The update fixes an issue with moderation actions sometimes not federating correctly(See release notes here).

There should be no or very minimal downtime. To convert UTC to your local time, use this

I expect a very minimal downtime of ca. 5-15 mins.

I had made some config changes to the database earlier in connection with the move to a new server, that caused the storage usage of the database to grow a lot. Then when it had no more space left, it crashed which caused the downtime. Unfortunately it happened at a time, where I wasn't available to fix immediately, which is why it was down for so long.

It is now fixed and I will keep a watch(setup an alert for database disk usage) to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Seems to be caused by low amount of available storage. This caused k8s to evict/delete pods -> site went down,, then it would fix itself -> site goes up again but then k8s would evict again -> site goes down. This continued untill it stabilized at some point.

This should be fixed and there should be more space available, when I move the server to a new host. I expect to move to a new server sometimes in the comming week. Will annonce the date, when I know, when it will happen.

EDIT: Spoke a little bit too soon, should be fixed now though.

EDIT2:

There was something that kept using storage, so ran into the issue again. Then the volume/storage for the image service(pictrs) stopped worked for some unknown reason(Thankfully, I have backups) and there shouldn't be any images lost.

Good news is that I have reclaimed a lot of storage, so shouldn't be in danger of running out of space for a long time.

While preparing for migration to a new host, I had to setup the db, but during that I deleted a resource in k8s to force a reload of settings in the db. This caused the db to use a different volume and it took a bit before I could revert it back to using the old volume.

No data should have been lost. Let me know, if anything is missing.

Same thing as yesterday.

Unfortunatly the tool for scanning CSAM didn't detect the image, so to ensure there are no CSAM on the server, images for the last 8 hours has been deleted.

The filesystem manager(longhorn) I use reported that multiple volumes were faulted. This caused the site to go down.

I have no idea why the volumes faulted, only that a reboot of the server fixed it. Hopefully this was a strange one off and it doesn't occur again.

To make it easier to deferate from unwanted instances I have switched to using the fediseer. With this tool I can get censures from other trustworthy instances. A censure is a "completely subjective negative judgement"(see more here) and reasons for the censure can be listed.

Currently I'm using the censures from lemmy.dbzer0.com(Can be seen here), that has any of the following reasons for the censure

• Lolicon
• CSAM
• Fascism
• Hate speech
• Bigotry
• Pedophilia
• Bestiality
• MAP

I will still manually deferate from instances, when it is needed, but this makes easier to deferate bad instances I would have missed/didn't know about.

Note: The automated deferation also includes spam instances, which is currently defined by

• More than 30 registered users per local post + comments
• More than 500 registered users per active monthly user.

The main reason is that they allow/support pedophilia, but they also allow zoophilia and biastophilia. They try to label it as MAP(minor-attracted person), but it is still pedophilia. Example of MAP post here.

There have been a report of CSAM and unfortunately the lemmy-safety doesn't go through the images quickly enough(on my hardware) to be of use in this case.

I think there exists a tool to purge a image via information from a post, but wasn't unable to find it now. In the future I can hopefully use that tool, when reports of CSAM come in.

To ensure that there aren't any CSAM or other problematic images, I have setup db0's lemmy-safety tool. This will scan images and delete them, if there is a high chance that it is an illegal or unethical image.

Unfortunately, the tool isn't perfect, so sometimes perfectly fine images might be deleted after you have uploaded them. In that case you need to upload a different image, since a similar image will probably be flagged as well.

When the moderation tools for lemmy are better I can hopefully remove the scanning tool, but untill then I think this is the best option.

If anyone has an alternative/better idea, I would love to hear it.

There has been CSAM on another instance and since it might have federated to this instance, I have deleted the images for the last 24 hour.

New images from now on should work. Let me know, if they don't.

The site will go down(a maintenance site will be shown instead), while the migration is ongoing. I expect it to take 10-20 mins if everything goes well.

EDIT: I thought I would able to move images in the background before the main migration, so that I could avoid having the site down for multiple hours. Unfortunatly after testing the migration, I have found that it is impossible to do. So the site will probably be down for 3-4 hours, since there is about 100GB of images, that needs to be migrated.

EDIT2: Images have now been successfully migrated. Let me know, if any images are missing.

There shouldn't be any downtime, since it is a simple upgrade with no database migrations.

EDIT: Has now been successfully updated to 0.18.4. There were no issues, so nothing should be lost.

Thanks to [email protected] there have been added an official self hosted version of alexandrite, which new.endlesstalk.org now uses. There have also been added more features in the update(See here)

Let me know, if there's any issues with the update.

There should be no downtime and no content should be lost.

Let me know, if anything is not working!

Images are currently not working, since it seems there been corrupted files in the image service. I will probably need to use a backup to get it working again, so some images might be lost.

EDIT: Images from 16/07 16:00 CET to 17/07 13:45 have been lost, but the image service is now working again.

I think I will do more frequent backups to avoid losing too many images, if it happens again.

After moving the site I added an auth proxy by mistake to endlesstalk.org, so it was impossible to access.

This has now been fixed and I apologize for the mistake. I will test in a private browser the next time, to avoid this issue.

The database and images has grown too much for the current host to handle.

Which means I'm forced to move to a new host. The images service isn't currently working correctly because of this, so some images might not be saved. The database seems to be working fine.

EDIT: ETA changed to 16:40. The site will be redirecting to a maintenance site, while it is down. EDIT2: Has now been moved to new host. All images hasn't been moved over yet, so some might be missing for a little bit.

To avoid missing posts and comments the site will be down, while the upgrade is happening.

EDIT: I will try a new deployment, which should provide zero downtime(blue-green), but if anything goes wrong, there still might be some downtime.

EDIT2: Due to some preparation I had to do for the new deployment rollout, I had to upgrade sooner, than I had mentioned. There was a little downtime, but no comments or posts were lost.

This site has been down for about an hour.

The cause of the downtime, was that the vps, where the site is hosted had an issue.

To avoid this issue in the future, I will move to a different host in the next hour. Therefor some posts and comments might be lost.

EDIT: Has been moved to new host. Comments and post for the last 5-10 min might be lost.