Ubuntu 20.04

This project, while good, required a decent amount of manual work just to get it up and running. There is next to zero documentation and uses some random language that has it's own issues getting installed properly. This guide assumes you know how to setup a DNS record.

Update and install nginx, redis (a caching server), and certbot. Redis will automatically start itself and create a service, which is nice.

sudo apt update;sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install redis-server nginx
sudo apt install python3-certbot-nginx
sudo apt install libsass-dev # Required to run nimble scss
sudo certbot --nginx certonly

This configuration will obtain an A+ on Qualy's SSL Labs and Mozilla Observatory.

sudo vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/nitter.placeholder.domain.conf

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name nitter.placeholder.domain;
    # enforce https
    return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri;
}

server {
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name nitter.placeholder.domain;

    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/nitter.placeholder.domain/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/nitter.placeholder.domain/privkey.pem;
    ssl_session_timeout 5m;
    ssl_ecdh_curve secp384r1;
    ssl_session_tickets off;
    ssl_ciphers 'ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:AES256+EECDH:AES256+EDH:!SHA1:!SHA256:!SHA384:!aNULL';
    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
    ssl_protocols TLSv1.3 TLSv1.2;
    ssl_dhparam /etc/ssl/dhparam.pem;
    ssl_stapling on;
    ssl_stapling_verify on;

    add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=15768000; includeSubDomains; preload;" always;
    add_header Referrer-Policy "no-referrer" always;
    add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff" always;
    #add_header X-Download-Options "noopen" always;
    add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN" always;
    add_header X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies "none" always;
    add_header X-Robots-Tag "none" always;
    add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block" always;
    add_header Content-Security-Policy "default-src 'self' 'inline-unsafe; script-src 'self' 'inline-unsafe'" always;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:8080;
    }
}

Install nim, just wget the latest package from their website. https://nim-lang.org/install_unix.html Their install script is improperly written so you will need to manually copy the executable binary nimble as that one is used to compile. Just stick it in /usr/bin. Below is an example using the current version of nim at the time of writing.

wget https://nim-lang.org/download/nim-1.4.4-linux_x64.tar.xz
tar xvf nim-1.4.4-linux_x64.tar.xz
cd nim-1.4.4/
./install.sh /usr/bin
sudo cp bin/nimble /usr/bin/

Add a user named nitter and login as that user. The following commands are under the nitter user only.

sudo useradd -d /home/nitter -m nitter
sudo su nitter

Clone Nitter

git clone https://github.com/zedeus/nitter
cd nitter

Build Nitter

nimble build -d:release

Build CSS

nimble scss
mkdir ./tmp

Configure nitter /home/nitter/nitter/nitter.conf Just make sure to fill out the hostname and hmacKey, I gave my key a randomly generated 64 character string, seems to work.

sudo ufw allow ssh
sudo ufw allow http
sudo ufw allow https
sudo ufw enable

Run this command as your standard log in user, not the nitter user as that should still not have a password.

sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/nitter.service

Systemd Service

[Unit]
Description=Nitter (An alternative Twitter front-end)
After=syslog.target
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple

# set user and group
User=nitter
Group=nitter

# configure location
WorkingDirectory=/home/nitter/nitter
ExecStart=/home/nitter/nitter/nitter

Restart=always
RestartSec=15

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target