this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023

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My experience as a noob to managing a server Trying to set up a self hosted Lemmy Instance (lemmy.captainapathetic.cfd)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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After I saw the news of Beehaw defederating from Lemmy.world I decided the best route to go would be to try and set up a self hosted instance to have the most control of my account as possible. I use Linux on the desktop but have no experience running a server. So far I've managed to get an instance that is able to get posts from the communities I've searched (which from I understand is typical behavior due to no pulling of historic data) however I've ran into issues. Both my Domain and VPS are from namecheap and I have the proper A records set up but am unsure what else I need to do to get everything working.

What I've done so far to get it going : Purchased a domain and VPS on namecheap. Got an admin user created and ssh set up with keys to login. I initially used Debian 11 because I tried to use the YunoHost method as it seemed easier but it uses an older version of Lemmy and just gave me headaches and couldn't even change settings on Lemmy. I decided to try Ansible kept having an error related to nginx (was installed but wasn't showing up) so decided to go with Ubuntu 22.04 which allowed me to get Lemmy up and running in the state it has now. Server Specs:

Ubuntu 22.04

40GB SSD Storage

2GB RAM

Dual Core CPU (What comes with the lowest Tier Namecheap VPS)

Not much but figured for 1 user should be enough and I can always migrate to a better server.

Used Ansible as the method to install Lemmy

Issues I'm currently having:

new data such as votes and comments from outside instances do not appear (posts do) , and comments and votes I send to other instances aren't visible outside mine
verification and notification emails do not send
cannot upload images

I will edit to add any issues I run into or solutions to the ones I already have. Any help that can be given would be appreciated. If anybody wants to register to take a look at what's going on yourself just mention your main Lemmy username in the application and this post.

EDIT: I WANT TO GIVE A MASSIVE THANK YOU TO @[email protected], HIS SCRIPT FIXED EVERYTHING EXCEPT THE EMAIL (which I know is on my end and isn't a huge deal) l

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I also did the Ansible setup.

Are you subscribing to communities? I think searching just pulls something like 20 posts but nothing else. Everything starts getting pulled in when someone subscribes.

I also had some issues with pictures but the problems just kind of resolved themselves. Maybe try resetting the server and see what happens.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yea I figured out about the subscribing thing (also hi from my working self hosted instance!), wish someone made a way to have a bot subscribe to communities en masse to populate the instance. Maybe I can learn to code and make it myself 😂

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I agree it would be nice if the instances would pull in communities automatically instead of us needing to manually search for them. I guess that'll be something the Lemmy devs do something about in the future. In the meantime, I have been using this site: https://lemmyverse.net/

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

@lemmy @person I am following because I am curious how to integrate Lemmy or other communities from my mastodon account. So hi for now and eggs, always a question to be had.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

From what I understand as long as it's a Federated activitypub based instance like Mastodon, kbin, and Lemmy they can communicate between each other but the platforms can have issues presenting the data from other ones in a way that makes sense.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

@lemmy I saw you from @selfhosted
I feel like pulling in and sharing will/may help the janky data ride. I am not a tech person other than I find it fascinating. I can see a corner and hope for the Hologram.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Looks like you can follow communities by pasting their URLs in the search bar on Mastodon. The communities show up as if they're users, but it looks like you can follow them and I guess reply as you normally would. Like you can follow this community by searching this URL: https://lemmy.world/c/selfhosted

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Could you document the process you're going through trying to host Lemmy? Would be helpful for other beginners such as myself.

Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Edited to include a summary of what I've done so far. I may try to go more in depth with it, but I am thinking of making a new post detailing what I did after I get it up and running fully functional. That way I'll know all the mistakes I made and bumps encountered and how I overcame them. I will make sure to include a link to the post in an edit here when it's done.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks. I also suggest a Github gist which will track the changes you make (if you log them).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Tbh I have no idea how to use git other than clone 😂, I ended just resetting the VPS and trying UberDuck77's script and that did the trick. Maybe now I should learn to code so I can make a bot account to mass subscribe to communities to populate my instance

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I'm another worshipper of ubergeek's script! Literally went from pounding my head against my desk to setting up my brand new instance where basically everything worked!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

How much are you paying for that Namecheap VPS? I'd guess that it's way too expensive for what you get, and you could get a more powerful VPS for the same price elsewhere.

To get emails, you need to configure the SMTP settings. See the "email" section: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/administration/configuration.html

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I didn't use the Ansible playbook but the docker compse I used my first go around was pulling an old image. Have you verified you're running the newest image?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You need to setup mail server information in the ansible configuration. I used Gmail with app passwords. The name cheap vps can't email out by itself.

For the other issues I can not help.

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