Manual installation

Hollo can be installed manually on your server. This guide will walk you through the process of setting up Hollo on your server. It assumes you have some experience with running web applications and are comfortable with the command line.

Tip

If you are not comfortable with Unix-like systems or prefer a more automated way to deploy Hollo, you can use Railway to deploy Hollo with just a few clicks.

Prerequisites

Before you start, make sure you have the following software installed on your server:

• Git
• Node.js 24+
• pnpm
• ffmpeg
• PostgreSQL 17+
• L7 load balancer (e.g., nginx, Caddy)
• A domain name pointing to your server

Installation

1. Check out Hollo’s latest code from GitHub:

   git clone -b stable https://github.com/fedify-dev/hollo.git
   cd hollo/

2. Install the dependencies using pnpm:

   pnpm install

3. Create a PostgreSQL user and database for Hollo:

   createuser --createdb --pwprompt hollo
   createdb --username=hollo --encoding=utf8 --template=postgres hollo

4. Create a configuration file for Hollo:

   cp .env.sample .env

Configuration

Once you’ve installed Hollo, you need to configure it. Open the .env file you created earlier and adjust the environment variables.

See the Environment variables chapter for details on how to configure Hollo.

Starting the server

To start the server, run the following command:

pnpm run prod

Upgrading Hollo

To upgrade Hollo, just pull the latest code from GitHub and reinstall the dependencies:

1. Pull the latest code from GitHub:

   git pull

2. Reinstall the dependencies:

   pnpm install

3. Restart the server:

   pnpm run prod