G'day all,

Wow, it's been, like, a few months, and we're still alive! Wow! Sniff my socks, u/spez!

I've launched another useful thing - this one's Netdata monitoring. You can access it at https://netdata.apollo.town, and it will display realtime stats on server load, downtime, etc. If the server's feeling sluggish, you can now find out why. It's read-only and locally hosted - it's connected to my Netdata Cloud for remote management. You can look, and that's about it.

In the future, this may or may not replace Uptime Kuma. Uptime Kuma was mostly for monitoring other Lemmy servers so we know if your feed isn't working or federating. I think I can get Netdata to do that, but I'll have to muck about with it in the future.

Incidentally, as well, it's already proved useful. Apparently our server needs some more RAM.

-Nico

I'm making this post because I'm shutting down my Kbin instance, kbin.lol, and redirecting it here for an undetermined amount of time.

But why?

Kbin isn't ready. Not even close. I know the developer, Ernest, has been working his ass off trying to get everything fixed and pushed, and I really value his efforts. However, it's still beta software, and as I've been unable to make a good user experience, it's being shut down until there's a better release, or a stable one.

What issues? Kbin.social works fine!

• There is no option to delete a user, except from the command line. Users can't delete their own data. I have to manually process all user removal requests, with the backend.
• Federation appears to be broken due to the messenger backend repeatedly crashing, with no information on how to fix it. All I did was restart the Docker stack, which shouldn't break anything.
• Compiling and running the site is extremely difficult. With Lemmy, I just pull a docker-compose, set some variables, and start it. With Kbin, I have to clone the git, change many variables across many config files, and then compile the entire stack from source(even though stable releases of some containers exist). I did eventually manage get the site running, except this leads into the next point...
• There's no way to do a stable update. I've tried pulling Git updates into the existing folder - that overwrites all my variables and the site doesn't start. I pulled it into another folder, and not only does it not start, but all the users and database get wiped. I'm sure I could figure it out...but I don't want to be providing a site to my users that's so duct taped together. Ernest, bless his heart, is patching stuff up on the source daily - but how do I update?
• It doesn't appear to be scalable. The main instance, Kbin.social, runs slow and unresponsive because of the sheer volume of users on it(which baffles me, because it's beta software that wasn't ready for prime time). It'd be better if we had more instances, but it's hard to deploy, so we don't have many instances...it's a never ending circle.

Okay, so it's got some issues. What now?

For now, you're more than welcome to join my Lemmy instance, which is right here. It's nice and stable and I feel confident providing it as a service. I'm still subscribed to Kbin development, and if it has a proper Docker stable release, or something that just makes it easier to host, I'll look into it again. It'd be a damn shame to let the kbin.lol domain name go to waste, lol, so I'm definitely invested in getting it running.

If you happen to be a smart web developer with spare time, and would like to volunteer your skills to get it running, feel free to reach out to me, but again, it's a hairball I don't feel comfortable with. With the right help, though, maybe it could work.

I don't like Lemmy, it's got tankie devs!

Personally, to be perfectly frank, I couldn't give a shit less. I've got a long history in the FOSS community and if I banned everybody I disagreed with it'd just be me, a scratch kernel, and nano. Outright political instances and instances that allow blatant racism are defederated here on my instance. Lemmy devs are willing to create a product that makes the entire internet better, and share it with everyone, for free, regardless of your beliefs. That's good enough for me. I'd rather see the internet become a better place, than to turn our nose up at a FOSS project, because of disagreements between humans. That's ruined enough of the world already.

What's a tankie?

Google it. I'm not here to be political.

Never mind all that, I just want Kbin!

Well, you're free to use any instance of anything, of course! Kbin.social is open for signups - although I can't guarantee that it'll keep up with the flow of new users from Reddit. We have hundreds of Lemmy instances including this one that seem to be doing fine, if you would like.

If Kbin can pull together a release that is actually worth running, I will deploy it and relaunch the site.

• P.S. All user accounts and data from the kbin instance have been deleted. Don't worry - your data is gone, not being kept or spied upon.

If you have heard of wefwef, it's an Apollo clone that runs in a web browser optimized for mobile. I thought it was cool(and quite fitting for the site) so I deployed a copy to app.apollo.town. Add it to your home screen as a web app for a slick new auto-updating client!

Also, I didn't vet this very much, so it could be hella broken, or it could be incompatible. I dunno, just thought it was neat and we could give it a try. As always, let me know if there's any issues.

G'day all,

I've come to realize my shotgun approach to updating whenever it's convenient isn't really working. To that end, I've deployed an instance of Uptime Kuma, a free and open source uptime monitor, which you can access at status.apollo.town.

I'll add a maintenance window here if we're going down for updates, as well as I've added a few other major instances so if you're getting federation problems, you can check if they're reachable by this server. Finally, it also monitors Lemmy source so if my Docker fails to build or something, maybe they changed the image name, etc.

As always, hit me up on Mastodon if you have any questions, or email me at admin at apollo.town. Please let me know if you have any other major instances you'd like monitored and I'll see about adding them.

Cheers!

-Nico

Email is now working.

If you enter an invalid email, the page may freeze when saving your account settings, but valid emails should save. This appears to be a Lemmy issue and I expect it to be fixed in the future.

Previous post

G'day all,

Thanks for using/visiting/interacting here at our instance!

Now, this is my first time setting up Lemmy, and currently the server isn't able to send emails out. I do approve users within a few hours, but you won't get a notification, You also can't add an email to your profile as of right now.

I'm working on getting it fixed up - I have a mail server already and I just need Lemmy to use it. Once it's fixed I'll update here. Thanks for your patience - again, it's my first time at this 😄

First of all, thank you for joining the server, or if you are part of another community and just stopping by, welcome! Federation is great, and that means you don't need to be here to hang out!

This is a Lemmy instance(a federated software that operates more or less like Reddit) that I created when I heard of my favorite app, Apollo, shutting down. Goodnight sweet prince, and may your memory live on forever in the domain of my website. Christian is a fantastic developer, and if you liked his app Apollo, you should check out his other app Pixel Pals!

Feel free to post in Community Requests if you'd like a community created - I was in all sorts of subreddits and I'd say about anything goes here. NSFW, memes, video games, gym bros, whatever you want! I'd just like to do my part and support the community, and it's an honor to be hosting for y'all.

Please don't hesitate to comment any questions that you might have, and above all, have a great time!

This is a second test post