A reminder to move to smaller instances for a better experience
A reminder that this constant advice people blindly parrot to install and flock to smaller instance has now created something like 1000 new servers in 50 days that are poorly run and already going offline as quickly as they went online.
Github Issue 2910 is the kind of PostgreSQL problems that the developers ignored for months and people still defend the developer choices to have the code doing real-time counting of every single comment and post for numbers nobody needs to needs done in real-time.
PostgreSQL is voodoo to this project, they do everything they can to avoid going to !postgresql@lemmy.ml community and asking for help, learning 101 about how to fix their SQL TRIGGER logic like Github Issue 2910 spelled out June 4.
A reminder that this constant advice people blindly parrot to install and flock to smaller instance has now created something like 1000 new servers in 50 days that are poorly run and already going offline as quickly as they went online.
I am always advocating for any of the top 25 instances that are not Lemmy.world or Lemmy.ml
For the rest of your post, I don’t know what that has to do with people aggreating on LW.
For the rest of your post, I don’t know what that has to do with people aggreating on LW.
aggregation refers to the lemmy database tables, site_ aggregates, community, person. The SQL TRIGGER logic lemmy_server uses that has been the source of so many crashes the past 60+ days.
Even if the SQL was top notch, it would not be a good thing for 50% of the active users to be on a simple instance. Just makes it easier to take down by any potential attacker.
A reminder that this constant advice people blindly parrot to install and flock to smaller instance has now created something like 1000 new servers in 50 days that are poorly run and already going offline as quickly as they went online.
And this will always… always be the biggest problem in the FOSS community.
“I dont like X, so I’m going to leave and make my own version of X”
So userbases get spread thin, manpower gets spread thin, developers get spread thin, and the user experiences degrades for everyone until it pushes them back to the bullshit websites and products.
For the rest of your post, I don’t know what that has to do with people aggreating on LW.
And, factually, the project leaders telling everyone to create 1000 new instances and shutting down sign-up on Lemmy.ml caused more performance problems.
They had a bug in their PostgreSQL TRIGGER logic where 1500 instances were updating + 1 comment and +1 post counting instead of WHERE site_id = 1, a single database row. So each new Lemmy server that went online made the table larger and crashes more frequent on lemmy.ml
The amount of disk writing by lemmy was ignored
The developers of Lemmy seem to make every effort they can to avoid using Lemmy itself to discuss their !postgresql@lemmy.ml learning 101. They have made massive mistakes in SQL TRIGGER logic that they avoided to such a degree that their social motives are in question now. Github Issue 2910 was opened June 4, almost a month before the Reddit API deadline, and they ignored it. Just like they hang out on Matrix Chat and don’t use Lemmy their own self to discuss code.
They have cultivated a kind of voodoo attitude towards PostgreSQL where people using Lemmy won’t actually scrutinize the Rust code or PostgreSQL tuning parameters.
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I mean having a bunch of new servers is not a problem. Just choose one that’s been up for a while and more stable.
But each additional row in site_aggregates table was causing the instability itself. The SQL code had major flaws. Adding more servers actually made Lemmy crash more.
Lemmy.one, my instance of choice, has been down since Thursday - just a reminder that smaller instance isn’t always the solution. Having a few solid account choices on multiple instances is the way to go.
It’s a bit frustrating though. If I didn’t know better about the fediverse, I would’ve thought Lemmy in general was down, with no heads up or somewhere to see what’s going on.
Lemmy One still down by the way
Lemmy.dbzer0.com is pretty stable, both in terms of release timing/server uptime, and also in terms of not flooding your feed with “politically instable” instances on both sides. Avoid the echo chambers.
That’s my favorite instance as well but I’m not sure what you mean by politically instable on both sides
Quoting myself from a previous post:
First of all, it’s really fine to stay on LW for now, no need to rush anything. But if at some point you have some time for this, then read the following.
So, to pick your instance, you can have a look at https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list, filter by “1m” to see what are the most popular ones. As you can see, with a 27433 monthly users, Lemmy.world is by far the most popular, which is why you might experience some issues from time to time.
You should have a look at the next instances on the list. Short story: lemm.ee, sh.itjust.works, lemmy.one, sopuli.xyz and reddthat.com are solid choices.
You are looking at instances with quite a lot of people (the more people help with filling your “All” feed), just not the most populous one (lemmy.world), the original one (lemmy.ml), and instances that are too specific, either due to country or specific focus.
Long story:
spoiler
- lemmy.ml is the original insance, also quite crowded, not really the best choice
- lemm.ee can be nice, you can have a look at it and see how fast it is for you. The admin communicates a lot and is very helpful.
- sh.itjust.works had some rough time in the last few days. You might also not like the name, that’s okay.
