So after we’ve extended the virtual cloud server twice, we’re at the max for the current configuration. And with this crazy growth (almost 12k users!!) even now the server is more and more reaching capacity.

Therefore I decided to order a dedicated server. Same one as used for mastodon.world.

So the bad news… we will need some downtime. Hopefully, not too much. I will prepare the new server, copy (rsync) stuff over, stop Lemmy, do last rsync and change the DNS. If all goes well it would take maybe 10 minutes downtime, 30 at most. (With mastodon.world it took 20 minutes, mainly because of a typo :-) )

For those who would like to donate, to cover server costs, you can do so at our OpenCollective or Patreon

Thanks!

Update The server was migrated. It took around 4 minutes downtime. For those who asked, it now uses a dedicated server with a AMD EPYC 7502P 32 Cores “Rome” CPU and 128GB RAM. Should be enough for now.

I will be tuning the database a bit, so that should give some extra seconds of downtime, but just refresh and it’s back. After that I’ll investigate further to the cause of the slow posting. Thanks @[email protected] for assisting with that.

  • Ataraxia
    link
    English
    1751 year ago

    Wow that was fast.

    • @Emerald_Earth
      link
      English
      671 year ago

      When a volunteer can run a server better then a big tech company

      unsurprising pikachu face

      • GaryPonderosa
        link
        English
        351 year ago

        To be fair the volunteer isn’t trying to squeeze value out of the users to inflate his IPO.

        • @Brickhead92
          link
          English
          81 year ago

          Won’t somebody think about the corporations!

  • @SkidFace
    link
    English
    1561 year ago

    Like many others, I came from Reddit and was initially hesitant to try it out, but I love this place so much! It really feels like the “worse” parts of Reddit have been skimmed off, and that definitely shows with how nice people seem here! Thank you so much!

    • I'm back on my BS 🤪
      link
      English
      271 year ago

      how nice people seem here

      yes! I love the culture of this place so far

    • @impulse
      link
      English
      231 year ago

      Truth is for me as someone who used Reddit for about the last 16 years, it very much feels like the early days of Reddit again.

      Which is a very good thing, because that’s what I originally signed up for compared to a metric fuckton of karma farming spam bots.

      I just hope it gains enough traction to be sustainable in the long run, especially considering that it’s relying on donations for funding, I believe?

      • @bandario
        link
        English
        91 year ago

        undefined> metric fuckton of karma farming spam bots.

        People are hard at work writing bots for lemmy so don’t worry, you’ll be able to enjoy your regular hogwash again really soon.

        Personally I think lemmy should go as far out of its way as possible to make bots in any and all forms just about impossible.

        • ChrisostomeStrip
          link
          English
          81 year ago

          Yeah, we can enjoy while it lasts, because with more users more questionable content will come

    • Maiznieks
      link
      English
      -6
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Found one russian troll already. Oh well…

      Edit: lol, was not referring to OP, it was some world news post comment with chiese username that spread misinformation about russian war in ukraine. I just added my thoughts on the community.

      • I'm back on my BS 🤪
        link
        English
        121 year ago

        you can easily block any user by click on the 🚫 sign under their comment, and never have to deal with their bs again

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          71 year ago

          wow, that’s actually a really nice feature. I wonder how it works though, i guess their text just will be blacked out for me, or will the post and all answers to it be completely vanish?

          • Drew Got No Clue
            link
            English
            51 year ago

            They’re only invisible to you, it’s kind of like muting on Twitter more than blocking, as far as I understood. (I haven’t felt the need to do it yet!)

      • @sensibilidades
        link
        English
        81 year ago

        what about that post made you think they were a russian troll?

        • @bobaduk
          link
          English
          191 year ago

          I think they meant they’ve seen one Russian troll on Lemmy already, not that skidface is a Russian troll.

          I … Have to assume so, anyway

          • @SkidFace
            link
            English
            11 year ago

            Can confirm I am not a russian troll ;)

        • @bobaduk
          link
          English
          161 year ago

          I think they meant they’ve seen one Russian troll on Lemmy already, not that skidface is a Russian troll.

          I … Have to assume so, anyway

          • @sensibilidades
            link
            English
            71 year ago

            that’s what I assumed, but was trying to understand all the downvotes

      • Drew Got No Clue
        link
        English
        81 year ago

        Lesson learned today: never take anything for granted—if there’s a chance to be massively misunderstood, it will eventually happen lol

  • delaghetto
    link
    English
    901 year ago

    So, I just want to make sure I understand this as I am a new user from reddit. Instances are server based and cost money. Instances are Lemmy.World, Beebaw, Lemmy.Film, etc etc. These are all seperate hosted instances. Correct?

