I run my own instance, the benefit is privacy and reliability. Everything is controlled on your own server. You also aren’t reliant on someone else running an instance that could go down at any time, either permanently or an outage. Been a problem with Lemmy.ml recently.
A balancing act for sure. I’m torn on the topic. With some much excitement right now but so little history there’s a lot of uncertainty where to “plant your flag”. Part of me wants to setup my own instance simply so I maintain control of my identity should .world suddenly disappear. On the other hand now I have the responsibility of making sure I don’t make myself disappear. The mental debate will continue.
I was asking myself a question, if you comment like you did here
Is it saved in the server on which the original post is, or is it saved on your server?
Kind of both. His server has a mirror of the community. When he comments it gets saved on his server and the his server communicates with the original server. In turn the original server also communicates his comment with other federated servers.
If data is migrated from server to server, as the community grows in size, the data to be maintained on each server also grows in size? Also i’ve seen some servers allow the creation of new users/communities, but some don’t… whats the point of that if the data is just replicated anyway?
Yes that’s right, an instance is constantly accumulating data over time, however instances that aren’t the origin instance have the option of going back and deleting old posts (manually in the DB) but then their users wouldn’t be able to see them anymore. I do get the concern though, if things really start to pickup and we get insane volume, I’m afraid even my instance wouldn’t be able to pick up. I’d have to unsubscribe from everything. On the other hand, I think people will come up with solutions as things scale. There’s a lot of unknowns right now, too many to build a solution. Just take a look at mastodon and how its model has changed over time.
If data is migrated from server to server, as the community grows in size, the data to be maintained on each server also grows in size? Also i’ve seen some servers allow the creation of new users/communities, but some don’t… whats the point of that if the data is just replicated anyway?
I believe it is saved first on the instance you’re signed up for, then gets pushed around the network using the Activity pub protocol. So it eventually ends up being stored across many instances of it has far enough reach.
How is your RAM/storage usage? I’m interested in setting up my own instance (no communities, just a username that will always be here) but don’t want to upgrade my VPS again. I already had to do that spinning up a Mastodon server.
Up to 400MB after two days here. I took a look at the code and it looks like Lemmy keeps all ActivityPub JSON for 6 months. It would be nice if it was possible to shorten that.
I’m still happy that I’m hosting my own instance, but I hope this thing doesn’t get too big!
So long as you can run Docker, I would think that you could setup an instance. You just need to make sure that the image you use for lemmy and lemmy-ui are compatible with your platform. I had to alter the provided docker-compose.yml file to use arm64 versions for my RaspberryPi.
I mentioned the total disk usage for the sake of setting up a pi. I don’t know what the space requirements are for lemmy separate from the bulkiness of an Ubuntu 22.04 install.
I run my own instance, the benefit is privacy and reliability. Everything is controlled on your own server. You also aren’t reliant on someone else running an instance that could go down at any time, either permanently or an outage. Been a problem with Lemmy.ml recently.
You have to worry about it yourself though.
A balancing act for sure. I’m torn on the topic. With some much excitement right now but so little history there’s a lot of uncertainty where to “plant your flag”. Part of me wants to setup my own instance simply so I maintain control of my identity should .world suddenly disappear. On the other hand now I have the responsibility of making sure I don’t make myself disappear. The mental debate will continue.
I think for now it’s so early it doesn’t matter all that much. Just have fun! You can make multiple accounts so why not
I was asking myself a question, if you comment like you did here Is it saved in the server on which the original post is, or is it saved on your server?
Kind of both. His server has a mirror of the community. When he comments it gets saved on his server and the his server communicates with the original server. In turn the original server also communicates his comment with other federated servers.
If data is migrated from server to server, as the community grows in size, the data to be maintained on each server also grows in size? Also i’ve seen some servers allow the creation of new users/communities, but some don’t… whats the point of that if the data is just replicated anyway?
Yes that’s right, an instance is constantly accumulating data over time, however instances that aren’t the origin instance have the option of going back and deleting old posts (manually in the DB) but then their users wouldn’t be able to see them anymore. I do get the concern though, if things really start to pickup and we get insane volume, I’m afraid even my instance wouldn’t be able to pick up. I’d have to unsubscribe from everything. On the other hand, I think people will come up with solutions as things scale. There’s a lot of unknowns right now, too many to build a solution. Just take a look at mastodon and how its model has changed over time.
If data is migrated from server to server, as the community grows in size, the data to be maintained on each server also grows in size? Also i’ve seen some servers allow the creation of new users/communities, but some don’t… whats the point of that if the data is just replicated anyway?
I believe it is saved first on the instance you’re signed up for, then gets pushed around the network using the Activity pub protocol. So it eventually ends up being stored across many instances of it has far enough reach.
How is your RAM/storage usage? I’m interested in setting up my own instance (no communities, just a username that will always be here) but don’t want to upgrade my VPS again. I already had to do that spinning up a Mastodon server.
I’m up to about 300MB of disk usage after a day of hosting my own. Curious to see how it grows.
haha better than the 12GB and rising of my single-user Mastodon instance. And this is with deleting my media cache every night.
Mastodon is aggressive with caching media. Akkoma is more lightweight
The pictures folder on my instance is at 1.3GB after two days. It’s just me and my friend. About how many communities are you subscribed to?
Gotcha, thanks. I’m at about 70 so that makes sense then.
Up to 400MB after two days here. I took a look at the code and it looks like Lemmy keeps all ActivityPub JSON for 6 months. It would be nice if it was possible to shorten that.
I’m still happy that I’m hosting my own instance, but I hope this thing doesn’t get too big!
For personal use, even a Raspberry Pi is sufficient.
My raspberry pi 4 is using 810mb of RAM and 11gb of file system space.
That’s interesting to read. Could an instance be added to an existing setup? (Debian OS)
So long as you can run Docker, I would think that you could setup an instance. You just need to make sure that the image you use for lemmy and lemmy-ui are compatible with your platform. I had to alter the provided docker-compose.yml file to use arm64 versions for my RaspberryPi.
I mentioned the total disk usage for the sake of setting up a pi. I don’t know what the space requirements are for lemmy separate from the bulkiness of an Ubuntu 22.04 install.