To install the plugins, you need to run sbot server, but if the plugins not there yet, sbot server will crash.

@k4ml

From memory, I think you can work around the problem of the server crashing if plugins are not there yet by doing this.

First manually install the plugins with sbot stopped:

cd ~/.ssb      
npm i ssb-about 
npm i ssb-backlinks
npm i ssb-fulltext  

Then with sbot running, enable them instead of installing them:

sbot plugins.enable ssb-about
sbot plugins.enable ssb-backlinks
sbot plugins.enable ssb-fulltext

Then restart sbot.