ActivityPub Federation Test

This test verifies Owncast's ActivityPub federation by having snac2 users follow the Owncast instance and confirming message delivery.

All test infrastructure (snac2, Caddy, mkcert, Go) runs inside a Docker container so you don't need to install anything on the host besides Docker.

Prerequisites

Docker installed and running

Running the Tests

# Run the federation test with default 100 users
./run.sh

# Run with fewer users for quick testing
USER_COUNT=10 ./run.sh

# Run the follower validation test
./run.sh test-follower-validation.sh

# Keep servers running after test for debugging
KEEP_RUNNING=true ./run.sh

# Adjust follow request throttling (default 0.1s)
FOLLOW_DELAY=0.2 ./run.sh

Configuration Options

Variable	Default	Description
`USER_COUNT`	100	Number of test users to create
`FOLLOW_DELAY`	0.1	Delay in seconds between follow requests
`KEEP_RUNNING`	false	Keep servers running after test for debugging
`CI`	false	Always true inside the container
`PROXY_PORT`	8443	HTTPS proxy port
`SNAC_PORT`	9080	snac2 HTTP port
`OWNCAST_PORT`	8080	Owncast HTTP port

What the Test Does

Creates a temporary snac2 instance with test users
Starts an HTTPS reverse proxy for TLS termination
Starts Owncast configured for federation
Has all snac2 users follow Owncast
Sends a message from Owncast
Verifies all followers received the message

Test Results

The test reports:

Followers Registered: Number of successful follow requests
Messages Delivered: Number of users who received the message
Delivery Time: Time to deliver to all followers
Follow Success Rate: Percentage of follow requests that succeeded
Delivery Rate: Percentage of registered followers who received the message

Docker Image Details

The Docker image (owncast-ap-test) bundles all dependencies:

Go (for building Owncast)
snac2 (built from source)
Caddy (HTTPS reverse proxy)
mkcert (TLS certificates trusted by the container)
sqlite3, jq, curl

Go module and build caches are stored in named Docker volumes (owncast-ap-test-gomod, owncast-ap-test-gobuild) so repeated runs are faster.

Troubleshooting

Docker build fails

Make sure Docker is running. On macOS, Docker Desktop or a compatible runtime (colima, OrbStack, etc.) is required.

Port already in use

If a previous container didn't shut down cleanly:

docker ps -a | grep owncast-ap-test
docker rm -f <container_id>

Cleaning up Docker resources

# Remove the image
docker rmi owncast-ap-test

# Remove Go caches
docker volume rm owncast-ap-test-gomod owncast-ap-test-gobuild

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