Federation is broken.

It’s been broken for days - and that’s not to say for months, because I charitably include the few hours it worked again lately for some reason.

I don’t know if other instances are that thoroughly broken, because the rest of Lemmy seems to be chugging along just fine. It’s just us poor SDF user suckers.

And no-one gives a rat’s ass.

Truly pathetic…

      • Dr. Wesker@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        10·
        10 months ago

        It wasn’t a criticism, I was commiserating. I personally am shitposting to other local communities.

      • medgremlin@lemmy.sdf.org
        8·
        10 months ago

        Yeah, I’m a grad student with limited funds and I contributed to the server when I joined last summer. I don’t really want to sacrifice this account, but if we can’t interact with anyone else, it kind of defeats the purpose of being federated.

  • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    12·
    10 months ago

    I think the problem is that we have only one admin, /u/SDF@lemmy.sdf.org , and they aren’t very active here. Their last post was 4 months ago.

    I have no idea who has access to install software updates. Maybe also just @SDF?

    Maybe it’s time to take applications to expand the roster? I assume @SDF has many other things in their life, and generally speaking, having only one person who can manage a service is just asking for extended downtime.

    • feoh@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      4·
      10 months ago

      I could be wrong but I think this is a general issue within the SDF. It’s an incredible organization and I value my membership in it very highly but I wish it were easier to pitch in and volunteer to make things better.

      I think I’ll give lemmy.ml a shot. It’s run by the Lemmy developers so seems like chances are good it’ll continue to function properly :)

      Ah well, we live in an imperfect world. I’m grateful for them in any case! :)

        • feoh@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          3·
          10 months ago

          Not as of yesterday, no.

          And that’s fine, I certainly have no shortage of things to occupy my time, I’d just hoped to be able to help make the SDF even more awesome :)

          I’m giving up on this Lemmy FWIW. I signed up over at lemmy.ml

          • bloup@lemmy.sdf.org
            2·
            10 months ago

            It feels pretty terrible when it feels like you have to literally beg people to let you help them. So, if you’re ready to just move on, by all means. But, by any chance, did you post to Requests on BBOARD saying that you are interested in volunteering and that you sent an application by email but never got a response? It might be worth a try if you still have some action points to spare.

            I just want to say, in any case, thanks for trying. This random stranger really appreciates it.

  • Oliver Lowe@lemmy.sdf.org
    10·
    10 months ago

    Looks like there’s a fix incoming: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4288#issuecomment-1878442186

    FYI, on lemm.ee I have been testing 0.19.1 patched with the #4330 changes by @phiresky for the past week and have noticed no further issues with outgoing federation, so I think this issue will be resolved with the next release

    That patch has been applied (https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/4330) so now I guess we’re waiting for a release to be cut. Fingers crossed.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
      8·
      10 months ago

      Until it breaks the next time. Really, they should just be less aggressive with the version they upgrade to.

    • Pixel@lemmy.sdf.org
      3·
      10 months ago

      Any idea if it’ll “catch up” and sync all the messages over the past few days, or just start properly federating new stuff going forward?

          • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
            5·
            10 months ago

            Yep. That’s a new feature of 0.19.x. It reworked how the federation works, and now it also checks if stuff federated successfully, if not, retry. It was done to make federation more reliable. But of course, new features, new bugs.

            At least that’s as far as I know. Don’t trust me.

          • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
            2·
            10 months ago

            I noticed some replies to my comments coming in like a day late. Not sure if that was on SDF’s end or the other servers’.

      • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        3·
        10 months ago

        It is, rebooting a service/system/server or other tinkering by the instance admins has let at least one instance come back. But the bug comes back so it’s not a real solution. The instances that don’t show the problem might still have it but also have a solution watching to reset when needed.

    • pmk@lemmy.sdf.org
      3·
      10 months ago

      What would be the right way? @SDF here on lemmy has been pinged afaik. I don’t use mastodon, and I don’t know where to e-mail.

      In the future, maybe we should ask SDF for an official way to contact them outside lemmy. I’m guessing that the admin isn’t really a lemmy user, or they would have noticed the whole thing going on.

      I realize that I can’t demand anything, we’re using a free service run by volunteers and donations. I like the community here on SDF, and am interested in finding out how we, together, can make it a great instance.

  • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    7·
    10 months ago

    Woah, a few minutes ago my test message to sh.itjust.works from 8 days ago finally arrived. Also a comment I made here 8 days ago.

