Alt account of poVoq@slrpnk.net here.
Our instance is currently down and I can’t get remote access to the servers. It appears that there might have been a hardware failure of the main firewall, which is the one thing I can’t work around remotely.
I am still trying a few things, but I am not very optimistic that I can get access.
The really unfortunate part is that just now I am on one of my rare work deployments abroad, so I also can’t access it physically during the next few weeks and my usual back up that could restart it is not available either.
As something like that never happened in 3 years operating the servers, I thought I can risk it, but murphy’s law seems inescapable 😓
I will try to keep you posted here on any updates, but probably there will not be much I can do for a while. Really bad timing 😥
Good luck and all the best. Time to touch grass, everyone 😔
You mean create an alt, right?
Found this post after a couple of days of hopeful reloading of the page! Took another couple of days to log in an old alt just to say I’m glad you communicated this, and let us know how we can help to make it more resilient (if at all necessary).
To the kind soul that was helping me with my greenhouse infested ants (in the unlikely event they are reading here - but iirc they were not from slrpnk.net but just passing by) I’m glad we spoke, it seems like they are harmlessly using my panels for hatching, and then moving on! Related, who has a nice gardening/greenhouse community to suggest? :)
I this it’s a law that servers run 100% perfect until the literal day one leaves town with zero way to return home. One of the many reasons I got all my services off of unraid.
Very cool to learn you’re running your own machines. Do you go into detail about this anywhere?
We have a small write up about the hardware on our wiki, but it is also down right now.
I think we will share a post-mortem write up of the actual improvements we will do to avoid this in the future.
One thing I will definitly do is to add a KVM remote management console to one of our server boards and move the main firewall into a VM with hardware passthrough of the NICs (this was anyways planned for a 10gbit network upgrade for the second half of 2025). This way I should be able to reboot and even reinstall the main ingress point remotely, so that only the fiber gateway remains as a failure point that requires physical access.
I have heard of the migration to Piefed, but will it remove the (very cool) aesthetics of the lemmy ? I loved it :'(
I think we will try to come up with a theme for Piefed with similar colors.
I am a slrpnk user. Oh well, shit happens. What makes me a bit sad was that a few months (?) ago something similar happened. Slrpnk.net was down for aa day or two? Don’t remember the exact amount of time. What I do remember is asking if there was intention of adding a second admin and making the point that it would be good to create that sort of redundancy. I was ignored.
Mid of july is basically 1 and a half months from now. Hopefully a new solarpunk instance emerges, one that is safer from such scenarios.
Enjoy your vacation and don’t stress too much! Shit happens.
I am genuinely confused. What makes you think you were ignored? We do have additional admins, the problem is physical access to the servers to replace hardware that seems to have broken.
We plan to add additional safeguards to such scenarios, but in the end it is a trade-off between reliability and costs. Running a Lemmy instance of our size on a fully managed rented server would easily triple the monthly costs. This would be beyond what I am willing to cover out of my own private pocket, thus making the instance dependent on donations. And that IMHO makes it more likely to be shut down in the future as donations are very variable.
I am not on vacations, but on a work deployment abroad, which further limits the time I can spend on this. Not that it would have made much of a difference, but at least the domain redirection and placeholder text was only possible to do on the weekend.
Well, I got no reply and I didn’t see anyone else in the “mods:” bit in the bottom of the sidebar on slrpnk.net. I understand that having more admins wouldn’t help in this specific case, but it would help in others.
Regardless, having a public lemmy instance only ran by 1 person is, in my opinion, a bad practice. And please know that I am not personally attacking you. I am just stating my thoughts. This time you were out on a work deployment. Next time you could be sick. The next time maybe a family member had an emergency and you had to help. And the next time maybe your house caught fire or whatever.
Resilience and redundancy is extremely important in public lemmy instances. And SolarPunk is, in my opinion, all about community. There should be more (trustworthy) people with the same level of access as you do.
Regarding the price and all that, maybe that is an interesting discussion to have with the slrpnk.net community? And it would also be good to let slrpnk.net users know how the instance is being ran, what hardware, where, etc, so users can be an educated decision on whether they want to see an instance or not? Maybe providing that info on the sidebar would be nice?
But again, shit happens. Hopefully this serves as a learning event. If not, so much shit is going through the world, losing a lemmy instance is not something about which one should lose sleep.
