Well, I have an instance running. At startup it outputs federation enabled, host is redacted, but I don’t see anything when looking at all. I can’t search for other instance communities. I thought I would be able to use my local instance to browse other instance/communities and post there from my instance. Is that not how this works? Did I miss a step setting it up?

Some more details: Any search I do results in a timeout error. This is from the lemmy logs.

In all my years of software development and testing, I’ve never seen an HTTP status code 101… 101: switching protocols

UPDATE: it’s fixed!

Thanks to @[email protected] who pointed me in the right direction, and thank you everyone who contributed to this post in the comments with suggestions and support!

Here are the steps:

add a new network interface

docker network create lemmyexternal

connect the lemmy container (lemmy_lemmy_1, unless you renamed it)

docker network connect NETWORK_ID CONTAINER_ID

(you can get the network and container IDs with docker network ls and docker container ls)

modify the docker-compose.yml to add the new network, and link it to the lemmy service

networks:
  # communication to web and clients
  lemmyexternalproxy:
  lemmyexternal:
  # communication between lemmy services
  lemmyinternal:
    driver: bridge
    internal: true

services:
  lemmy:
    image: dessalines/lemmy:0.17.4-rc.1
    hostname: lemmy
    networks:
      - lemmyinternal
      - lemmyexternal

save, and restart

docker-compose restart

  • tezoatlipocaEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    I think mebbe that’s what OP is missing. A new (empty) instance doesn’t know anything about what other communities exist. @[email protected] you gotta search for the communities before your instance will start snarfing posts.

    • KNovaEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      yeah, once I added about ~5 popular communities discovery became easier. People were suggesting other communities etc. so it helps your instance know whats out there.

      • tezoatlipocaEnglish
        1•1 year ago

        Well that begs the question then - if communities are “homed” on instances (although the same community can exist on two different homes as completely separate communities) and then get “subscribed” or federated to other instances through searching, how does one know what all communities exist? Short of going to, or scraping the /Communities page of each Lemmy or Kbin instance, how does one know whats available?

        Clearly we need a Lemmy411 Community. :)

        Be the change you want to see in the world: https://lemmy.ca/c/lemmy411 TADA!

        • KNovaEnglish
          4•1 year ago

          Discovery is still a challenge, but if instance admins subscribed to that it would make it easier on users.

          What I think would be better would be to automatically send some kind of community digest out to other known instances once a week or something. That way if a user searches for a “music” community, they will get results from instances they may not personally know about.

    • SlashzeroOPEnglish
      1•1 year ago

      Thanks! I’ve been searching for known communities I have posts in, but not getting any hits. Using the full shorthand, like: !wow@lemmy.ml there are no results.

      • tezoatlipocaEnglish
        2•1 year ago

        Its federating to lemmy.ca now. : https://lemmy.ca/c/[email protected]

        I just had to bash the search form a few times. Intra-instance community discovery/seraching seems to be a bit “sticky” for lack of a better way to describe.

        Also, as the “prime” instance lemmy.ml is getting hammered with new Reddit exodus users at the moment, so I suspect lemmy.ml may not be the most responsive atm.

      • tezoatlipocaEnglish
        2•1 year ago

        I also find that sometimes the search takes… a while?

        So by wow you’re talking about the world of warcraft community @ lemmy.ml?

        Took a bit of futzing in the search screen but I see it:

        • SlashzeroOPEnglish
          1•1 year ago

          Yes, I have a few comments in the world of warcraft community on lemmy.ml. When I search for that using the shortcode: [email protected] , I get an immediate response with no results.

          Server side, there is a timeout error in the log, but that is timing out in less than a second.

          I wonder if instances need to be allowed to interact with lemmy.ml?

          • tezoatlipocaEnglish
            2•1 year ago

            Naw, because sometimes it works and sometimes it don’t. I think lemmy.ml is just getting slammed right now.

            Try it with a community from a different instance.

            • SlashzeroOPEnglish
              1•1 year ago

              That’s a great idea. I will try some other communities.