1 yr. ago • 100%

lemmy.ml is overloaded, use other instances instead

This site is currently struggling to handle the amount of new users. I have already upgraded the server, but it will go down regardless if half of Reddit tries to join.

However Lemmy is federated software, meaning you can interact seamlessly with communities on other instances like beehaw.org or lemmy.one. The documentation explains in more detail how this works. Use the instance list to find one where you can register. Then use the Community Browser to find interesting communities. Paste the community url into the search field to follow it.

You can help other Reddit refugees by inviting them to the same Lemmy instance where you joined. This way we can spread the load across many different servers. And users with similar interests will end up together on the same instances. Others on the same instance can also automatically see posts from all the communities that you follow.

Edit: If you moderate a large subreddit, do not link your users directly to lemmy.ml in your announcements. That way the server will only go down sooner.

57 comments

I'm going to set up a general purpose instance tomorrow with the intention of handling a relatively large number of users. The main problem is choosing a domain!

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- I was also contemplating setting up a new instance for this. I have 100s of gigs of unused ram, CPUs on idle and a 10gbit connection looking for something to do. The only issue I couldn't figure out was the name. I own itjust.works was thinking of something clever subdomain to use with it. I'm glad I'm not the only one with this issue
  
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  sh.itjust.works
  
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  Keep it simple with lemmy.itjust.works.
  
  If you get this going or need a hand then let me know.
  
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  can't wait for fedd.itjust.works to go online!
  
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  Do you also have a few million dollars under your mattress? 😁
  
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- It's a week later, but I did get this done finally. I've set up https://lem.monster/ . Still doing some tweaking, but it's open.
  
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- Naming things is one of the two most difficult issues in IT, alongside cache validation and off-by-one errors.
  
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  choosing the name for my instance was easy. programming related? programming.dev it is!
  
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  I'm getting the following error reading this post: "item at index 2 does not exist"
  
  Should I post this on stack overflow or some other Lemmy help community?
  
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  There are only two hard things in CS: naming things, caching, and off-by-one errors.
  
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  I name everything as var1 var2 etc.
  
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is it possible to move an existing profile to a new server, like on Mastodon? or I need to create a new one and "start over"?

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- Right now, there is no import/export. It's a known useful feature, but the devs have no time to work on it (I've been following all the optimization work they've been doing on github, I don't know if they sleep). You'll have to start over atm, sorry.
  
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Hi, as one of the new people, is there a way to transfer to another instance or would I have to create a new account there?

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- You have to create a new account. But that's easy ;)
  
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  That's kind of wrong though, isn't it? What about stuff like GDPR data exports? Users should be able to export their data, then import it into another instance, effectively migrating instances.
  
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I think lemmy will be bitten in the ass by not having considered clustering/horizontal scaling from the start. Federation alone as a scaling mechanism is only feasible for "nerds". But if the network wants to grow, we will need a few scale-able large hosted instances. And if their only choice is to scale vertically, there will be a hard limit (unless we put a good old Mainframe somewhere ^^).

Another downside of this design is: you can't run it with high availability. If there's only one process per instance, updating it will mean the whole instance is down. Sure, if all goes well this downtime is under a second. But if it doesn't go well or if a migration is needed, this might quickly become hours.

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- Indeed. If a big instance like lemmy.ml was to be shut down all the communities would be lost. This is simply not sustainable. Why would users put effort building a community if it could be gone at any time?
  
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  That however would be a different problem. A horizontally scaled instance would be able to cope with more users, but if it shuts down for monetary, personal, or whatever reason, it's still down.
  
  Protecting a community from this is what the decentralized part is for. That is already in place.
  
  (Although there is a middle ground where you could design the system in a way that one instance is mirrored and load-balanced across different hosters. That would actually also be quite interesting to have. But that's another layer of complexity on top.)
  
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I use kbin too.

New to this feedverse or how you call it.

Why isn't there one login that can post on all platforms and I have to signup on each separately?

If there is, you're not making it obvious I guess.

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- @nutomic @ionhowto you dont have to sign up on multiple instances. if you want to comment a post on another instance, copy the url and paste in into the search field and then your current instance will fetch the post so you can comment on it.
  
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@nutomic lemmy.world is a new instance which can also be used.

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Point us to where the coin slot is. E.g. Patreon. We insert coin 🪙, you upgrade.

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- Here they list them:
  
  https://join-lemmy.org/donate
  
  EDIT: shoutout to the madlad who donated $1,000!
  