EDIT: I may be missremembering about the whole “something similar happened a few months ago and my question about new admins was ignored”… I think that might have been on mander.xyz and not slrpnk.net. I really can’t fully remember, but I think it was mander.xyz after-all. Sorry! The rest of the post stands though!
Regarding the price and all that, maybe that is an interesting discussion to have with the slrpnk.net community? And it would also be good to let slrpnk.net users know how the instance is being ran, what hardware, where, etc, so users can be an educated decision on whether they want to see an instance or not? Maybe providing that info on the sidebar would be nice?
We have been very transparent about that and documented that in the wiki which is linked in the sidebar. But it seems few people ever read the Wiki and having it integrated like it is with Piefed would probably help.
I agree that more admins with remote access would be good to have, and we have been working towards adding more (there are already more than one, who are not directly involved with slrpnk, but rather the mother project f-hub.org), but physical access will always be limited by the location (Azores) unless we move to an entirely different data-center (which in turn would make it hard for me to access the physical servers).
We have been very transparent about that and documented that in the wiki which is linked in the sidebar. But it seems few people ever read the Wiki and having it integrated like it is with Piefed would probably help.
Oh ya. I knew about that, and I am fine with that. Though I think having it behind a link is bad UI. People will not read it haha… It should be presented on account creation, in my opinion. Just 1 sentence “This instance is ran on private hardware and may suffer some down time here and there” would suffice.
Sure, that seems reasonable. We will add that when the instance is back online.
If I forget, please remind me. For sure we will not just ignore you 😊
I see in your edit that you confused us for a different instance, but I want to mention regardless that Slrpnk.net has 3 active admins, it’s not just poVoq (Kris).
Thanks for the heads up! My Main account is in slrpnk, so I’ll set a reminder in an month to switch back. :)
Thanks for all that you do for us and this community! A little downtime won’t hurt anyone. I would also be in gavour of PieFed migration 💙
I’d probably make an account there if it moves to piefed.
I totally agree with everything you said :)
I just created an account in PieFed and it looks very interesting because there is the option to create your own feeds! I had the wrong impression that you can only choose from the existing ones. This is so exciting!!!
That sounds pretty cool. I don’t know much about Piefed — would we still be able to access posts from Lemmy instances?
Yes, they’re 100% cross compatible. As an example, you can access !piefed_meta@piefed.social from your Lemmy instance seamlessly.
Ty for the update! slrpnk is my favorite instance that isn’t my home instance
Thanks for the update, good luck with your trip.
Hey fellow slrpnk.net refugees… if you’re looking to recreate your list of subscribed communities, here’s a good place to start:
click here for a list of communities that are NOT politics, tech, or meme -related.
Most are currently active (except for the ones with a * which were less active last I checked) Sometimes politics, tech or memes sneak in but they’re not the focus.
GENERAL DISCUSSION / QUESTIONS
- !ask@lemm.ee
- !asklemmy@lemmy.world
- !askmeanything@lemmy.ca
- !casualconversation@lemm.ee
- !casualuk@feddit.uk
- !Dullsters@dullsters.net
- !dull_mens_club@lemmy.world
- !forumlibre@jlai.lu
- !general@lemmy.world
- !nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
- !goodoffmychest@lemmy.world
- !preguntalealemmy@feddit.cl
- !rant@lemmy.sdf.org
ART / PHOTOS
- !artporn@lemm.ee
- !astrophotography@lemmy.world
- !accidentalrenaissance@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- !badrealestate@feddit.uk *
- !collage@lemmy.ml *
- !desire_paths@sh.itjust.works
- !fakehistoryporn@lemmy.world *
- !fediclicks@viewfinder.pro *
