2y ago

Should I host my own instance if I don't intend to run a community?

Is there any benefit to host my own instance?

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I’ve run linodes for years. My blog runs on them. I still host a variety of other services on them. They are good for everything from gaming servers to a blog etc.
They did get bought out by akamai a while back. And have raised their prices but they are still solid.
Nanodes are awesome deals frankly.
- Is the 2GB the one you use for your Lemmy server? I'm getting ready to purchase one to see if I can figure it out.
  
  Im currently on the 4GB dedicated. However heres an htop of it.
  https://imgur.com/a/NpEsw4t
  I am currently the only user. Im considering opening it up to limited users but not really having communities once i get a lot of the instances cached and indexable.
  Others like @leopardboy@netmonkey.tech are running on a 2GB shared just fine. I will likely move to that if i choose to keep it solo for sure, or under 100 users and no communities.
  I dont have the time to really moderate others or content on the instance. So i dont think I plan to host any communities at all. I do wish you could federate/sync specific communities to your instance to make searching/subscribing easier.
  
  I do wish you could federate/sync specific communities to your instance to make searching/subscribing easier.
  You mean something that populates your server with a history of posts and comments to communities before your subscribe to them?
  
  That's exactly what I'm wanting to do. Just have myself and maybe a few others with limited communities. Would you recommend using ansible to setup a Lemmy on Linode?
  
  Yes the ansible config worked fine for me. I worked for days to get an kbin instance up. Ansible worked first go.
  I have yet to get email working but otherwise its solid. Linode will block email btw if you account is new (and frankly may be blocking mine now). You just have to put in a case and justify and it should be fine. My account should be old enough to be exempt but I will likely do it anyhow. Their support is pretty good.
  Getting federation crawled and communities added is a bit slow. Mostly because the other instances are a bit slow.
  A few pointers if you havent done admin yet.
  Put nothing in the federation allow list unless you want to go whitelist only. Over time as other instances hit yours and you search others, the linked list of instances will grow. Just use the blocklist if you want to block certain instances. I havent found a good way to block the growing number of instances in case they have some illegal content like CSAM. So...i may just go whitelist anyhow
  Searching for instances seems to be CPU heavy on mine. Its not a problem though. You just cant simply plug in a URL of a community in another instance if you havent linked. You will get a 404 if you do. So you have to go to search, looking for that community by hitting search a few times until it shows up, then you can join and it will start crawling
  I have no idea what "Private instance" does other than i believe it will keep your instance form starting in the future if you have it checked AND federation turned on. I saw some logs in dockers startup when i did it but nothing in the UI.,
  
  Thank you for the information. I've signed up for a 2GB shared linode and it's running Debian 11. I assume I need to ssh into it, then run the ansible stuff. I have very basic knowledge of Linux and command line. I am not entirely sure how to fill out the config but I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

32 comments