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submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Edit: unexpectatly we are back online. Will share how we found a solution later. There might be still some federation issues though.

Alt account of [email protected] here.

Our instance is currently down and I can't get remote access to the servers. It appears that there might have been a hardware failure of the main firewall, which is the one thing I can't work around remotely.

I am still trying a few things, but I am not very optimistic that I can get access.

The really unfortunate part is that just now I am on one of my rare work deployments abroad, so I also can't access it physically during the next few weeks and my usual back up that could restart it is not available either.

As something like that never happened in 3 years operating the servers, I thought I can risk it, but murphy's law seems inescapable πŸ˜“

I will try to keep you posted here on any updates, but probably there will not be much I can do for a while. Really bad timing πŸ˜₯

Edit: we might use this "opportunity" to migrate the instance to Piefed, which has been an idea for quite some time now. I will keep you posted on that.

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[-] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

I have heard of the migration to Piefed, but will it remove the (very cool) aesthetics of the lemmy ? I loved it :'(

[-] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

I think we will try to come up with a theme for Piefed with similar colors.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago
[-] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

Found this post after a couple of days of hopeful reloading of the page! Took another couple of days to log in an old alt just to say I'm glad you communicated this, and let us know how we can help to make it more resilient (if at all necessary).

To the kind soul that was helping me with my greenhouse infested ants (in the unlikely event they are reading here - but iirc they were not from slrpnk.net but just passing by) I'm glad we spoke, it seems like they are harmlessly using my panels for hatching, and then moving on! Related, who has a nice gardening/greenhouse community to suggest? :)

[-] [email protected] 96 points 1 week ago

Solarpunks can have a little downtime, as a treat

[-] [email protected] 62 points 1 week ago

Seriously, I think a big part of solarpunk ethos is combating the notion that everything has to always be available 24/7. Society pays a lot to deliver every convenience like fruit out of season from the other side of the world.

[-] [email protected] 27 points 1 week ago

And on the punk side of things, anybody familiar with volunteer community action, cooperative events, whatever, knows that sometimes a person doing shit for the community fails to do the shit they were supposed to do because some other shit happened in their life. It happens. We just move on to the backup shit-doer-person or find a workaround for the lack of shit.

And this is the cool thing about a distributed network like Lemmy. If a giant centralized database like FB goes down, its users can't do anything. If our favorite Lemmy node goes down, we can log into other nodes until our home base is back up.

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[-] [email protected] 46 points 1 week ago

Work trip and server problems. Where have I seen this before?

[-] [email protected] 34 points 1 week ago

Yeah, but at least I have not disappeared yet πŸ˜…

[-] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago

I see you understand the allusion.

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[-] [email protected] 39 points 1 week ago

Sorry to hear that! My main account is on slrpnk.net. But don't let it stress you out, "solarpunk" says "punk" which implies "DIY" which means this sort of thing happens. Much better to have an instance run by an admin who truly cares, rather than some soulless corporation.

[-] [email protected] 37 points 1 week ago

Try not to stress too much about it while you're away! If nothing can be done, nothing can be done. Solarpunks need to be resilient to things like this anyway. Community over convenience.

[-] [email protected] 20 points 1 week ago

Thanks, I am trying, but it really is quite annoying to lose access like that.

[-] [email protected] 35 points 1 week ago

Alt of [email protected] chiming in, thanks for giving us the sitrep, poVoq!

This is an unusually unlucky set of circumstances, but for the Solarpunks who find their way here, let's try to make the best of it. If you don't already have an alternative account somewhere, you may want to create one to use until we're back up and running. lemmy.dbzer0.com, sopuli.xyz, or lemmy.cafe are some solid choices to consider. After that, you may want to favorite poVoq's post here so you can check back on any news.

Even without our home base, we can still share the solarpunky stuff we find and create around the threadiverse (though as Tofu mentioned, maybe this could be a time to take a breather to be refreshed when we come back πŸ˜„).

Besides, if the past is any indication, time will fly by and we'll be back before you know it!

[-] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago

Well, on the plus side lots of lessons learned and I think I might move at least the xmpp server to an external vps to have a backup communication channel.

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[-] [email protected] 34 points 1 week ago

This is making me want to create an alt on slrpnk.net , since you're so chill and communicative about issues.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

communicative about issues

Aren't most admins this way?

*glances at your instance name*

Ah...

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[-] [email protected] 28 points 1 week ago

Thanks for letting us know

[-] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago

This is actually great timing, i'd say. Just now most of the northern hemisphere is starting into summer. At least i deeply feel it on a personal level that summer is arriving. I take this as a gift from the universe that directs me towards touching grass, and going swimming. Enjoy your summer, you all! Connect with your local community, if you can.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago

thirty minutes later

Okay I touched grass and now I'm bored and itchy

[-] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago

Glad that at least someone sees a positive side of it, because I sure don't... well at least it gives me a bunch of ideas how to avoid such situations in the future 🀷

[-] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago

Thank you for letting us know, good luck!

[-] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago

Shit happens. Thanks for the update πŸ™‚

[-] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago

I this it’s a law that servers run 100% perfect until the literal day one leaves town with zero way to return home. One of the many reasons I got all my services off of unraid.

Very cool to learn you’re running your own machines. Do you go into detail about this anywhere?

[-] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

We have a small write up about the hardware on our wiki, but it is also down right now.

I think we will share a post-mortem write up of the actual improvements we will do to avoid this in the future.

One thing I will definitly do is to add a KVM remote management console to one of our server boards and move the main firewall into a VM with hardware passthrough of the NICs (this was anyways planned for a 10gbit network upgrade for the second half of 2025). This way I should be able to reboot and even reinstall the main ingress point remotely, so that only the fiber gateway remains as a failure point that requires physical access.

[-] [email protected] 20 points 1 week ago

Hey fellow slrpnk.net refugees... if you're looking to recreate your list of subscribed communities, here's a good place to start:

click here for a list of communities that are NOT politics, tech, or meme -related.

Most are currently active (except for the ones with a * which were less active last I checked) Sometimes politics, tech or memes sneak in but they're not the focus.

GENERAL DISCUSSION / QUESTIONS

ART / PHOTOS

ANIMALS

COMICS / GRAPHIC NOVELS

ENTERTAINMENT

GENRES / STYLES

HISTORY

INFORMATION / KNOWLEDGE

OTHER

FEDIVERSE

FINDING NEW/GOOD COMMUNITIES ON LEMMY

click here for a list of (mostly non-political) meme communities

MEMES, SOCIAL MEDIA REPOSTS, AND HUMOR

Most of these are currently active. (except for the ones with a * which were less active last I checked). Sometimes these include politics but that's not the sole focus.

(luckily I was posting this to newcomers whenever I had the chance...)

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[-] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago

Thanks for the update, good luck with your trip.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago

Ouch. Best of luck getting it back up and running ASAP.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

Good luck and all the best. Time to touch grass, everyone πŸ˜”

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[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

Thanks for the heads up, try not to stress too much.

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this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2025
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