- !filmsframes@lemmy.world
- !foodphotos@sh.itjust.works *
- !gameart@sopuli.xyz
- !grasweeti@slrpnk.net
- !hmmm@lemmy.world
- !imadethis@lemm.ee
- !imaginary@reddthat.com
- !inhabitedbeauty@lemmy.world
- !liminalspace@lemmy.world
- !mobile_wallpaper@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !nocontextpics@lemmy.world
- !pics@lemmy.world
- !pictures@lemm.ee
- !pixelart@retrolemmy.com
- !pixelart@lemmy.ml *
- !sillydrawingrequests@sopuli.xyz
- !traditional_art@lemmy.world
- !trams_trolleys_streetcars@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- !wallpapers@lemmy.ca
- !52weeksofart@lemmy.world
ANIMALS
- !bats@lemmy.world
- !catposting@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- !cat@lemmy.world
- !catsstandingup@lemmy.world *
- !opossums@lemmy.world
- !scrungycats@lemmy.world *
- !superbowl@lemmy.world
COMICS / GRAPHIC NOVELS
- !alanmoore@feddit.uk *
- !comics@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- !comicstrips@lemmy.world
- !eurographicnovels@lemm.ee
- !truecomics@midwest.social *
- !garfield@lemmy.world
- !outofcontextcomics@lemmy.world
- !unix_surrealism@lemmy.sdf.org
ENTERTAINMENT
- !80smusic@lemmy.world
- !90smusic@lemmy.world
- !90s_tv@lemmy.sdf.org
- !badmovies@lemmy.world
- !bmoviebonanza@lemmy.world
- !Bside@fedia.io
- !boardgames@sopuli.xyz
- !cultfilms@lemux.minnix.dev *
- !dwarffortress@lemmy.ml
- !edm@reddthat.com
- !fullmoviesonyoutube@lemm.ee
- !iasip@sh.itjust.works
- !martialartsmovies@lemm.ee *
- !metal@lemmy.world
- !movies@lemm.ee
- !music@lemmy.world
- !pokemon@lemm.ee
- !pokemon@lemmy.world
- !pokemongo@lemmy.world *
- !ska@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- !thrashmetal@lemmy.world
- !trailers@lemmy.blahaj.zone
GENRES / STYLES
- !cassettefuturism@lemm.ee
- !cosmichorror@lemm.ee
- !cyberpunk@lemmy.zip
- !fuckyournelsonlamp@lemmy.world *
- !goblincore@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- !gothindustrial@lemmy.world
- !lovecraft_mythos@lemmy.world
- !mullets@lemmy.ca *
- !punk@lemmy.world
- !punk_rock@lemmy.ca
- !raygungothic@lemm.ee
- !streetwear@lemmy.world *
- !vampires@lemmy.zip
- !weirdcore@sopuli.xyz
- !witchcraft@lemmy.ml *
- !witchesvspatriarchy@lemmy.ca
HISTORY
- !ancientcoins@lemmy.world
- !ancienthistory@slrpnk.net
- !artp@sh.itjust.works *
- !askhistorians@lemmy.world *
- !historyartifacts@lemmy.world
- !historicalpropaganda@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- !history@lemmy.world
- !historyporn@lemmy.world
- !historyruins@lemmy.world
- !historyillustrations@lemmy.world
- !vintageads@sh.itjust.works *
INFORMATION / KNOWLEDGE
- !buyitforlife@slrpnk.net
- !catastrophicfailure@lemmy.world *
- !creepywikipedia@lemmy.world
- !dataisbeautiful@lemmy.ml
- !documentaries@lemmy.cafe
- !esa@feddit.nl
- !explainlikeimfive@lemmy.world
- !goodnewseveryone@sh.itjust.works
- !humanities@beehaw.org
- !interestingasfuck@lemmy.world
- !math@lemmy.world
- !mealtimevideos@lemmy.cafe
- !recommendations@lemmy.world
- !solarpunk@slrpnk.net
- !thingscutinhalf@lemmy.world
- !til@lemmy.world
- !vexillology@lemmy.world
- !whatisthisthing@lemmy.world
- !wikipedia@lemmy.world
- !youshouldknow@lemmy.world
OTHER
- !andfinally@feddit.uk
- !academiagonewild@lemmy.world *
- !internetisbeautiful@lemm.ee
- !mildlyinteresting@lemmy.world
- !nowhereelsetoshare@sh.itjust.works
- !pbsod@lemmy.ohaa.xyz
- !publictransport@slrpnk.net
- !stick@sh.itjust.works *
- !sumo@lemmy.world *
- !shortstories@literature.cafe
- !treehuggers@slrpnk.net
- !the_heinlein_society@lemmy.world
- !woahdude@lemmy.world *
- !youcantparktheremate@feddit.uk *
FEDIVERSE
- !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !fedigrow@lemm.ee
- !fediverse@lemmy.world
- !fediverse@piefed.social
- !fediverselore@lemmy.ca
- !lemmyapps@lemmy.world
- !comm_revival@lemmy.dbzer0.com *
- !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com
FINDING NEW/GOOD COMMUNITIES ON LEMMY
click here for a list of (mostly non-political) meme communities
MEMES, SOCIAL MEDIA REPOSTS, AND HUMOR
Most of these are currently active. (except for the ones with a * which were less active last I checked). Sometimes these include politics but that’s not the sole focus.
