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Instructions

PLEASE READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY BEFORE USE. Nostr is a new protocol and there is quite a lot of uncertainty as to how to use it properly. Below you'll find important information to help you get started without undue confusion and risk.

Initial Config

It is highly recommended that you run a private relay, not a public one. Private will be the default option when you open the config for the first time. You will not be able to save the config until you follow the instructions below.

Running a private relay

Private relays act as a personal backup for your posts, follows, messages, settings, etc. Without a private relay, there is no guaranteeing these things will be saved anywhere, and they could disappear at any time.

With a private relay, only the whitelisted pubkeys will be permitted to post and save content to your relay. So, at minimum, you must whitelist your own pubkey in hex format. The config will refuse to save until there is at least one pubkey in the whitelist.

Some Nostr clients will not allow you to copy your hex pubkey. In that case, visit https://damus.io/key to convert your npub to hex.

Running a public relay

In contrast to a private relay, a public relay does not include a whitelist, so it allows any pubkey to post. It is not recommended to run a public relay unless you understand the risks and configure it with the proper protections. The main risk you need to avoid is malicious clients spamming your relay and causing your storage drive to full up. We've included fairly restrictive defaults in your config so that you have the best chance of avoiding this risk, but you are on your own here.

Connecting to your relay

All platforms

  1. Ensure your computer or phone is running Tor: https://docs.start9.com/latest/guides/device-guides/
  2. In Nostr Properties, copy your Nostr Relay Websocket URL (e.g. ws://<address>.onion), and paste it into your Nostr client relay list.

*Note: there is also a Local (e.g. wss://<address>.local) URL is included in Properties. We do not recommend using this interface except to sanity check that your relay working in certain cases. No one will be able to access your .local URL except you and anyone else connected to the same LAN.

Using Firefox with Iris or another web client

  • Ensure that you have configured Firefox for Tor
  • Go into Firefox about:config and set network.websocket.allowInsecureFromHTTPS to true. This is necessary to access you ws:// URL, since Tor does not use wss://

Testing your relay (requires SSH)

Once you've connected a client to your relay, any events created by your client will be stored on your relay, assuming the pubkey that created the event is whitelisted (or the relay is set to "public"). You can check that your relay is indeed storing events by going into your client relay settings and eliminating all relays except your own, sending some events, then SSHing into your Start9 server and entering the following command:

`sudo podman exec nostr.embassy sqlite3 /data/nostr.db 'select count(*) from event;'`

If this displays a number greater than 0, your relay is working.

To list all events (notes) stored on your relay, use the following command:

`sudo podman exec nostr.embassy sqlite3 /data/nostr.db "SELECT content FROM event;" | grep -o 'content":"[^"]*' | awk -F: '{print $1":"$2}'`

More

For more information about the Nostr protocol, relays, and clients, visit https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr