_videos; do
    curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iv-org/invidious/refs/heads/master/config/sql/$F.sql | \
        psql -h localhost -p 5432 -U kemal invidious
done

Shutdown the temporary container, it is no longer needed. Create a database volume unit:

cat > ~/.config/containers/systemd/invidious-db.volume <<EOF
[Volume]
VolumeName=invidious-db
EOF

And a database container:

cat > ~/.config/containers/systemd/invidious-db.container <<EOF
[Container]
ContainerName=invidious-db
Environment=POSTGRES_DB=invidious POSTGRES_USER=kemal POSTGRES_PASSWORD=kemal
Image=docker.io/library/postgres:14
HealthCmd=pg_isready -h localhost -p 5432 -U kemal -d invidious
Notify=healthy
Pod=invidious.pod
Volume=invidious-db.volume:/var/lib/postgresql/data:Z
EOF

Create a helper container:

cat > ~/.config/containers/systemd/invidious-sig-helper.container <<EOF
[Container]
ContainerName=invidious-sig-helper
Environment=RUST_LOG=info
Image=quay.io/invidious/inv-sig-helper:latest
Exec=--tcp 0.0.0.0:12999
Pod=invidious.pod
EOF

Generate your VISITOR_DATA an PO_TOKEN secrets. For more information about these, read the information dialog above.

podman run quay.io/invidious/youtube-trusted-session-generator

Set those secrets as temporary environmental variables, also generate a random string for HMAC secret:

HMAC=$(openssl rand -base64 21)
VISITOR_DATA="ABCDEF%3D%3D" # notsecret
PO_TOKEN="MpOIfiljfsdljds-Lljfsdk-ojrdjXVs==" # notsecret

In the same terminal where you defined the environmental variables, create new environmental config file:

cat > ~/.config/containers/systemd/invidious.env <<EOF
INVIDIOUS_DATABASE_URL="postgres://kemal:kemal@invidious-db:5432/invidious"
#INVIDIOUS_CHECK_TABLES=true
#INVIDIOUS_DOMAIN="inv.example.com"
INVIDIOUS_SIGNATURE_SERVER="invidious-sig-helper:12999"
INVIDIOUS_VISITOR_DATA="$VISITOR_DATA"
INVIDIOUS_PO_TOKEN="$PO_TOKEN"
INVIDIOUS_HMAC_KEY="$HMAC"
EOF

From now on, if you need to change configuration just edit the generated file ~/.config/containers/systemd/invidious.env. Now, create invidious container unit:

cat > ~/.config/containers/systemd/invidious.container <<EOF
[Container]
ContainerName=invidious
EnvironmentFile=%h/.config/containers/systemd/invidious.env
Image=quay.io/invidious/invidious:latest
Pod=invidious.pod
[Unit]
After=invidious-db.service
EOF

And finally, create pod unit. Note only port 3000 is exposed, do not expose other ports!

cat > ~/.config/containers/systemd/invidious.pod <<EOF
[Pod]
PodName=invidious
PublishPort=3000:3000
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target default.target
EOF

Systemd units are generated on-the-fly during daemon-reload command, but before that let's check syntax with quadlet generator. Note, you need Podman version 5.0 or higher, older versions will not work:

/usr/libexec/podman/quadlet -dryrun -user

Reload systemd daemon. Keep in mind you need to do this command every time you change a unit file, you can change the environmental file freely tho.

systemctl --user daemon-reload

And the whole application can be now started:

systemctl --user start invidious-pod

Keep in mind that generated units cannot be enabled using systemctl enable, the main pod will be enabled automatically. If you do not like this behavior, remove the WantedBy line from invidious.pod.