How to Host Your Own Youtube with Peertube

Peertube is a federated and open source video hosting platform that you can run from your own computer. Iit allows you to completely control all the content that you host and share from your website. This tutorial shows you how to install and host Peertube on Ubuntu.

Tip: if you just want to watch YouTube offline, there is no need to install Peertube. Check out all the ways to watch YouTube offline.

Why Host and Use Peertube

One of the most attractive features of Peertube is its ability to load videos from other instances, making it possible to view content from outside your website but still retain the control over your data.

Another advantage of Peertube over Youtube is that it is entirely open source. (Learn all about open source licenses here.) This makes it easy for anyone to scrutinize the program’s codebase, which can be helpful for users that are concerned about their data security.

Good to know: learn more about protecting your data online by installing privacy and security extensions in Chrome.

Installing Peertube

Before you can install Peertube, you need to make sure that you have a server ready. This could be your personal PC or a rented server from a web host. This tutorial is done on an Ubuntu VPS from Digitalocean.

1. Set up a new user account for Peertube. This will allow you to easily control what the program can do inside your system:

sudo useradd -b /bin/bash -m -d /var/www/peertube -G sudo peertube
sudo passwd peertube

Creating a new user account also allows you to set the $HOME variable under “/var/www/.” This is important, as the Web backend for Peertube will not be able to traverse the default “/home” heirarchy.

2. Switch to your new user account with the command:

su peertube

3. Install the dependencies for Peertube:

sudo apt install cron wget curl unzip python3-dev python-is-python3 certbot nginx python3-certbot-nginx ffmpeg postgresql postgresql-contrib openssl g++ make redis-server git

4. Install NodeJS in your machine:

curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_16.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt update
sudo apt install nodejs

5. Install Yarn. This is a powerful yet lightweight package manage for NodeJS:

curl -sL https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/yarnkey.gpg >/dev/null
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/yarnkey.gpg] https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yarn.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install yarn

6. Once you have installed all of the dependencies for Peertube, configure your system to install the program. First, enable the program’s database backend:

sudo systemctl enable postgresql
sudo systemctl start postgresql
sudo systemctl enable redis-server
sudo systemctl start redis-server

7. Add your Peertube user to PostgreSQL by running the following commands:

cd $HOME
sudo usermod -aG peertube postgres
sudo -u postgres createuser -P peertube

8. Create the database for the program by running the following commands:

sudo -u postgres createdb -O peertube -E UTF8 -T template0 peertube_run
sudo -u postgres psql -c "CREATE EXTENSION pg_trgm;" peertube_run
sudo -u postgres psql -c "CREATE EXTENSION unaccent;" peertube_run

9. Create the directory structure of the program in your home directory:

mkdir config storage versions
chmod 750 ./config

10. Download the Peertube binary files:

cd ./versions
wget https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/releases/download/v5.0.1/peertube-v5.0.1.zip
unzip peertube-v5.0.1.zip
cd ./..

11. Create a symbolic link between your install and your home directory:

ln -s /var/www/peertube/versions/peertube-v5.0.1 /var/www/peertube/peertube-latest

12. Install Peertube using the following Yarn command:

cd ./peertube-latest
yarn install --production --pure-lockfile

Configuring Nginx and SSL

By default, Peertube opens its Internet service on port 9000. While you can access the program from that, it is good practice to create a reverse proxy between the program and a well-known port.

The program’s developers have made a template file that you can use to create your own reverse proxy by running the following command:

sudo cp /var/www/peertube/peertube-latest/support/nginx/peertube /etc/nginx/sites-available/peertube
sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

Configure your new template file by opening it using a text editor:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/peertube

Inside, change every instance of these two variables: ${WEBSERVER_HOST} and ${PEERTUBE_HOST}.

• For the ${WEBSERVER_HOST}, replace it with your machine’s FQDN.
• Meanwhile, replace ${PEERTUBE_HOST} with “127.0.0.1:9000.”

Press Ctrl + O, then Ctrl + X to save your file to disk and exit the text editor.

Enable the Peertube Nginx config file and restart Nginx.

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/peertube /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo systemctl reload nginx

Creating Your SSL Certificate

We are obtaining a new SSL certificate using the free Certbot utility from Let’s Encrypt. (You can also create a wildcard SSL certificate if you intend to use it on multiple (sub)domains.)

sudo certbot

Certbot will scan your Nginx configuration and bring up the list of domains hosted on your server. Enter the number beside the domain for which you want to obtain a new SSL certificate.

Once the SSL certificate is issued, certbot will auto-update your Nginx config file with the correct entry. You just need to reload your Nginx configuration to make sure all is running well.

sudo systemctl reload nginx

Tip: enabling SSL will encrypt all TCP connections to your instance; however, it is better practice to secure your Linux server from the get go.

Configuring and Running Peertube

1. With both your Nginx server and SSL certificate done, you can now configure your Peertube instance. You can use a template that the developers have made to streamline this process. Run the following commands:

cd $HOME
cp /var/www/peertube/peertube-latest/config/default.yaml /var/www/peertube/config/default.yaml
cp /var/www/peertube/peertube-latest/config/production.yaml.example /var/www/peertube/config/production.yaml

2. Open the “production.yaml” file in a text editor:

nano /var/www/peertube/config/production.yaml

3. Change the hostname: variable to your machine’s FQDN:

4. Generate a random secret for your instance with the following command:

openssl rand -hex 32

Go back to your “production.yaml” file and paste your random secret beside the peertube: variable.

5. Look for the database: block. Change the suffix: block to “_run.”

6. Change the password: variable to your database account’s password.

7. Go to the smtp: block and find the hostname: variable. Change that to the hostname of your mail server. Also, change both the username: and password: variables to the credentials of your email account.

8. Replace the from_address: variable with the email address of your email account.

Once you are done making the changes, press Ctrl + o to save the file and Ctrl + x to exit the file.

Creating a Peertube Service File

To make Peertube run automatically at startup, we are creating a systemd service file for Peertube.

1. Run the following command to copy the template systemd file to the system:

sudo cp /var/www/peertube/peertube-latest/support/systemd/peertube.service /etc/systemd/system/

2. Reload systemd to apply your new service file.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable peertube
sudo systemctl start peertube

Using Peertube

If everything is configured properly, you should be able to access Peertube from your own domain name.

By default, every new Peertube instance creates a root account that you can use as the site’s administrator. To use this, run the following command:

sudo journalctl -u peertube | grep "User password:"

Go back to your Peertube website and press the “Login” button on the page’s upper-left corner. Write “root” as your username and paste its password.

Peertube will greet you with a brief message that contains links to the program’s documentation.

Once you have reviewed the content of the message, press X on the window’s upper- right corner to start using your Peertube website.

Frequently Asked Questions

Image credit: Unsplash. All alterations and screenshots by Ramces Red.

Ramces Red - Staff Writer

Ramces is a technology writer that lived with computers all his life. A prolific reader and a student of Anthropology, he is an eccentric character that writes articles about Linux and anything *nix.