Self-hosting

The instructions here are written for the Debian operating system. If you are using a different operating system, you may need to adjust the commands accordingly. Please contribute back to the community by providing instructions for other operating systems https://github.com/2anki/docs.2anki.net

Note that commands might require root access, so you may need to prepend them with sudo but it is not recommended to run the application as root. Lines starting # are example output and can be omitted.

Prerequisites

Assuming you have your system up and running we will start by installing all the development requirements.

First we will install git get the Node Version Manager.

apt-get install -y git
curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.7/install.sh | bash

Now close that terminal and open up a new one to confirm that nvm is installed.

nvm --version
# 0.39.7

Getting the source code

Clone the repository and navigate to the directory.

mkdir -pv ~/src/github.com/2anki
cd ~/src/github.com/2anki
git clone https://github.com/2anki/server
git clone https://github.com/2anki/web server/web
git clone https://github.com/2anki/create_deck

Building the frontend

Navigate to the web directory and install the dependencies.

cd web
nvm install
npm install
npm run build

Setup card creation service

Navigate to the create_deck directory and install the dependencies.

cd ../create_deck
apt-get install -y python3-pip
pip install --break-system-packages -r requirements.txt

Running the server

Navigate to the server directory and install the dependencies.

Make sure your to add your ip address in the whitelist src/lib/constants.ts file.

Also setup a environment file in the server directory:

cat >> ~/src/github.com/2anki/server/.env <<EOF
WORKSPACE_BASE=/tmp/genanki
EOF
mkdir -pv /tmp/genanki

cd ../server
npm install
npm run build
node src/server.js

The server should now be running on port 2020. You can access it by visiting http://<server-ip-address>:2020 in your browser.