title: Configuring full-text search description: Setting up Elasticsearch to search for statuses (authored, favourited, or mentioned), public indexable status, and accounts aliases:
Mastodon supports full-text search when Elasticsearch is available. It is strongly recommended to configure this feature.
Mastodon’s full-text search allows logged-in users to find results from:
It deliberately does not allow searching for arbitrary strings in the entire database.
{{< hint style="info" >}} Mastodon is tested with Elasticsearch version 7. It should support OpenSearch, as well as Elasticsearch versions 6 and 8, but those setups are not officially supported. {{< /hint >}}
Elasticsearch requires a Java runtime. If you don’t have Java already installed, do it now. Assuming you are logged in as root
:
apt install openjdk-17-jre-headless
Add the official Elasticsearch repository to apt:
wget -O /usr/share/keyrings/elasticsearch.asc https://artifacts.elastic.co/GPG-KEY-elasticsearch
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/elasticsearch.asc] https://artifacts.elastic.co/packages/7.x/apt stable main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/elastic-7.x.list
Now you can install Elasticsearch:
apt update
apt install elasticsearch
{{< hint style="warning" >}}
Security warning: By default, Elasticsearch is supposed to bind to localhost only, i.e. be inaccessible from the outside network. You can check which address Elasticsearch binds to by looking at network.host
within /etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.yml
. Consider that anyone who can access Elasticsearch can access and modify any data within it, as there is no authentication layer. So it’s really important that the access is secured. Having a firewall that only exposes the 22, 80 and 443 ports is advisable, as outlined in the main installation instructions. If you have a multi-host setup, you must know how to secure internal traffic.
{{< /hint >}}
To start Elasticsearch:
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable --now elasticsearch
Edit .env.production
to add the following variables:
ES_ENABLED=true
ES_HOST=localhost
ES_PORT=9200
ES_PRESET= # single_node_cluster, small_cluster or large_cluster
# ES_USER=
# ES_PASS=
Note: If using TLS, prepend the hostname with https://
. For example: https://elastic.example.com
.
The value for ES_PRESET
depends on the size of your Elasticsearch and will be used to set the number of shards and replicas for your indices to the best value for your setup:
single_node_cluster
if you only have one node in your Elasticsearch cluster. Indices will be configured without any replicasmall_cluster
if you have less than 6 nodes in your cluster. Indices will be configured with 1 replicalarge_cluster
if you have 6 or more nodes in your cluster. Indices will be configured with more shards than with the small_cluster
setting, to allow them to be distributed over more nodesIf you have multiple Mastodon servers on the same machine, and you are planning to use the same Elasticsearch installation for all of them, make sure that all of them have unique REDIS_NAMESPACE
in their configurations, to differentiate the indices. If you need to override the prefix of the Elasticsearch indices, you can set ES_PREFIX
directly.
By default, Elasticsearch does not handle any authentication and every request is made with full admin permission. We strongly advise you to configure Elasticsearch security features on your cluster.
To configure it, please refer to the official documentation. It will guide you through:
xpack.security.enabled: true
)Once done, you can create a custom role for Mastodon to connect.
For example (please adapt this snippet to use your Elastic admin password):
curl -X POST -u elastic:admin_password "localhost:9200/_security/role/mastodon_full_access?pretty" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d'
{
"cluster": ["monitor"],
"indices": [{
"names": ["*"],
"privileges": ["read", "monitor", "write", "manage"]
}]
}
'
Elasticsearch documentation for role creation
Once the role is created, you can create a user for the Mastodon server to use, and assign it the role.
For example (please adapt this snippet to use your Elastic admin password, and customize your new user mastodon
user password):
curl -X POST -u elastic:admin_password "localhost:9200/_security/user/mastodon?pretty" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d'
{
"password" : "l0ng-r4nd0m-p@ssw0rd",
"roles" : ["mastodon_full_access"]
}
'
Elasticsearch documentation for user creation
Once this is done, you need to configure Mastodon to use the credentials for your newly created user.
In .env.production
, adjust your configuration:
ES_USER=mastodon
ES_PASS=l0ng-r4nd0m-p@ssw0rd
You are all set, and your Elasticsearch server should be much more secure!
After saving the new configuration, restart Mastodon processes for it to take effect:
systemctl restart mastodon-sidekiq
systemctl reload mastodon-web
Now it's time to create the Elasticsearch indices and fill them with data:
su - mastodon
cd live
RAILS_ENV=production bin/tootctl search deploy
The standard analyzer is the default for Elasticsearch, but for some languages like Chinese it may not be the optimal choice. To enhance the search experience, consider installing a language-specific analyzer. Before creating indices in Elasticsearch, be sure to install the following extensions:
And then modify Mastodon's index definition as follows:
diff --git a/app/chewy/accounts_index.rb b/app/chewy/accounts_index.rb
--- a/app/chewy/accounts_index.rb
+++ b/app/chewy/accounts_index.rb
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ class AccountsIndex < Chewy::Index
settings index: { refresh_interval: '5m' }, analysis: {
analyzer: {
content: {
- tokenizer: 'whitespace',
+ tokenizer: 'ik_max_word',
filter: %w(lowercase asciifolding cjk_width),
},
diff --git a/app/chewy/statuses_index.rb b/app/chewy/statuses_index.rb
--- a/app/chewy/statuses_index.rb
+++ b/app/chewy/statuses_index.rb
@@ -16,9 +16,17 @@ class StatusesIndex < Chewy::Index
language: 'possessive_english',
},
},
+ char_filter: {
+ tsconvert: {
+ type: 'stconvert',
+ keep_both: false,
+ delimiter: '#',
+ convert_type: 't2s',
+ },
+ },
analyzer: {
content: {
- tokenizer: 'uax_url_email',
+ tokenizer: 'ik_max_word',
filter: %w(
english_possessive_stemmer
lowercase
@@ -27,6 +35,7 @@ class StatusesIndex < Chewy::Index
english_stop
english_stemmer
),
+ char_filter: %w(tsconvert),
},
},
}
diff --git a/app/chewy/tags_index.rb b/app/chewy/tags_index.rb
--- a/app/chewy/tags_index.rb
+++ b/app/chewy/tags_index.rb
@@ -2,10 +2,19 @@
class TagsIndex < Chewy::Index
settings index: { refresh_interval: '15m' }, analysis: {
+ char_filter: {
+ tsconvert: {
+ type: 'stconvert',
+ keep_both: false,
+ delimiter: '#',
+ convert_type: 't2s',
+ },
+ },
analyzer: {
content: {
- tokenizer: 'keyword',
+ tokenizer: 'ik_max_word',
filter: %w(lowercase asciifolding cjk_width),
+ char_filter: %w(tsconvert),
},
edge_ngram: {