Hosting a Gemini Server

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To read more about Gemini and ways to test out this new protocol without your own server, see my previous post Launching a Gemini Capsule.

Preparation

This guide assumes you have access to a server accessible to the world through a public IP address and that you own a domain name used for this Gemini capsule.

Getting Started with Agate

We are going to use Agate for this tutorial. This is a very simple Gemini server written in Rust. It takes very little time and maintenance to get it running.

Install Dependencies

First, you will need to install the Rust package for your system. On Ubuntu, use the following commands (remember to use sudo if you are not the root user). The Rust installation will give you options to customize the installation - I used the default installation options.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh

Remember to configure your shell with the new configuration:

source $HOME/.cargo/env

Before we install agate, make sure you have the gcc package installed:

sudo apt install gcc

Next, you'll need to install the agate executable with Rust's Cargo package maintainer:

cargo install agate

Create Symlinks

Once Cargo has finished installing all of the required packages, symlink the executable to your $PATH.

sudo ln -s $HOME/.cargo/bin/agate /usr/local/bin/agate

Using Agate's Built-In Installation Tool

If you're running Ubuntu or Debian, use the Debian install script found in Agate's GitHub repository, under the tools/debian folder.

git clone https://github.com/mbrubeck/agate
cd agate/tools/debian
sudo ./install.sh

Configure the Gemini Service

We have a little more to do, but since this script tries to immediately run the service, it will likely fail with an exit code. Let's add our finishing touches. Edit the following file and replace the hostname with your desired URL. You can also change the directory where content will be served.

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/gemini.service

# Edit these lines to whatever you want - see the next code block for my personal configuration.
WorkingDirectory=/srv/gemini
ExecStart=agate --hostname $(uname -n) --lang en

This is my personal config:

WorkingDirectory=/var/gemini/
ExecStart=agate --hostname gemini.example.com --lang en

Since we've altered the systemd configuration files, we have to reload the daemon. Let's do that, restart our service, and check its status.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart gemini.service
sudo systemctl status gemini.service

Fixing Systemd Errors

If you're still getting errors, the installation process may not have properly enabled the gemini service. Fix it with the following commands.

sudo systemctl enable gemini.service
sudo systemctl restart gemini.service
sudo systemctl status gemini.service

Firewall Rules

Great! Our server is now functional and running. The first consideration now is that you need to be able to access port 1965 on the server. If you have a firewall enabled, you'll need to open that port up.

sudo ufw allow 1965
sudo ufw reload

Creating Content

Let's create the Gemini capsule. Note that wherever you set the WorkingDirectory variable to earlier, Agate will expect you to put your Gemini capsule contents in a subfolder called "content". So, I place my files in "/var/gmi/content". I'm going to create that folder now and put a file in there.

sudo mkdir /var/gemini/content
sudo nano /var/gemini/content/index.gmi

You can put whatever you want in the "index.gmi" file, just make sure it's valid Gemtext.

The Results

Here are some screenshots of the Gemini page I just created in the Lagrange browser and the amfora browser.

Lagrange: gemini.cleberg.net

Amfora: gemini.cleberg.net