Does anyone run their own Lemmy instance on a pi? How was the process of setting it up? Were there any pitfalls? How is performance?

[Edit] So a lot of testing around. Compiling from scratch, etc, etc…

So far i have tried

  • installing lemmy using rootless docker (on 0.17.3)
  • compiling the image 0.18 docker image as arm

rootless docker did not work well for me. lots of systemd issues and i gave up after running into a lot of issues. I tried rootless docker for security reasons. minimal permissions, etc.

When trying to compile the latest lemmy image in arm, i ran into issues with muslrust not having an arm version. It might be worth investigating rewriting the docker file from 0.17.3 to work with 0.18.0 but i haven’t investigated that fully yet! I tried compiling the latest image because i wanted to be able to use the latest features

At the moment, I’m trying to set lemmy to run under bare metal. Im currently attempting to compile lemmy under arm. If that works, i’ll start setting up .service files to start up lemmy and pictrs.

  • @Path23English
    4•1 year ago

    I’m a newbie here but what would be the benefit of running an instance just for yourself?

    • HunterHogEnglish
      5•1 year ago

      The ability to host your own data - both for privacy, and insurance that the instance you host your account in won’t suddenly disappear.

      • thegreenguy
        3•1 year ago

        I would also add that Lemmy is part of the fediverse, meaning it is federated. Federation means all instances “talk” to all instances (unless they defederate), so you aren’t limited only to the content on one instance (or in some cases not even Lemmy, case in point: I’m posting this from my kbin.social account).

        • Adama
          4•1 year ago

          What happens to posts/comments and any media/content that is hosted on a server that just goes away (for example if I created one virtually and then deleted it or if a sdcard on a pi is corrupted)

          • @marsara9
            5•1 year ago

            If you upload an image to that server, the image will be gone. Your comments will still exist on other federated instances, assuming that instance was federated in the first place. But any replies to those communities will not propagate once the hosting instance is offline.

            For example assume you have 3 instances, A, B, and C. You have an account on A and create a post to a community on A. At some point A goes away, but those posts and that community will still exist on B and C. So you create a new account on B, and reply to one of those posts… users on C won’t be able to see those replies as A isn’t there to broadcast those replies out. And if someone on C creates a new post on that community from A, you wouldn’t be able to see it on B either.

            P.S. The same is true if A just decides to defederate instead of shutting down. (other than the images and accounts would still exist obviously).

      • @TheInsane42English
        1•1 year ago

        That, and somehow I think it’s nice to be able to federate with a username within your own domain when you have one. (or multiple, decisions, decisions, which one to pick ;) )