I've written 'toot', a very simple command-line utility to allow Mastodon posts to be sent from the command-line: https://www.npmjs.com/package/toot

@glynn_bird OK, I've poked about randomly, but am way out of my depth. I can't make this work, and don't know what to tell you beyond what I've said already. So let me know what you need me to tell you to help diagnose this.

Cheers.

@ColinTheMathmo

First of all this is an 'npm' module. So it assumes you've got Node.js installed. https://nodejs.org/en/

If you get that far, you should be able to do

npm install -g toot

or

sudo npm install -g toot

After that just run 'toot' and follow the on-screen instructions. Feel free to DM me screenshots.

@glynn_bird I'm on Ubuntu - can I install node.js with an apt-get? (I'm about to Google for that as well)

@ColinTheMathmo instructions here: https://nodejs.org/en/download/package-manager/#debian-and-ubuntu-based-linux-distributions

@glynn_bird I've done a sudo apt-get install nodejs and it says:

nodejs is already the newest version.
nodejs set to manually installed.

@ColinTheMathmo so doing `npm -v` gives you?

@glynn_bird

1.3.10

@ColinTheMathmo let me try on my virtual ubuntu machine

@glynn_bird Thanks

@ColinTheMathmo I just did

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_6.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs
(from the instructions in the page I sent you)

and got

node -v
v6.10.2

npm -v
3.10.10

and then

sudo npm install -g toot

worked just fine

@glynn_bird Bingo! Thank you for your help! It looks like it was version skew, so you might want to put the version check somewhere.

But that's working - thank you.

@ColinTheMathmo great news! :smiley: I think Ubuntu ships with an ancient version of Node.

@glynn_bird That would explain it. I am, however, always worried about instructions that have one curl a file directly through bash.

But it's sorted.

@ColinTheMathmo I know. "pipe this unknown thing to sudo bash". Nightmare.