I’m aware that some of you have been getting some errors loading this instance. This was a configuration that I needed to be adjusted which has since been.

Do be patient if we run into other issues, I’ll be continuously working in the back-end with others to better your overall experience.

Still a lot of capacity available!

edit: For those that are interested in the configuring changes. I was using the default lemmy configuration for the nginx worker_connections value. This value needed to be raised. Shout out to @[email protected] over at lemmy.world for helping me out.

  • Whooping_Seal@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    16·
    2 years ago

    Just out of curiosity, would it help if when posting images we use services such as imgur (or alternatives)? I’m assuming if there is storage issues those type of posts are the biggest culprit.

    Thank you for hosting this server @TheDude :)

    • TheDude@sh.itjust.worksOPMEnglish
      21·
      2 years ago

      Yes 100%. Using external image hosting service would reduce how much storage is being consumed

      • csm10495@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        6·
        2 years ago

        Would be cool if there was a plugin or something to link with imgur, etc.

        Have you considered disabling image upload?

        • TheDude@sh.itjust.worksOPMEnglish
          3·
          2 years ago

          yes this is an option however the lemmy-ui which is responsible for displaying this page would still show the option. It could be manually removed and might be something I look more into at a later time.

      • PCChipsM922U@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        2 years ago

        As someone who is still hosting a forum, I would not suggest this. I have also tried to reduce footprint of the forum using external image hodting services and this has always ended up badly (images get lost as one hosting service changes policy and maybe disables direct linking or just closes it’s doors, whatever).

        This is one of the reasons why I’m not tempted to open up a lemmy server, even though my hosting plan allows 3 subdomains. Used space will rise quickly, even if it’s just images… if videos are allowed as well, than all hell will break loose, even if they are processed and reduced in quality and resolution server side. I’ve seen it happen before, it’s a nightmare to revert things afterwards (users complain), not to mention you can’t revert the damage, that space is taken and that’s that.

        My estimate is that, if only images are allowed and images are processed in webp, it’ll take about a week for a quite busy instance to reach the 1GB mark… probably a lot faster if it’s an NSFW instance (a few days). Think about this from a migration perspective after 1 year - it will be a nightmare.

  • falkerie71@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    12·
    2 years ago

    Thanks for the update! Any plans for a separate channel outside of sh.itjust.works like Discord or Mastodon, just in case to give people a heads up if the server goes down or is in maintenance?

  • TheDude@sh.itjust.worksOPMEnglish
    12·
    2 years ago

    if anyone starts getting any weird errors please do let me know but everything still seems to be running smoothly from my side.

        • csm10495@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          2 years ago

          Yeah still hanging for me (even on a different computer) :/ In looking at the dev tools, it doesn’t seem to do a POST or anything. The only thing it does is load the svg for the ‘thinking’ icon on the button.

  • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    12·
    2 years ago

    Are things scaling well then? Is it still alright to recommend new people come here or would you rather hold off for a bit now?

    • TheDude@sh.itjust.worksOPMEnglish
      14·
      2 years ago

      I figured out the storage issue last night, the instance is only at about 20% utilization so we should be good to take on a good amount more. We probably will need to do some more tweaking as we grow but for now its looking pretty good!

        • TheDude@sh.itjust.worksOPMEnglish
          10·
          2 years ago

          its not so much about how many registered users as it is about how many online users. The online user count is what adds fuel to the fire!

      • PCChipsM922U@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        Think long term. Don’t take too many new users or you’ll end up with loads of new content (mainly images). Storage is not expensive nowadays, but you can’t load new disks to the arrays indefinitely.

          • PCChipsM922U@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            2·
            2 years ago

            We can, but then you might loose history. This is long known problem on forums. Trying to cut on disk space by linking to image hosts. Sometimes the images survive, most of the time they don’t. If that doesn’t bother most of the user base, fine, but certain communities would like to keep a history of the media, since sometimes they share valuabe information, like maybe schematics or art.

            • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              2·
              2 years ago

              I guess it’s a balance. I remember the imageshack purge but I also don’t want to overload the instance.

              • PCChipsM922U@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                2·
                2 years ago

                Photobucket was next after that, not to mention countless others. Imgur has been pretty consistent over the years, but after 2 purges and hundreds of lost images (schematics in most cases) on my forum, I’m scared to death of trusting another image hosting company.

                Basically, we still allow externally hosted images on the forum, but only for temp things, like buy/sell, stuff like that. Everything else is attached on the forum.

                • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                  2·
                  2 years ago

                  Imgur is deleting all images that were uploaded without being signed into an account.

  • starrox@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    9·
    2 years ago

    Thanks dude. The performance here is really excellent in my opinion. Had a couple of page errors but nothing that couldn’t be fixed by reloading.

      • taladar@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        8·
        2 years ago

        Not sure if you already did or the default config does it but if you only have one backend in an nginx reverse proxy it might also make sense to configure the max_fails and possibly the fail_timeout options so nginx won’t consider your backend down for a few seconds every time it receives a TCP error connecting to that (single) backend. max_fails=0 in the named upstream section (see http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_upstream_module.html#upstream ) is what you want here.

  • manifex@sh.itjust.worksMEnglish
    8·
    2 years ago

    Thanks @TheDude! Scaling systems like this is always a challenge and you really get to learn the performance quirks of the code. Thanks for all your work.

    • TheDude@sh.itjust.worksOPMEnglish
      13·
      2 years ago

      The official supported deployments are single instance based, that being said things are already broken up into separate docker containers so it should be pretty easy to do. Would need to do some testing before hand. If this instance continues growing this way I’ll need to look into scaling horizontally instead of vertically

      • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        4·
        2 years ago

        If this instance continues growing this way I’ll need to look into scaling horizontally instead of vertically

        Could you elaborate what this means?

        • isildun@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          6·
          2 years ago

          Better to have more servers as opposed to one ultra powerful server because the ultra powerful server tends to be more expensive than an equivalent strength collection of weaker servers. Also, you pay for all the power even during times you don’t need it whereas you can take down or add more weak servers as necessary.