Bluesky Personal Data Server (PDS)

Bluesky Personal Data Server (PDS)

Mark Elvers
1 min read

Categories

  • bluesky

Tags

  • tunbury.org

Today I have set up my own Bluesky (PDS) Personal Data Server.

I followed the README at https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds using an Ubuntu 22.04 VM. The basic steps are:

  1. Publish DNS records pointing to your machine.
  2. As root, run install.sh.
  3. Enter your email address and preferred handle.

It wasn’t entirely obvious how to set your handle to be the same as the domain name when you have something else already published on the domain such as your web server.

Issue #103 shows how this should be achieved.

  1. Publish the DNS record for pds.yourdomain.com.
  2. Use pds.yourdomain.com during setup.
  3. At the final stage where a handle is created, use tmphandle.pds.yourdomain.com
  4. Change the change to your preferred handle via the Bluesky app.

Login using a custom server pds.yourdomain.com and the handle you created.

Next go to Account > Handle and select ‘I have my own domain’. Enter the domain name which should be the new handle that you want. In my case, mtelvers.tunbury.org. Next, publish a DNS TXT record for _atproto.mtelvers.tunbury.org and publish your did record did=did:plc:5le6ofipuf6sdk6czluurgjc

Check service status      : sudo systemctl status pds
Watch service logs        : sudo docker logs -f pds
Backup service data       : /pds
PDS Admin command         : pdsadmin

To see pdsadmin commands, run "pdsadmin help"
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