Hello sh.itjust.works community,

Many of you have been eager to get an update about when the sh.itjust.works instance will get it’s upgrade to the latest version of lemmy. Here’s a update along with a tentative timeline.

In December 2023 I purchased a new server for this community. It took me awhile but I eventually made the time to get it racked at the local datacenter. For the sysadmins lingering and those interested here are the specs:

  • Dual Xeon 2.9Ghz CPUs (32 cores total)
  • 256GB ram
  • 4 x 1TB SSD in raid 10 (with room to add 6 more disks)
  • 10gbit networking

While I’m ready to proceed with the upgrade, I’ve decided to first migrate this instance over to the new hardware. Here are two reasons.

  1. Those of you who have been around long enough may remember that I’ve been running this instance on “borrowed” unused resources that were available at the time. There are no more resources available for this instance to grow.
  2. There are reports that the latest version of lemmy may use more resources. Given we are among the bigger instances, should I end up in a situation where I need to increase resources to keep things fast I’ll be restricted.

Here’s the tentative timeline:

Task Date Expected Downtime
Migration to new server Tuesday February 27 2024 @ 8:00PM ET 90 Minutes
Upgrade to V19.3 Thursday February 29 2024 @ 8:00PM ET Up to 120 Minutes
  • If anything major goes wrong on the 27th I will revert back the changes and bring the instance back up on the current server.
  • If anything major goes wrong on the 29th I will revert back using an earlier snapshot. If that fails, I will restore from a backup.

During these two planned events those who want to provide moral support or who want to get periodic updates are more than welcome to join us on our matrix channel

    • Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      5·
      11 months ago

      Does anyone else feel strangely old reading this comment, despite the fact that sh.itjust.works has only been around for less than a year?

      “I was there, when the wall came down and the hexbears came”

      (Obligatory “sh.it.heads for life”; “up with sh.it.heads, down with shitheads”; and so on)

      • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.worksMEnglish
        6·
        11 months ago

        Yeah same. Makes me feel warm inside to know that there are some sh.itheads who never got caught up in the various internet slapfights that have unfolded over the past year.

        I mean forget about hexbear, OG sh.itheads will remember the exploding-heads defederation drama. I’ll never forget when these users absolutely eviscerated me regarding our “glacial” response to defederating EH.

        https://sh.itjust.works/comment/512007

        Oof

        Your “oh maybe, I kinda guess it’s possible” attitude here is the problem. You are acting now, great, but this was an incredibly slow response, it doesn’t matter if your vote is tomorrow. It’s already incredibly, mind bogglingly slow, and you still decided to post a day long debate thread before the vote (it seems to show overwhelming support for defederation, which I consider totally unsurprising, and makes me wonder again what you’ve been waiting for).

        I understand a little about why it was so glacial, but you continue to appear to not understand that this was actually a huge issue, that in that time you let the server bias towards the alt-right, showed a general support for alt right topics, and alienated an unknowable number of users in the process. Those are all the sort of users you probably wanted to keep, the ones who aren’t just content to see things go badly and will take action when they see it rather than stare like a deer in headlights. If they’re like me, they were probably posting and trying to find out the delay before leaving in disgust. They’re folks that care about having an instance that reflects their values, and you’ve let them - us - down.

        That can’t be undone, but the way you keep shrugging it off as though you really don’t see it does not inspire confidence.

        Even rereading it now, that one still hurts. Thanks for not turning into a bunch of Nazis, that would have been a lot of guilt for me to work through 😅

        • Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          4·
          11 months ago

          Ugh, yep. Right around the time the agora system was getting fleshed out, too, so things just naturally took a bit longer.

          Related - “What’s a Beehaw?” - newer sh.it.heads, probably.

          • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.worksMEnglish
            3·
            11 months ago

            Beehaw was so worried about other instances turning into Nazi bars even as their own server was rapidly bleeding users due to excessively strict moderation and defederation.

            Here’s a fun snapshot of the Lemmy network as of June 15th, 2023. Beehaw was huge in the early days.

        • InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          3·
          11 months ago

          Sadly, no.
          Like imaqtpie mentioned, I’ve cobbled together something, because otherwise we’d be drowning in garbage/spam.
          Hopefully it doesn’t become sentient enough to rampage on its own.

          There’s the recent spam wave, but there’s a lot of other day-to-day junk.
          Compare, say…
          https://sh.itjust.works/c/opensource@kbin.social
          With a random instance’s version:

          Or even with its kbin source: https://kbin.social/m/opensource

          (Unrelated, but federation seems currently broken between that kbin magazine and lemmy in general… but then it’s 99% down in there lately)

        • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.worksMEnglish
          3·
          11 months ago

          Nah, he’s talking about @SJW_Bot2. Automod functionality isn’t built into Lemmy, InEnduringGrowStrong actually created and maintains that bot to help combat spammers and trolls.

          It would have been impossible to protect this instance from the recent spam wave without that bot, as you can see by scrolling through the modlog to see all the random shit it automatically removes.