- !onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- !196@pawb.social
- !19684@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- !2meirl4meirl@lemmy.world
- !4chan@lemmy.world
- !4chanFails@feddit.nl
- !absoluteunit@sh.itjust.works
- !ancientinternet@lemmy.world
- !animemes@ani.social
- !antimeme@lemmy.world *
- !atbge@lemmy.world
- !antiquememesroadshow@lemmy.world
- !are_the_straights_ok@lemmy.blahaj.zone *
- !atheistmemes@lemmy.world
- !badrealestate@feddit.uk *
- !bonehurtingjuice@lemmy.ca
- !coaxedintoasnafu@lemmy.dbzer0.com *
- !comedyheaven@lemmy.world
- !Couplememes@sh.itjust.works
- !crumbgrabber@lemm.ee *
- !curatedtumblr@sh.itjust.works
- !dankchristianmemes@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- !dankmemes@lemmy.world
- !ehbuddyhoser@sh.itjust.works
- !ExplainTheJoke@spaffel.social
- !fbstolencontent@lemmy.ca *
- !fediashitpost@fedia.io
- !fedimemes@feddit.uk
- !femcelmemes@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- !funny@sh.itjust.works
- !funny@lemmy.world
- !furry_irl@pawb.social
- !garfieldism@lemmy.blahaj.zone *
- !gifconversation@lemm.ee
- !greentext@sh.itjust.works
- !gunmemes@lemmy.world *
- !high_quality_gifs@lemmy.sdf.org
- !hq_memes@lemmy.world
- !imgoingtohellforthis@lemm.ee
- !internetfuneral@lemmy.world
- !humor@beehaw.org *
- !iamverybadass@lemmy.ca *
- !justpost@lemmy.world
- !kemper_loves_you@lemmy.dbzer0.com *
- !lemmybewholesome@lemmy.world
- !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world
- !linkedinlunatics@sh.itjust.works *
- !lotrmemes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !loweffortmemes@crazypeople.online
- !mathmemes@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- !me_irl@lemmy.world
- !memes@jlai.lu
- !memes@lemmy.world
- !memes@slrpnk.net
- !memes@sopuli.xyz
- !memes@lemmy.ml
- !metalmemes@lemmy.world
- !microblogmemes@lemmy.world
- !MoldyMemes@spaffel.social
- !NiceMemes@sopuli.xyz *
- !nocontextpics@lemmy.world
- !nominativedeterminism@feddit.uk *
- !nonsense@moist.catsweat.com *
- !okmatewanker@feddit.uk
- !potatoism@lemmy.world *
- !pokemonmemes@lemmy.world *
- !programmer_humor@programming.dev
- !reactionmemes@lemmy.dbzer0.com *
- !reallyshittycopper@lemmy.world *
- !relationshipmemes@lemmyis.fun
- !roughromanmemes@lemmy.world
- !rpgmemes@ttrpg.network
- !RichardScarryPosting@sh.itjust.works
- !shitty_million_dollar_ideas@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !SighFi@quokk.au
- !science_memes@mander.xyz
- !shera@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- !shirtsthatgohard@lemmy.world
- !shitposting@lemmy.ml
- !shittylifeprotips@lemmy.world
- !shittytattoos@lemmy.ca
- !spaceflightmemes@sh.itjust.works
- !surrealmemes@sh.itjust.works *
- !tech_memes@lemmy.world *
- !tantes_linksqueer@feddit.org
- !the_pack@lemmy.world
- !TwoGoobers@lemm.ee
- !wholesomegreentext@sh.itjust.works *
- !wholesomememes@lemmy.world *
- !wizards@lemmy.world
- !witchymemes@lemmy.world
- !wlw_memes@lemmy.world
- !yurimemes@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- !youtubeclassics@sh.itjust.works
(luckily I was posting this to newcomers whenever I had the chance…)
Good stuff, Segio! :D
Great list, as usual!
