Mostro Setup on Digital Ocean

July 1, 2026 · View on GitHub

Note: This guide is based on the wonderful nostr relay guide

Intro

This is a step-by-step, complete guide on how to set up a Mostro server on Digital Ocean. The steps are based mostly on Digital Ocean droplet but it can be easily applied to any other VPS provider like AWS, OVH, Linode etc.

It will use the code on this repository and SQLite database.

Requirements

  • Digital Ocean account with some cash on it OR any other cloud/VPS provider will do, just change this steps accordingly
  • root privileges

Please note: All commands are executed as root.

droplet

  • Pick your droplet, for example:
    • Basic (shared CPU), Disk: SSD - 2vCPU - 2 GB Ram - 60 GB SSD disk - 3 TB transfer
    • x86
    • Linux Ubuntu

Create a SSH key and add it as a new key to your Digital Ocean account

ssh root@1.2.3.4
  • otherwise:
    • get means to access the VPS via ssh
    • check with your provider or manually setup the firewall (iptables, ufw)
    • connect to the instance with ssh

Installation Steps

Perform the updates

apt update
apt upgrade -y

Install rust tools (press 1 when asked)

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
source /root/.cargo/env

Check that rust is installed and in your path

rustc --version
cargo --version

Install dependencies

apt-get install cmake build-essential libsqlite3-dev libssl-dev pkg-config git sqlite3 -y

Compile Mostro

cd /opt
mkdir mostro
git clone https://github.com/MostroP2P/mostro.git
cd mostro
cargo build --release

Install Mostro

install target/release/mostrod /usr/local/bin

Mostro Configuration

Create a mostro user to run the service and turn into that user

adduser --disabled-login mostro  # keep pressing enter until it ends

Update the configuration file

cd /opt/mostro

Create a new settings file from /opt/mostro/mostro/settings.tpl.toml and save it to /opt/mostro:

cp /opt/mostro/mostro/settings.tpl.toml /opt/mostro/settings.toml

Update the file /opt/mostro/settings.toml with your favourite editor.

Here some parameters you might want to change:

  • lnd_cert_file: path to tls.cert file
  • lnd_macaroon_file: path to macaroon file
  • lnd_grpc_host: lnd gRPC host and port
  • nsec_privkey : Your mostro private key
  • relays : List of relays you want to connect to

Database

The data is saved in a sqlite db file named by default mostro.db, this file is saved on the root directory of the project and can be change just editing the url var on the [database] section in settings.toml file.

Before start building you can initialize the database manually with sqlx-cli (optional — mostrod creates the file and runs migrations on first connect):

cargo install sqlx-cli --version 0.9.0 --no-default-features --features sqlite
export DATABASE_URL=sqlite://mostro.db
sqlx database create
sqlx migrate run

Check the DB files are there

ls -al /opt/mostro
drwxrwxr-x root root 4.0 KB Fri Jun 14 15:52:07 2024 .
drwxr-x--- root root 4.0 KB Sat Jun 15 15:50:32 2024 ..
.rw-r--r-- root root  52 KB Fri May 31 16:35:34 2024 mostro.db
.rw-r--r-- root root  32 KB Sat Jun 15 15:28:23 2024 mostro.db-shm
.rw-r--r-- root root  16 KB Fri Jun 14 15:57:24 2024 mostro.db-wal

Clean compilation artifacts

Since the instance you are using has little disk space you don't want to waste valuable disk space. Once successfully compiled the compilation artifacts can use up to 2Gb of space.

In order to reclaim that space, once the compiled binaries are installed and moved under /usr/local/bin, you can clean them up with

cargo clean

First Test

Start mostrod as a stand alone foreground process and check the logs

/usr/local/bin/mostrod -d /opt/mostro

Stop it with CTRL+C

Give the permissions to the user mostro

chown -R mostro:mostro /opt/mostro

Service Setup

Systemd run script

Create a file /etc/systemd/system/mostro.service with the following content

[Unit]
Description=Mostro daemon
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=mostro
WorkingDirectory=/home/mostro
Environment=RUST_LOG=info
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/mostrod -d /opt/mostro
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then enable and start the mostro service

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable mostro.service
systemctl start mostro.service

Check that the service is running

systemctl status mostro.service

ps aux | grep mostrod
mostro    174139  0.0  2.0 925284 40824 ?        Sl   Jun14   0:58 /usr/local/bin/mostrod -d /opt/mostro

Run an external check

From another pc/server/vps (your laptop) check that mostro is sending and receiving events

First we need to install two tools, nostreq and nostcat:

cargo install nostreq
cargo install nostcat

Now we connect with one of the relays we added to the settings.toml file:

nostreq --kinds 38383 --limit 5 --authors your-mostro-pubkey | nostcat --stream wss://random.nostr.relay | jq

In few minutes you should see a nostr event with Mostro settings:

[
  "EVENT",
  "7005a443-d1ba-4f58-9046-70f9881c979d",
  {
    "tags": [
      ["d", "info-your-mostro-pubkey"],
      ["mostro_pubkey", "your-mostro-pubkey"],
      ["mostro_version", "0.12.1"],
      ["mostro_commit_id", "466ef06d2c113fb026e46491d7cb27955c41b531"],
      ["max_order_amount", "20000"],
      ["min_order_amount", "100"],
      ["expiration_hours", "24"],
      ["expiration_seconds", "900"],
      ["fee", "0.006"],
      ["hold_invoice_expiration_window", "900"],
      ["hold_invoice_cltv_delta", "298"],
      ["invoice_expiration_window", "900"],
      ["y", "mostrop2p"],
      ["z", "info"]
    ],
    "content": "",
    "sig": "7195fe1cdcd51e8947160d70b74a17f144924f5497aad4c5852e3f27177cc165360b04eb0243a4884772d3901e004f9213ca1d08c64f3284be9f1640aea1af5e",
    "id": "06df0bfbd4f30cfd8680f5ac6397f0b0bfdec38384f8c78f70a7fb70dcc53842",
    "pubkey": "your-mostro-pubkey",
    "created_at": 1718483696,
    "kind": 38383
  }
]

Logs

Mostro logs

To keep an eye on what's goin on simply ask the logs

journalctl -f | grep --line-buffered mostro | cut -d' ' -f 10,12-100

Press CTRL+C to stop it

Inspect Database

NOTE : ⚠️ carefull with this one as you might damage the db

Try some sqlite commands like:

    cd /opt/mostro
    sqlite3 mostro.db
    ...
    sqlite> .databases
    sqlite> .tables
    sqlite> select * from orders;
    sqlite> select count(*) from orders;
    ...

Connect your client

If you made it so far, congrats !!

Now is time to connect your client and see it at work !!

What about starting with mostro-cli

Pitfalls

  • Do not install rust and/or cargo using apt. Just use rustup.