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Is scaling the server a largely financial issue, or not? @nutomic@lemmy.ml

could you reasonably confidently say that you could 10x the amount of users for something like 1000$/mo on liberapay?
If so, would you mind setting a "goalpost" for the community to help lift the financial burden?

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I've made https://lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz/ to help take off some of that load. New registrations are welcomed and it should be maintained for a very very long time 🎂

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lemmy.ml should be a roundrobin dns that sends you to a random instance in the pool. Or else you will re-centralize lemmy and curmble under the IT bill.

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- Except (as far as I'm aware) your account only exists on one instance. So, if I end up on beehaw.org due to the round-robin, my account on lemmy.ml will not authenticate to that instance. I would have to have a separate account per instance which is hundreds of accounts.
  
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I don't know what happened but in the last half hour the website has become highly responsive again. Thank you admins for your hard work.

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You might wanna consider temporarily closing sign-up requests on lemmy.ml similarly to how mastodon.social did it during its large influx. Making a sign-up request and just receiving an infinite loading icon is a very frustrating experience.

Similarly, you want to make it as easy as possible to financially contribute to lemmy, even if it means using proprietary platforms like Patreon.

Overall, the current Reddit API change is probably one of the largest opportunities for lemmy right now, so smoothing over the user experience as fast as possible in the coming days will be of atmost importance if we want lemmy to become a viable Reddit alternative...

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- Nope. You can subscribe/post/comment on any community on any instance. There is one small seam though: if you're the first person to subscribe from your instance, you need to put in the full URL of the community (https://lemmy.ml/c/gaming, for example) to pull it into your instance.
  
  After that, everybody on the same instance as you will see it when searching for communities just like it was local.
  
  EDIT: Oh, forgot to mention: make sure the search is set to "All", not "Communities" when you do this.
  
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Can I login to another instance with my lemmy.ml account? Or do I need multiple accounts?

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- An account on a given instance only lets you log on to that instance. You can use that account to interact with people from other instances, however.
  
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Hi,

I setup my account on lemmy.ca. But it seems I cannot sign into lemmy.ml with this account (just getting busy spinning circle. On a high level I want to subscribe to some of the communities on lemmy.ml.

Thanks

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- After watching a video and looking around it looks like I was in error. Pretty much I can be signed into lemmy.ca ... then change he view filter to show all communities and subscribe to technology community on ML. The subscribe button does not always update right away. But in my listing of lemmy.ca I see I am subscribed. Hope this helps someone else.
  
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I'm a noob. I created an account on beehaw and on lemmy.ml. That's because I see communities on one instance that I'm interested in and a different community on another instance. So if there's a technology community on both, how do I get to see all the technology posts without having to have two accounts?

This is really confusing for noobs like me. I'd just like to see one community to technology, one for Science, one for nintendo etc. I don't care it it's spread out amongst different servers to divvy up the load, but from the user side, it needs to be seamlessly integrated.

I'm still learning how all this works though. But I don't know how many folks that are more casual than me will be willing to figure it out. I hope they do though! It'll be worth it to leave reddit in the rearview mirror!

Edit: lawdy, I just figured it out. Local vs all on the communities list. It was right in front of my face. good grief!

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- there should also be a “subscribed” option that’ll show you posts from only the communities that you’ve subscribed to across all instances
  
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Edit: If you moderate a large subreddit, do not link your users directly to lemmy.ml in your announcements

How/which URL should we link to then? Now is the best time to get users to switch to Lemmy so we need to make it as newbie friendly as possible. Already the application process has put off some people (I do like that bit though, keeps away the low effort folks). Thanks.

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- How/which URL should we link to then?
  
  My (somewhat) hot take is that large migrating subreddits should probably host their own communities, which is what we did when we told people on r/PrivacyGuides to move to Lemmy. Or at the very least, actually coordinate with instance admins beforehand about all of this, clearly lemmy.ml isn't the ideal choice for this situation.
  
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I hope it's not inappropriate to comment this here, but if anyone's looking for another space to join, I'm in the process of building Krab Borg. It would be lovely to have people to help fill it out and diversify the communities, as well as suggest what the local ones should look like as I have no idea.

I'm trying to balance not reinventing the wheel/duplicating existing communities 100 times but also still supporting the idea of decentralisation and creating some duplicates (though this isn't hard and fast, I'm open to feedback).

I've seeded it with some communities from other servers (including a bunch from lemmy.ml) to get things moving a bit as well.

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Did my part and created an instance in the hopes of offloading some of the bigger instances: https://rammy.site

No clue if and how I should promote it, though. Looks like it's just me for now.

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