- beehaw.org does not federate with the big instances, so if you go there, you will be in their own space. It can a valid choice, but please have a look at their guidelines first, they tend to moderate a lot. Can work for you, or not.
- feddit.de, lemmy.ca, discuss.tchncs.de, feddit.uk, aussie.zone are country specific instances, so probably not interesting to you if you are not from there
- lemmynsfw is a NSFW instance, probably not the one you want to move to
- programming.dev is an instance focused on programming
- lemmy.blahaj.zone is a pro queer instance
.
To migrate your settings (including subscriptions and blocked instances), you can use that script: https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim
LASIM author here, ironically on my own alt: Just an FYI that support for Lemmy 0.18.3 is not yet out, but keep an eye out for it soon (I have it working on a branch but I need to test it more before release).
This is the first breaking API change since it’s creation, so here are the limitations:
- Old version (0.1.2) will only support API 0.18.1 and 0.18.2
- New version (0.2.0) will only support 0.18.3 (and above until there are more breaking API changes)
- Profiles downloaded with 0.1.2 (and below) will automatically be converted to work with 0.2.0.
So that all means:
- You can use the old LASIM to migrate between 0.18.2 Lemmy instances
- You can use the new LASIM to migrate between 0.18.3 Lemmy instances
- You can use the old LASIM to download from an 0.18.2 instance then use the new LASIM to upload to a 0.18.3 instance
- You cannot use the new LASIN to download from a 0.18.3 instance and then the old LASIM to upload to a 0.18.2 instance (unless you are comfortable doing some manual work editing the JSON file so “old LASIM” understands it).
This will be true of every release with breaking API changes.
EDIT: PR is out. Once it builds, I’ll publish a new release! https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim/pull/21
EDIT 2: Release is published! https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim/releases/tag/v0.2.0
Thanks for all your hard work on this. I’ve used lasim to transfer my subscriptions to my other accounts on other instances when the lemmy.world downtimes happened last week. I love the portability of the tool.
Thanks for your kind words, I’m glad it has helped you!
Thank you for the heads up! You might want to add that to the ReadMe on your Github
Removed “and above” from page and instead added a note to always get the latest version if your version isn’t listed as supported explicitly.
Great, thank you!
Fwiw, sh.itjust.works is a horrible name, but a great instance lol.
What’s funny though, I’m getting beehaw posts in my all feed since yesterday. No idea if they’ve refederated with us, or if it’s an artifact of connect (my app of choice), or what,
Interesting. You are still on the list of their blocked instances, so I’m not sure: https://beehaw.org/instances
Must be some kind of weirdness with the app then. Thanks for looking at that!
You’re welcome, have a good one!
geddit.social is a another good server, I have alt there. It’s run by @stux@geddit.social who has his own hosting company and also hosts mstdn.social.
Smaller instances are usually worse, in my experience
working fine for me , actually I have to say lemmy.world has been very stable
Perhaps I open Jerboa too often but in the last week lemmy.world has been down around 4 times for me, sometimes for a short time sometimes for much longer. When I was on lemmy.fmhy.ml it was only down once for me until their domain was seized and that was for the server upgrade.
You are not the only one, the last few weeks have been rough for LW. That’s why I suggest people to moving to other instances, I detailed the process in another comment in this thead (can’t get the comment link to work for some reason)
I’ve found it, thanks 👍
There are 63 instances according to Jerboa.
Or just have 10 accounts so you only have downtime when your own internet is down.
And run 2 or 3 uplinks to different ISPs so that you’re never offline.
Just waiting patiently to get approved on midwest.social
Hopefully they’ll get back to you soon!
Where is this screenshot from? Link me plz :)
Danke!
I said that in a support post on lemmy.world, and got accused of pushing an agenda 🙃
Sorry to hear that. Based on this thread, it seems to become more and more of a general agreement
While this thread has some interesting points in it, the majority of it is chaotic and confrontational. I’m closing this, as I believe we need to have a bit of a cooldown.
We’re back!
This is the problem with Lemmy. It’s hard for it to go mainstream. :(
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Lemmy’s machine-generated ORM SQL and hand-made flawed PostgreSQL TRIGGER logic is so bad, bloated. The developers on GitHub brag about “high performance”. It’s unbeliable.
In reality, small instances work because it has so many SQL performance problems that it mostly only is stable with little posts and comments in the database. They dd everything they could to avoid using Lemmy itself to discuss !lemmyperformance@lemmy.ml topics and hang out on Matrix Chat to avoid using the constantly-crashing servers they created.
If you go to a server with no users creating comments and posts and only has a tiny amount of data, it does crash a lot less.
That’s an interesting community.
