How to run Invidious in a FreeBSD Jail

Invidious is a YouTube frontend replacement, meaning that you have all YouTube content without using its UI, which is full of tracking and ads. So it’s a simpler way to consume its content sharing less data as possible. You can learn more here.

But if you run a FreeBSD server (like me that runs a TrueNas Core NAS), you’ll find out that there are only Linux installation processes in their documentation. I tried self-hosting it in a Jail a few months ago, without any success. This week I found out on this issue that someone was able to host it in a FreeBSD installation. So I tried it out by myself, and it worked as expected.

So, for documentation purposes, I’m copying the steps in the issue here so more people can see it.

Install dependencies:

pkg install shards crystal postgresql15-server ImageMagick7-nox11 librsvg2 git sqlite3 nano

Enable postgres:

sysrc postgresql_enable=yes

First-time setup:

/usr/local/etc/rc.d/postgresql initdb

Start it:

service postgresql start

Open the configuration file and enable password login. First, open the configuration file:

cd /var/db/postgres/data15
nano pg_hba.conf

At the end of the file, you’ll see something like

# TYPE  DATABASE        USER            ADDRESS                 METHOD

# "local" is for Unix domain socket connections only
local   all             all                                     trust
# IPv4 local connections:
host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            trust  
# IPv6 local connections:
host    all             all             ::1/128                 trust 

You need to change the METHOD OF ipv4 and ipv6 local connections to md5. It will look like this:

# TYPE  DATABASE        USER            ADDRESS                 METHOD

# "local" is for Unix domain socket connections only
local   all             all                                     trust
# IPv4 local connections:
host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            md5  
# IPv6 local connections:
host    all             all             ::1/128                 md5 

Save, close and restart Postgres

ctrl + x and enter to save
service postgresql restart

Now you can create a new database user, and database and set permissions:

su - postgres
psql

Inside psql:

create database invidious;
create user kemal with superuser password '<strong password here>';
grant all privileges on database invidious to kemal;
exit

Now exit again to return to your user, download and build Invidious

git clone https://github.com/iv-org/invidious
cd invidious
shards install --production
crystal build src/invidious.cr --release
cp config/config.example.yml config/config.yml

You’ll need to edit the configuration file to fill your needs. At minimum fill in the database information.

nano config/config.yml

Now you can test it by running:

./invidious --migrate
./invidious

You should be able to browse Invidious normally!

To run it as a service, I use runit. You can install it and some dependencies:

pkg install runit bash

mkdir /var/service
cp -R /usr/local/etc/runit /etc/runit
echo runsvdir_enable=yes >> /etc/rc.conf
service runsvdir start

Create a startup script inside the Invidious directory

cd /root/invidious
nano start.sh

Adjust and paste a similar content to this:

cd /root/invidious
./invidious

Grant proper permissions:

chmod +x start.sh

Now create service directory and file:

mdkir /var/service/invidious
nano /var/service/invidious/run

Adjust and paste a similar content to this:

#!/bin/sh -e
exec 2>&1
exec /usr/local/bin/bash /root/invidious/start.sh

Grant proper permissions:

chmod +x start.sh

And start the service

sv start invidious

You can check services running by port to make sure everything is up:

sockstat -l4 -P tcp