    And donations would help pay for the server, ie lemmy.world?

    • @AcidOctopus
      link
      English
      321 year ago

      I’m a newbie from Reddit too, but your understanding matches mine.

    • @ComeHereOrIHookYou
      link
      English
      311 year ago

      Yes, lemmy.world, lemmy.film, beebaw and etc are other instances of Lemmy and users from other instances can interact with other instances.

      And yes donations help the server afloat.

      Pretty cool stuff.

      • delaghetto
        link
        English
        131 year ago

        Awesome, thank you for this information. I hope you have a great week!

    • @Crackhappy
      link
      English
      251 year ago

      That is correct. I’ve signed up for monthly donations to help cover costs (as well as added tip to help the admins themselves).

    • @fubo
      link
      English
      161 year ago

      “Lemmy instances” are analogous to “email servers”: your account is hosted on one of them, but you can communicate with people on other ones, because the servers know how to talk to each other.

      Expanding the capacity of the Lemmy service will involve both (1) more instances, and (2) more resources for existing instances.

    • @Hetoimos
      link
      English
      11
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      deleted by creator

  • Cool Beance
    link
    English
    83
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    For less tech-savvy newbies (like me), in case there is some confusion affecting your urge to engage/donate… My friend gave me a great explanation:

    • Lemmy the platform is planet Earth

    • “Instances” like lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, beehaw.org, etc. are like the different countries on Earth

    • When someone signs up, the user picks one instance to be a part of, like how an Earthling becomes a citizen of a country

    • If you register at lemmy.world, that means your home instance/ “home country” is lemmy.world, but you can “travel” to lemmy.ml, another instance / “country”, to check out and subscribe to their community

    • When you subscribe to a different instance that’s not your home instance, you can still participate in their content, and other people will be able to see which instance / “country” you’re from

    • Each instance can have its own version of the same “subreddit”, so you can have a c/Memes in your home instance that is different from a c/Memes in another instance. But you can subscribe to both separately

    • c/[community name] is the naming convention used here I think like r/[subreddit name] on Reddit. If talking about a community in a different instance, it’s c/[community name]@[instance name] so like c/[email protected]

    • Donations will help with the cost of running lemmy.world only and not lemmy.ml, beehaw.org, etc.

    Someone please correct any of this if any of it is wrong, I’ll happily edit

  • notsorryforpartying
    link
    English
    771 year ago

    I’m not sure how its being done as far as the technical aspects but Ruud has done a great job as admin upgrading the servers to keep up and anticipating the flow of new users.

    The same admin also has experience with a mastadon.world server that experienced lots of growth from Twitter users leaving over musk moves. So essentially we have a good admin as far as I can tell and it’s not his first rodeo. Part of the reason I chose this server

    • @prototypeByDesign
      link
      English
      241 year ago

      I’m less concerned with the technical aspects and more curious about the long term.

      Federated instances, such as lemmy.world, are operated by individuals; What happens if they decide to stop doing so without handing the server/data off to someone else? Do all of our accounts created here disappear? What do other users see if they click through my profile from a post on a different federated server? What happens to all of the content created on the server in question?

      • stankmut
        link
        English
        191 year ago

        It would be gone.

        The federated design has got people already thinking about it though. It’s inevitable that some instances will just close without notice. So people are trying to figure out the best way to handle it, from archiving/mirroring to creating an export account feature.

        • Sens
          link
          fedilink
          English
          221 year ago

          It’s very early days and the projects will be developed quite extensively I imagine, this is a chance for some people like myself to contribute to new features and make a real impact on its future.

  • Ulu-Mulu-no-die
    link
    English
    351 year ago

    12k ??? That’s crazy! It was only 500 when I joined 6 days ago, wow!

    No worries for the downtime, when it’s needed, it’s needed :)

  • @Saturn
    link
    English
    331 year ago

    I’m glad to hear about the new users (I myself am one.) and the server upgrades!

    I think lemmy.world suits me better than Beehaw. (great folks over there, no shade)

    I like that lemmy.world let’s communities be openly created by users, as well as the inclusion of downvoting which I personally prefer.

