Its pretty simple to get and RSS feed of an account, just add .rss to the end of the URL.

An example of embedding Mastodon feeds on your site you can use emfed.

• Most accounts are accessible via RSS with .rss at the end of the URL
• Add .rss to the end of most pages you see on a Mastodon server to get an RSS feed for your RSS reader.

I have a VPS (I use OVH) and figured I could just host my own. My VPS runs Arch Linux and there is a package for Mastodon on AURappear

snippet.bash

$ cd ~
$ git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/mastodon.git
$ cd mastodon
$ makepkg -sri
<<< enter password >>>

Ok installed but unfortunately the promised post-install message didn't appear. So lets read the official documentation which recommends three things…

1. Only allowing SSH key-based login (I already have this configured).
2. Installing fail2ban to block repeated logins.
3. Install a firewall and only allow SSH, HTTP and HTTPS ports

I took some steps to harden my SSH login some time ago. They are minor but make a small difference. In /etc/ssh/sshd.config change the following…

snippet.bash

PermitRootLogin no
Port <insert-port-number>
PasswordAuthentication no

Note however that before changing PasswordAuthentication to no you MUST upload your public SSH key to your account on your VPS otherwise you will lock yourself out.

snippet.bash

rsync -av ~/.ssh/<keyname>.pub <username>@<vps-server-name|ip-address>:~/.ssh/.

You should now be able to login using your SSH key and its even easier if you use keychain.

Under Arch Linux install with the following (as root)…

snippet.bash

# pacman -Syu fail2ban

As per instructions you could add the following to /etc/fail2ban/jail.local.

snippet.bash

[DEFAULT]
destemail = your@email.here
sendername = Fail2Ban
 
[sshd]
enabled = true
port = 22
 
[sshd-ddos]
enabled = true
port = 22

However, I don't…

1. Want lots of emails telling me about failed login attempts (like anyone is ever going to read what I write here!).
2. Don't run sshd on port 22 and instead use some other random port to reduce exposure to attacks (not perfect but its one simple step to take).

For obvious reasons I'm not posting what I have entered here and you should interpolate your own values for the relevant fields. Once you have configured fail2ban appropriately you can enable/restart the service.

snippet.bash

systemctl enable --now fail2ban.service

I've already configured nginx which I use for serving the sites I host on my VPS to redirect http requests on port 80 to https on port 443 and use certbot to provide valid certificates. I'm not going to allow any firewall to allow http connections then. As mentioned above I configure sshd to run on a port other than 22. To which end my installation of iptables is somewhat different from the recommended.

TODO Finish off.

• Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse
• It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon
• Notes from a data witch - Everything I know about Mastodon

• Fedifinder Find Fediverse accounts of your Twitter followings
• Twitodon - Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon
• movetodon.org
• Debirdify
• 10 quick Mastodon tips

• emacs.ch
• martianh/mastodon.el: Emacs client for Mastodon
• Sacha Chua - Mastodon Config
• A different timeline layout for the Emacs mastond client

• KeyOxide ## Servers
• Servers - Mastodon
• mastodon.social
• fosstodon.org
• pixelfed.social

• masto.host
• mastodon
• Ross A. Baker: WebFinger ## Technical
• Mastodon User Timelines are RSS Feeds | Real-world Machine Learning
• Writing A Simple RSS To Mastodon Bot | www.bentasker.co.uk
• Create a bot with RSS and webhooks for Mastodon, a Twitter alternative - DEV Community
• Automatically post your Flickr photos to your Mastodon account – Steven Can Plan (find your RSS feed for Flickr with this).
• How to create a RSS feed bot for Mastodon – Thibault Milan THIS WORKS!

• TrueSciPhi
• Academics on Mastodon
• Mastodon Media List

• A guide to potential liability pitfalls for people running a Mastodon instance