How to Install Firefox Account Server on Arch Linux

Firefox Account Server is a popular identity management tool developed by Mozilla. It provides a secure way to store user data and authenticate users across multiple online services. In this tutorial, we will guide how to install Firefox Account Server on Arch Linux.

To install Firefox Account Server, follow these steps:

Step 1: Install Required Packages

Before we begin, we'll need to ensure that our system is up-to-date and install several packages we'll need for the installation.

sudo pacman -Syu
sudo pacman -S python2 postgresql

Once you have installed these packages, start PostgreSQL and create a new database.

sudo systemctl start postgresql
sudo su postgres -c "createuser -P fxa"
sudo su postgres -c "createdb -O fxa fxa_db"

Step 2: Clone the Firefox Account Server Repository

Next, we'll download the source code for Firefox Account Server from GitHub.

git clone https://github.com/mozilla/fxa-auth-server.git ~/fxa-auth-server
cd ~/fxa-auth-server
git checkout v1.8.0

Step 3: Create a Python Virtual Environment

To keep the dependencies of Firefox Account Server separate from your system's Python packages, we'll create a virtual environment.

sudo pacman -S python2-virtualenv
virtualenv ~/fxa-env
source ~/fxa-env/bin/activate

Step 4: Install Dependencies

Next, we'll install Firefox Account Server's dependencies using pip.

pip install -r requirements/dev.txt
pip install -r requirements/prod.txt

Step 5: Create Configuration Files

Firefox Account Server relies on several configuration files to run. We'll create those now.

cp ./etc/dev.json-dist ./etc/dev.json
cp ./etc/default.json-dist ./etc/default.json

Step 6: Configure Database Settings

In the dev.json file, modify the database connection settings.

"db": {
    "user": "fxa",
    "password": "<db_password>",
    "name": "fxa_db",
    "host": "localhost",
    "port": 5432
}

Step 7: Start the Server

Finally, we'll start the server using the virtual environment we created earlier.

./run.sh

Congratulations! You now have Firefox Account Server installed and running on Arch Linux. You can now create user accounts and use them to authenticate users across your online services.