How to modify mastodon files

[aksaks]

Hello,
I need to modify files in the mastodon instance. Need to change mastodon logo, edit css etc. I read somewhere that cloudron doesn't allow any changes to these files? Is that true?

[jdaviescoates]

@aksaks said in How to modify mastodon files:

Is that true?

Yeah. App code is read-only which makes updates, backups, restores, migrations etc of apps Just Work, and prevents hackers (or just users) breaking things.

[james]

Hello @aksaks and welcome to the Cloudron Community

Yes Cloudron does limit what you can edit for every app.
We do this for security reasons => https://docs.cloudron.io/security/#app-isolation-and-sandboxing and to allow a smooth update experience.

Each app has its dedicated documentation for common tasks => https://docs.cloudron.io/packages/mastodon/

[aksaks]

@james said in How to modify mastodon files:

Yes Cloudron does limit what you can edit for every app.

Ok, I didn't know that. I do get security thingy etc but if we can't modify files then how else we are going to work with read only apps?

[james]

Hello @aksaks

From the documentation:

Apps are run with an AppArmor profile that disables many system calls and restricts access to proc and sys filesystems.

Apps run with a read-only rootfs preventing attacks where the application code can be tampered with.

@aksaks said in How to modify mastodon files:

if we can't modify files then how else we are going to work with read only apps?

The core application is read-only. Everything that is needed to be read-write e.g. files in Nextcloud, pictures in Mastodon, everything that is user-data is read-write.
This also greatly reduced the backup footprint, backup times and restore times.
Also, a tamper protection.
As an example, most WordPress instances get hijacked at some point and then the WordPress core PHP files are edited to insert malware or worse.
The application-core read-only approach protects from that.