You will unfortunately have to get rid of the lemmy.ee links since they are closing down very soon.
Many of the .ee communities are in the process of migrating, so hopefully the list can be updated with their new homes.
Thanks for letting us know! Try not to worry about it too much, it’s all good
Sorry to hear that! My main account is on slrpnk.net. But don’t let it stress you out, “solarpunk” says “punk” which implies “DIY” which means this sort of thing happens. Much better to have an instance run by an admin who truly cares, rather than some soulless corporation.
This is making me want to create an alt on slrpnk.net , since you’re so chill and communicative about issues.
You’re very welcome! Kris@feddit.org / @poVoq@slrpnk.net is an incredible admin, and up until now has declined donations, funding the entire instance several years now from his own pocket.
This current downtime is the exception that proves the rule. I hope he’s not stressing out too much. We’ll all be ready to jump right back into it when he gets back.
Already thinking about how to make the best of it 🤷 Maybe we can use this opportunity to try and migrate to Piefed? I had this in the back of my mind for some time already and Rimu seems optimistic that it is possible.
What do you like more about Piefed compared to Lemmy?
Lemmy has a lot of individual parts that don’t interact very well with each other, especially the image host part. Futhermore the main UI is quite a mess and we were thinking of switching to an alternative already, but this would further increase the “too many moving parts” issue. Piefed on the otherhand has an integrated and very lightweight UI, which also has some nice additional filtering and moderation features Lemmy currently lacks.
And I personally feel more at home with the Python codebase, as it allows better troubleshooting and more standartized (Flask) tooling. The Rust codebase of Lemmy has a lot of obscure custom stuff and the error messages are extremely obstruse from a sysadmin perspective.
And looking at the performance metrics of Lemmy, the main limiting factor seems to be the Postgres database anyways, so the theoretically slower Python codebase of Piefed should not have much impact.
That’d actually be pretty rad if it’s doable, especially now that the API for piefed was released and mobile apps are already beginning to support it.
Wouldn’t that mean the instance would completely restart? I mean I don’t know much about piefed but logically it seems like the DB structure would be incompatible. Thus “Migrating” to piefed means a complete reboot, all posts, all users, all content just bye bye.
Not necessarily, no. We aim to preserve users, communities and posts/comments. Image uploads might get lost though.
Such an in-place migration will need extensive database operations and likely some support by the Piefed developer (to add support for bcrypt hashed passwords), but we are hopeful to make it happen and maybe this will result in a database migration script other Lemmy instances could also use.
If this turns out to be infeasible, we will stay with Lemmy rather than reset everything.
Oh awesome, I mean I’ve heard of other platforms like sublinks offering database migration but I didn’t think it would be feasible with piefed since unlike sublinks it’s very different than lemmy.
That would be so nice if we could move to Piefed.
He’s pretty awesome. He has a monthly thread with updates and actually responds to you too.
communicative about issues
Aren’t most admins this way?
*glances at your instance name*
Ah…
pretty hands-off
Given that the single admin @SDF@lemmy.sdf.org hasn’t been active in two years, yeah, I’d say that counts as “pretty hands-off”. The SDF organization as a whole will probably be around for decades to come, but they don’t seem to care that much about their Lemmy instance.
They have stepped in when a lot of people complained, it took their whole instance complaining to do so while a Nazi troll spammed hate across the local feed.
I miss BBS.
you can still have it with NodeBB!
Are there modem sounds to play air guitar to?
beep beep boop boop boop boop beep… EEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeee awwwwwww ka-dong ka-dong da kshhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
eerie silence
Yeah! It’s definitely worth adding to my list of migration contenders now that lemm.ee is closing and I have to jump ship
Yeah me too, I’d wanted to for a while but never got around to it. Now I probably never will (unless they get the servers back up at some point in the future).
it seems they will, just not too soon
You guys have always been excellent. As others have stated, no need to worry.
I’ll be giving piefed some love in the meantime 👍
Try not to stress too much about it while you’re away! If nothing can be done, nothing can be done. Solarpunks need to be resilient to things like this anyway. Community over convenience.
Thanks, I am trying, but it really is quite annoying to lose access like that.
