Absolutely. This is exactly why It’s important that we get a donation strategy put into place sooner rather than later.

This is odd. I did not upgrade pictrs (the service responsible for image hosting). There may have been an error for some specific tables rows during the database migrates. Another possibility could have been an error during the schema update that I believe the new version had to go through.

Would you be able to DM me links to other posts that you come across with broken images? I will look to see if I can identify any common trends that could tell us more.

Thank you

We sure are!

Hi @[email protected]

It’s coming. This instance is deployed using lemmy-ansible but with some slight modifications. I need to review a few things to make sure the transition is smooth. As you also pointed out, it’s also summer time which isn’t helping with my free time situation.

I have a long term solution that will speed up upgrades but I only expect to get it in place by the fall. In the meanwhile, I’m planning on getting this instance upgraded to 19.5 in the coming weeks.

Hey,

I’m due to make a post about the instances finances soon. I’ll get one posted in the next bit.

I’m still covering costs out of pocket but my goal has been to have this instance fully funded by its members. I want this instance to stay true to its members, the fediverse and be put in a position where it can continue to thrive transparently without me. The admin team has been doing an outstanding job keeping this instance safe and moderated for everyone. I don’t thank them enough but they are the true heroes of this instance.

As some may know, I’ve been working with a local non profit for the past 6 months to have them leveraged in accepting accepting donations for this instance. They have been slow to get things done but its progressing. I may end up doing what I was trying to avoid and create my own non-profit instead if that’s what it takes. That direction does have its own challenges and would add additional responsibilities to my plate.

In the meanwhile, while some of the costs of the services have gone up slightly, I get joy knowing that I can continue providing this instance to all of you. I’m OK paying the costs to keeping the lights on until we can transition to donations.

Yes, I’ll get this done

There was a little hiccup this morning unrelated to the migration tonight. The Lemmy services like to be restarted every once in a while. Once we move to the new hardware I’ll be able to look into implementing a better logging system and hopefully be more proactive when situations like these happen.

The biggest consumer of storage on this instance is related to the image hosting which we use an external object storage provider for. The second is the database which is no were near the 2TB capacity. 1TB SSDs are cheaper than 2TB SSDs and I also didn’t want to spend more than I needed. As other mentioned if we need more space or IOPs in the future, I could accomplish this by adding more drives as a quick fix. This server does not support NVME unless I leverage its PCIe ports but I don’t plan on doing that. By the time this instance gets to the point where 10 SSD drives just isn’t cutting it anymore I’ll probably have come across another opportunities on getting a new server with better NVME support.

I’ve started the preparation steps to minimize the maintenance window needed for this upgrade. These operations are running some background tasks and once they are done I’ll make an announcement to give everyone a few days heads up of the anticipated upgrade time and date. Should be soon.

@[email protected] in the perfect world community admins should be moderating their communities and the site admins should only be called upon when there is community abuse or when community mods are not doing any moderation.

As @[email protected] mentioned below @[email protected] is an alt account for same person on lemmy.world ans she has provided tons of help to this instance.

You are right about one thing, I am currently stretched really thin. If made a list of all my responsibilities I think it would shock a lot of you. That being said the amount of time it takes to run a community is astonishing and running a community well requires a lot more time than I have left to give. There is still a lot of work needed to be spent on this site.

The admins of this site help a huge amount as is mostly due to them that we are still running but I don’t want to dump more onto their plates.

I could use a lot more help in all areas (system administration, community moderation, legal revision, moving to accepting donations).

If anyone is interested in helping reach out on Matrix.