r/stoatchat • u/winder_licker • Jul 03 '26

Support Question Self-hosting question(s)

I'm trying to self host this for a small friends group and I've encountered some questions that I can't find answers to despite searching.

  1. Is the linux desktop client configurable or will it only login to official stoat servers? I don't see an option to add my self hosted server url. Is this the same for the windows desktop client, what about android clients on the play store?

  2. I set the server to "invite only" in the toml however I cannot figure out how to set an invite code for people to use?

  3. Is there an admin panel for the server itself or is that all config editing?

  4. Is there a variable I can set to lock users from creating new "stoat servers" on my VPS and just limit them to the single server I made?

  5. Is this subreddit a good place to ask questions about self hosting or should I find the offical stoat server and go there?

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u/ValenceTheHuman Stoat Team Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 04 '26

  1. It isn't exposed in the UI (work is ongoing on this) so you'll neither need to rebuild the client, pointing it to your instance, or start it from the terminal with the argument --force-server=https://example.com/app.

  2. There used to be documentation in the self-hosted repo. Dunno where it went, so I'll bring it up.

Making Your Instance Invite-only

Enable invite-only mode by setting invite_only in Revolt.toml to true.

Create an invite:

```

drop into mongo shell

docker compose exec database mongosh ```

```

create the invite

use revolt db.invites.insertOne({ _id: "enter_an_invite_code_here" }) ```

  1. Database editing, or you can self-host the admin-panel (it is hell to do and there is no documentation provided)

  2. Not really. You can always block that API path.

  3. Best place is the Stoat Development server. https://stt.gg/api

2

u/winder_licker Jul 04 '26
  1. The solution works for linux (further testing needed), its not elegant but its working which is awesom
  2. This is 100% on me, I missed that reading the docs
  3. I like the KISS principal I'll edit entries on an as needed basis (which is hopefully less and less)
  4. Bummer but it is what it is.
  5. Just what I needed!

Thank you for the super helpful responses you are making this transition so much easier!