atproto-pds-ansible

Ansible playbook for deploying a self-hosted Bluesky PDS with Caddy (TLS) and Watchtower (auto-updates).

What it deploys

• PDS — Bluesky Personal Data Server (ghcr.io/bluesky-social/pds:0.4)
• Caddy — Reverse proxy with automatic TLS via Let's Encrypt
• Watchtower — Pulls new PDS image versions hourly and recreates containers

Requirements

• A server running Ubuntu 20.04/22.04/24.04 or Debian 11/12/13
• SSH access as the sysadmin user (with sudo privileges)
• A domain pointed at the server (A record for the hostname + wildcard *. subdomain for handles)
• Ports 80 and 443 open to the internet
• Ansible installed locally

Setup

cp inventory.yml.example inventory.yml       # set your server IP
cp vars/main.yml.example vars/main.yml       # set your hostname and admin email

Edit inventory.yml:

all:
  hosts:
    pds:
      ansible_host: 203.0.113.10

Edit vars/main.yml:

pds_hostname: bsky.example.com
pds_admin_email: you@example.com

Deploy

ansible-playbook playbook.yml

What it does

First run: the official PDS installer bootstraps Docker, generates secrets, and creates the initial database. Ansible then reads the generated secrets from pds.env, templates pds.env, compose.yaml, and Caddyfile, and runs docker compose up -d.

Subsequent runs: the installer is skipped (guarded by account.sqlite). Ansible reads the existing secrets from pds.env and re-templates all config files. Changes only trigger a restart if content actually changed.

Variables

Variable	Required	Default	Description
pds_hostname	yes	—	Public DNS name for the PDS
pds_admin_email	yes	—	Admin contact email (used by Caddy for Let's Encrypt)
pds_data_dir	no	/pds	Data directory (must be /pds — the installer enforces this)
pds_image_tag	no	0.4	PDS Docker image tag
pds_blob_upload_limit	no	104857600	Max blob upload size in bytes
pds_rate_limits_enabled	no	true	Enable rate limiting
pds_invite_required	no	true	Require invite codes to create accounts
pds_blobstore_type	no	disk	Blob storage backend (disk or s3)
pds_email_smtp_url	no	—	SMTP URL for email verification
pds_email_from_address	no	—	From address for outgoing emails

Auto-updates

Watchtower checks every hour (WATCHTOWER_POLL_INTERVAL=3600) for new 0.4.x images on ghcr.io/bluesky-social/pds:0.4. When a new image is found, it pulls it and recreates the container. Old images are cleaned up automatically.

Post-deploy

Check that the PDS is healthy:

curl https://your-hostname/xrpc/_health

Create an account:

pdsadmin account create

Notes

• pds.env is Ansible-managed. Secrets (JWT, admin password, PLC rotation key) are generated by the installer on first run, then read and preserved by Ansible on subsequent runs. To change config like S3 or SMTP, update vars/main.yml and re-run the playbook.
• The installer creates a pds.service systemd unit. It's left in place — it just runs docker compose up -d on boot. Docker's restart: unless-stopped policy also handles this independently.