  • @naughty
    link
    English
    30
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    deleted by creator

    • @NevermindNoMind
      link
      English
      291 year ago

      The two day blackout was what finally got me to actually look into the fediverse, figure out servers and whatnot, and make an account to try it out. I’ve been meaning to look into it for a while, but the blackout was the push I needed. I’m sure I’m not alone. I’m far more interested in exploring this exciting new space then I am going back to the garbage filled Reddit, even if they miraculously back down on the API changes .

      My reddit account was over 10 years old. This is my first comment on Lemmy/Fediverse.

      • @Rockfury
        link
        English
        41 year ago

        Relate. 12 year account, would like to see this take off. They’re not changing.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      141 year ago

      I will stay here. Did not have this feeling of internet independence for a very long time. I’m done with Reddit.

    • @godofpainTR
      link
      English
      131 year ago

      I’m just gonna browse both for a while I guess. I know I’m not downloading the official app on my phone though

      • @sorenant
        link
        English
        61 year ago

        I’m gonna browse Reddit occasionally as well due to its large back content, albeit with adblocks and privacy extensions up and running, but I will only post here. Might be a good idea to mirror anything I end up referring to on Reddit.

        • LUHG
          link
          English
          31 year ago

          Iirc somebody is working on a mirror system. I’ll try find it but it’s on Reddit somewhere.

    • @RamesesKnibs
      link
      English
      111 year ago

      I don’t plan on it. RIF was my main way of browsing Reddit so once that goes, that’s pretty much me done. I’ll probably still peruse sysadmin for work purposes, but my Reddit time will become Lemmy time.

    • @kemo
      link
      English
      9
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I am in a transition period where I still keep Apollo installed, and trying to find enough communities here in order to be somewhat ready for the July 🙈

      I have deleted nearly 10 years worth of content and account already. Those leaving should do the same.

    • @realitista
      link
      English
      51 year ago

      I’m more or less getting what I wanted out of reddit out of lemmy already. There are a few teething pains, but overall it reminds me of the nice little community we had at reddit in 2007. It got better and better until about 2012 after the big digg migration where it started to peak and devolve. I would love to relive those first 5 years here again. I don’t miss reddit at all.

  • ZeeKay
    link
    fedilink
    English
    281 year ago

    Just curious, what sort of hardware is lemmy.world using/moving to? Wondering if there’s a good way to predict load based on number of users.

    • Slashzero
      link
      fedilink
      English
      11
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Yes. It’s called performance testing. Basically an engineer would need to setup test user transactions to simulate live traffic and load test the system to see how everything scales, where it breaks, etc. Then you can use the results of the tests to figure out how big of an instance you should use for your projected number of users.

      Jmeter, and locust.io are the two biggest open source performance test tools.

      The alternative is take a wild guess. See how the system behaves, and make adjustments in real time… like what @[email protected] is currently doing.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        81 year ago

        Worth noting that typical app scaling does not scale linearly, and hardware caps out at some point (with diminishing returns up to that point) - federation will help with that much cheaper where normally a company would just have to throw more money at more servers themselves :)

        • Slashzero
          link
          fedilink
          English
          2
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Yup. You don’t have to explain that to me. It’s funny when folks assume:

          if I double the servers, I’ll get twice the throughput!

      • ZeeKay
        link
        fedilink
        English
        11 year ago

        Yeah, I meant specific data using lemmy.world as a datum, not the theoretical “check and see if you guessed right” method.

  • @kadu
    link
    English
    25
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Lemmy.world is fantastic, thanks for your efforts. It fit perfectly with all the criteria I had when choosing where to host my account.

    That being said, I wish Lemmy.ml, the “main” Lemmy instance, more often registered communities created here. At the moment, most people just search for communities there and many of our own don’t show up because no user from that instance interacted with our new and growing communities just yet - not only does this create a fragmentation issue, but given the massive load spike, Lemmy.ml is actually running a bit slow whereas Lemmy.world is handling posts better, making interaction easier specially when migrating users from Reddit or other places. For instance, my GameBoy community is ready, with users, and I’m about to post some good content - but as far as someone from Lemmy.ml is concerned, no such community exists.

  • @amcjv12
    link
    English
    231 year ago

    Awesome to see so much growth. I just joined yesterday and I guess I’m not alone!

  • @ShadowCatEXE
    link
    English
    231 year ago

    What’s the operating cost? Thank you, for running this server! :)

      • @ShadowCatEXE
        link
        English
        101 year ago

        Honestly cheaper than I would have expected. However, still a nice chunk of money to shell out for a community, and for that, I commend.