# Jimmy B. - Hosting Your Own Ghostbin (Spectre) in 2020

**URL:** <https://discourse.jimmyb.ninja/t/jimmy-b-hosting-your-own-ghostbin-spectre-in-2020/984>\
**Category:** jimmyb.ninja Posts\
**Created:** [March 22, 2022, 3:27pm UTC](https://discourse.jimmyb.ninja/t/jimmy-b-hosting-your-own-ghostbin-spectre-in-2020/984 "2022-03-22T15:27:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jimmy](https://discourse.jimmyb.ninja/user_avatar/discourse.jimmyb.ninja/jimmy/32/20_2.png) [@jimmy](https://discourse.jimmyb.ninja/u/jimmy)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2022, 3:27pm UTC](https://discourse.jimmyb.ninja/t/jimmy-b-hosting-your-own-ghostbin-spectre-in-2020/984/1 "2022-03-22T15:27:21Z")

</div>

A Ghostbin (Spectre) installation doesn't really require a lot of resources. I am currently running it on a system with 4x 2.26GHz CPUs, 8GBs of RAM and a 120GB disk. I've done it on much less though.

## Installing Ghostbin (Spectre)

1. Install your operating system. I used Ubuntu 20.04 Server.
2. Install Go:

```
cd /usr/local
wget https://dl.google.com/go/go1.14.linux-amd64.tar.gz
tar -C /usr/local -xzf go1.14.linux-amd64.tar.gz
```

Add to the bottom of your `/etc/profile` file with:

```
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin
```

You can either also run that at your command prompt or logout and log back in.

3. Install Mercurial and Python Pygments:

```
apt install mercurial python3-pygments
```

4. Install ansi2html:

```
apt install python-pip
pip install ansi2html
```

5. Install Git, I like to compile it myself so I get the latest version:

```
cd /usr/local/src
apt install autoconf libssl-dev zlib1g-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev tcl-dev gettext
wget https://github.com/git/git/archive/v2.22.1.tar.gz
tar zxvf v2.22.1.tar.gz
cd git-2.22.1/
make configure
./configure --prefix=/usr
make -j2
make install
```

6. I recommend creating a new user to run your GhostBin code under:

```
adduser ghostbin
```

7. You should also set a password on the new user account using `passwd ghostbin`.
8. Login as your new user account and add the following to your `~/.bashrc` file:

```
export GOPATH=$HOME/go
```

9. Save and exit the file and run `source ~/.bashrc`.
10. Next obtain the source code for GhostBin (login as your new user first):

```
mkdir -p ~/go/src
cd $HOME/go/src
mkdir github.com
cd github.com
git clone https://github.com/DHowett/spectre.git
cd spectre/
```

11. At this point your full path should be something like - `/home/ghostbin/go/src/github.com/spectre`.
12. Run `go get`.
13. Run `go build`.
14. Run `which pygmentize`. It should return `/usr/bin/pygmentize`. If not, no problem, just copy the path.
15. You'll also want to run `which ansi2html` which should return `/usr/local/bin/ansi2html`. Again, if it doesn't no big deal, just copy the path.
16. Update the `languages.yml` file with the paths for `pygmentize` which should be on line 6. Also update the path for `ansi2html` which should be on line 23. Save and exit. Here's my `languages.yml` up to line 25 to give you an example:

```
formatters:
  default:
    name: default
    func: commandFormatter
    args:
    - /usr/bin/pygmentize
    - "-f"
    - html
    - "-l"
    - "%LANG%"
    - "-O"
    - "nowrap=True,encoding=utf-8"
  text:
    name: text
    func: plainText
  markdown:
    name: markdown
    func: markdown
  ansi:
    name: ansi
    func: commandFormatter
    args:
    - /usr/local/bin/ansi2html
    - "--naked"
  iphonesyslog:
```

17. Next we'll need to build a CSS file which will give color to the pastes:

```
pygmentize -f html -S $STYLE > public/css/theme-pygments.css
```

You can choose from several styles/color themes:

```
- monokai
- manni
- rrt
- perldoc
- borland
- colorful
- default
- murphy
- vs
- trac
- tango
- fruity
- autumn
- bw
- emacs
- vim
- pastie
- friendly
- native
```

I used monokai:

```
pygmentize -f html -S monokai > public/css/theme-pygments.css
```

18. If all went well all that is left to do is to start the service:

```
./ghostbin
```

19. Here's an screenshot of my install: ![](upload://uTMH22oj1r78Hay69KVCwWJt8Cf.jpeg)
20. I would also recommend running the binary with the `--help` flag:

```
$ ./ghostbin --help
Usage of ./ghostbin:
-addr string
    bind address and port (default "0.0.0.0:8080")
-alsologtostderr
    log to standard error as well as files
-log_backtrace_at value
    when logging hits line file:N, emit a stack trace
-log_dir string
    If non-empty, write log files in this directory
-logtostderr
    log to standard error instead of files
-rebuild
    rebuild all templates for each request
-root string
    path to generated file storage (default "./")
-stderrthreshold value
    logs at or above this threshold go to stderr
-v value
    log level for V logs
-vmodule value
    comma-separated list of pattern=N settings for file-filtered logging
```

This allows you to see flags you can run with the binary. I run mine as such:

```
./ghostbin -logtostderr
```

This will just log the errors to the screen.

## Setting Up GhostBin w/ Nginx

1. Install Nginx:

```
apt install nginx
```

2. Create a Nginx configuration file for GhostBin:

3. Next we need to make a symlink so Nginx knows to load the configuration:

```
cd ../site-enabled
ln -s ../sites-available/ghostbin.conf .
```

4. Restart the Nginx service:

```
systemctl restart nginx
```

Your GhostBin site should now be available at [http://ghostbin.YOURDOMAIN.com](http://ghostbin.YOURDOMAIN.com)!

## Notes

- Whenever I start up the binary I see:

- It looks like the GhostBin repository has been renamed to 'spectre'. It looks like this was done to "de-brand" it for people who want to run it themselves and separate it from [GhostBin.com](http://ghostbin.com/) where I believe the developer run their own copy. See [this commit](https://jimmyb.ninja/post/%5Bhttps://github.com/DHowett/spectre/commit/7c12db4bb766e26c6dcef80d95e7e113ede7a4f2%5D(https://github.com/DHowett/spectre/commit/7c12db4bb766e26c6dcef80d95e7e113ede7a4f2)).
- You should definitely set up your install with Let's Encrypt for SSL.
- It seems like the binary was renamed back to `ghostbin` from `spectre`. Why? I don't know. I also noticed there is a binary in `/home/ghostbin/go/bin/` but it doesn't seem to work? 🤷🏼‍♂️

* * *
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at [https://jimmyb.ninja/post/1591729781](https://jimmyb.ninja/post/1591729781)