    I’ve sent myself another one about 2 minutes ago, but it hasn’t federated yet. We’ll see…

    Edit: 2 more of my comments federated, latest from 4 days ago. I think we’ll be ready to federate smoothly in about 30 minutes, based on last time this happened.

    Edit 2: Test message arrived after 17 minutes.

    • vext01@lemmy.sdf.org
      4·
      10 months ago

      I just had a flurry of replies come in too.

      I wonder if this is a result of me emailing sdf this morning?

    • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      3·
      10 months ago

      I see the UI has been updated to version 0.19.2, while the backend is still 0.19.1-rc2. Perhaps the backend update is still in progress. Could be that federation is working again simply because they restarted the backend service.

      Hopefully the backend update to 0.19.2 is coming and will be more stable.

      I also noticed that the web UI is kind of messed up now. None of the button icons display for me, like for upvote, downvote, reply, or notifications, so it’s a little hard to navigate.

      • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        2·
        10 months ago

        Oh damn, I didn’t even notice that.
        It seems the browser cache is saving me for now:

        Edit: Hmmm, interesting. The buttons are there, but they only show up briefly after refreshing.

        Edit 2: The page with icons returns

        HTTP/2 404 
server: nginx
date: Sat, 13 Jan 2024 22:31:19 GMT
content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8
vary: Accept-Encoding
x-powered-by: Express
content-security-policy: default-src 'self'; manifest-src *; connect-src *; img-src * data: blob:; script-src 'self' 'nonce-a11a1859d413a6f8d1a7e96994bb6ccb'; style-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline'; form-action 'self'; base-uri 'self'; frame-src *; media-src * data:
cache-control: public, max-age=60
etag: W/"14aa8-/2gJKxI2YSvDtADj1ANGgw9bOSs"
content-encoding: gzip
X-Firefox-Spdy: h2

        https://lemmy.sdf.org/static/9aa19d8b/assets/symbols.svg
        for comparison:
        https://lemmy.ml/static/9aa19d8b/assets/symbols.svg

        It isn’t empty if you check the page source, there’s SVG icons.
        Example:

        <symbol id="icon-arrow-up" viewBox="0 0 24 24">
      <path d="M5.707 12.707l5.293-5.293v11.586c0 0.552 0.448 1 1 1s1-0.448 1-1v-11.586l5.293 5.293c0.391 0.391 1.024 0.391 1.414 0s0.391-1.024 0-1.414l-7-7c-0.092-0.092-0.202-0.166-0.324-0.217s-0.253-0.076-0.383-0.076c-0.256 0-0.512 0.098-0.707 0.293l-7 7c-0.391 0.391-0.391 1.024 0 1.414s1.024 0.391 1.414 0z"/>
    </symbol>
      • vext01@lemmy.sdf.org
        2·
        10 months ago

        I got a reply from membership@sdf.org:

        It looks like the site is now running 0.19.2.  Can you confirm you still are unable to use it?

        I think it’s working now.

        At the bottom of the web UI it says: BE: 0.19.2

        So I guess the upgrade is complete?

    • ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
      6·
      10 months ago

      Easy: post from the SDF instance, then check directly on the other instance if your post made it. If it hasn’t after 10 minutes, feel like you wasted your time. Rinse, repeat - until you’re tired of wasting your time and open an account on another instance.

      • bloup@lemmy.sdf.org
        5·
        10 months ago

        It’s frustrating and it makes me sad and disappointed to see the SDF so unresponsive to pretty much all issues (even those raised on the system itself, about the system).

        That being said, I actually feel like it makes me do the opposite of waste time, because it’s virtually impossible for me to get sucked into an upsetting interaction here that has no broader consequence beyond making me feel bad.

      • fatalError@lemmy.sdf.org
        41·
        10 months ago

        That’s a shame. Problems like this is why lemmy won’t go very far imo. Expecting a random person on the internet to go through the signup process which involves applying for an account on some instances is wishful thinking, them understanding what federation is and how it works is very optimistic, but then braking the federation with no warning and no action plan for fixing it is just shooting yourself in the foot.

  • lemmy689@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    6·
    10 months ago

    I started looking for an SDF alternative just yesterday, to see if SDF was broken again. So thanks for the post. Guess I will carry on with another account. I’m thinking lemmy.ca.