diff --git a/.travis.yml b/.travis.yml
index a329920..dad235b 100644
--- a/.travis.yml
+++ b/.travis.yml
@@ -10,6 +10,34 @@ addons:
     packages:
     - postgresql-10
     - postgresql-client-10
+    - postgresql-contrib-10
+    # the following are mastodon dependencies
+    - imagemagick
+    - ffmpeg
+    - libpq-dev
+    - libxml2-dev
+    - libxslt1-dev
+    - file
+    - git-core
+    - g++
+    - libprotobuf-dev
+    - protobuf-compiler
+    - pkg-config nodejs
+    - gcc
+    - autoconf
+    - bison
+    - build-essential
+    - libssl-dev
+    - libyaml-dev
+    - libreadline6-dev
+    - zlib1g-dev
+    - libncurses5-dev
+    - libffi-dev
+    - libgdbm3
+    - libgdbm-dev
+    - redis-tools
+    - libidn11-dev
+    - libicu-dev
 services:
   - redis-server
 before_install:
diff --git a/bin/run-mastodon.js b/bin/run-mastodon.js
index ed104ff..314466a 100644
--- a/bin/run-mastodon.js
+++ b/bin/run-mastodon.js
@@ -15,13 +15,14 @@ const dir = __dirname
 
 const GIT_URL = 'https://github.com/nolanlawson/mastodon'
 const GIT_BRANCH = 'for-pinafore'
+const DB_USER = 'nolan'
 
 const envFile = `
 PAPERCLIP_SECRET=foo
 SECRET_KEY_BASE=bar
 OTP_SECRET=foobarfoobarfoobarfoobarfoobarfoobarfoobarfoobarfoobarfoobarfoobarfoobarfoobar
 DB_PORT=${process.env.PGPORT || 5432}
-DB_USER=nolan
+DB_USER=${DB_USER}
 `
 
 const mastodonDir = path.join(dir, '../mastodon')
@@ -42,12 +43,12 @@ async function cloneMastodon () {
 async function setupMastodonDatabase () {
   console.log('Setting up mastodon database...')
   try {
-    await exec('dropdb mastodon_development', {cwd: mastodonDir})
+    await exec(`dropdb -U ${DB_USER} mastodon_development`, {cwd: mastodonDir})
   } catch (e) { /* ignore */ }
-  await exec('createdb mastodon_development', {cwd: mastodonDir})
+  await exec(`createdb -U ${DB_USER} mastodon_development`, {cwd: mastodonDir})
 
   let dumpFile = path.join(dir, '../fixtures/dump.sql')
-  await exec(`pg_restore -Fc -d mastodon_development "${dumpFile}"`, {cwd: mastodonDir})
+  await exec(`pg_restore -U ${DB_USER} -Fc -d mastodon_development "${dumpFile}"`, {cwd: mastodonDir})
 
   let tgzFile = path.join(dir, '../fixtures/system.tgz')
   let systemDir = path.join(mastodonDir, 'public/system')