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

=========================================================
Update February 29 2024
We’ve successfully completed the upgrade to v1.9.3. I’m happy to announce that we did it in an astonishing 27 minutes, a whole 93 minutes under what was expected. The extra leg work that was done over the last few weeks combined with the better hardware definitely played a part. Looking over the processes, it looks like the service responsible for images is still doing some work so it’s possible that you will come across some broken images. I’ll be keeping on eye on that over the next bit and make adjustments if needed. Thank you all for the support and to all of you who kept me company on our matrix channel. Have a good evening.

=========================================================
Update February 27 2024
We’ve successfully completed the migration. I’m happy to announce that this instance is now running on its new hardware dedicated solely to this community! We experienced just under 40 minutes of downtime which is a whole 50 minutes less than expected. Please give this instance a chance to catch up what it missed but we should be good within the next 30 or so minutes. Thank you

    • Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      3 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
        0·
        3 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
          0·
          3 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
            0·
            3 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.

            • SolOrion@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              0·
              2 months ago

              Oh, wow. I didn’t realize beehaw dropped off that hard. I thought about going there in the early days, but decided on here instead purely because the signup seemed like less of a hassle. I’m also kinda surprised our user count here isn’t even 5k. I guess that’s federation at work.

            • assaultpotato@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              0·
              2 months ago

              Wait did beehaw fall off? I have two accounts, one here and one on beehaw. I actually made my sh.itjust.works account because beehaw defederated from some instances with communities I wanted to keep and now I use both semi regularly. Mostly lurk though.

              • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.worksMEnglish
                0·
                2 months ago

                Yeah they’re down to 600 MAUs. They are apparently planning to move off Lemmy to another platform. I’m not sure why

                • Draconic NEO@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                  0·
                  2 months ago

                  Probably something to do with them not wanting to be part of the Fediverse and federation, since it gives them less control of content and moderation. Also judging by the way they run their instance it seems like they would prefer something more along the lines of the classic forum experience.

        • MomoTimeToDie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          Lmao I remember that thread. It was when I realized that this site was hardly better than reddit in terms of people just wanting everything they don’t like censored. I made a dozen or so accounts on other instances to get around defeds as a result. I’m just glad that I can use a proper multi-account app instead of trying to manage everything manually these days

          • CancerMancer@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            0·
            2 months ago

            So long as you support anything resembling free speech, you will be a Nazi to them. It doesn’t matter that 20 years ago, lefties were being actively suppressed in North America using the same weapons they are using to supress the populists today. It doesn’t matter if you’re on your union local’s executive and advocate for socialist policy and democratic reform. It doesn’t matter if you have a past of creating actual material change for the exploited.

            You let someone say what Hexbear considers bad words, that means you’re a Nazi.