Before it got enshittified with an update a few years ago, I used the RealVNC Android app to connect to a few of my own VNC servers. Wasn’t interested in any of the fancy features, I just wanted a good VNC app.

Now I use AVNC. It’s solid, performs better than RealVNC used to, and it’s open source! You can get it on FDroid.

It should still work!

I only go back and make changes to LED if something breaks with a major Lemmy update, but Lemmy hasn’t had a major update since January. Lemmy v0.19.4 isn’t released yet, but when it is, I’ll make sure the deployment is up to date.

Note that it does not have any advanced features that a major instance might want, such as storing images on S3, exporting data, or image moderation. If you intend for your instance to grow for 100+ users, this isn’t for you. This is only intended for beginners who are overwhelmed by the other Lemmy hosting options, and want an easy way to host a small single-user or small-user instance.

I’m scratching my head to think what Vultr could do better in this case

There was substantial room for improvement in the way they spoke publicly about this issue. See my comment above.

I still don’t like how flippant they’ve been in every public communication. I read the ToS. It’s short for a ToS, everyone should read it. They claim it was taken “out of context,” but there wasn’t much context to take it out of. The ToS didn’t make this distinction they’re claiming, there was no separation of Vultr forum data from cloud service data. It was just a bad, poorly written ToS, plain and simple.

They haven’t taken an ounce of responsibility for that, and have instead placed the blame on “a Reddit post” (when this was being discussed in way more detail on other tech forums, Vultr even chimed in on LowEndTalk).

As for this:

Section 12.1(a) of our ToS, which was added in 2021, ends with “for purposes of providing the Services to you.” This is intended to make it clear that any rights referenced are solely for the purposes of providing the Services to you.

This means nothing. A simple “we are enhancing your user experience by mining your data and giving you a better quality service” would have covered them on this.

We only got an explanation behind the ToS ransom dialog after their CMO whined in a CRN article. That information should have been right in the dialog on the website.

In both places, they’ve actively done vague things to cause confusion, and are offended when people interpret it incorrectly.

You are giving it the -d flag. -d means “detached.” There are logs, you are just preventing yourself from seeing them.

Replace the -d with an -i (for interactive) and try again.

Have you completed the podman rootless setup in order to be able to use it? You may need to edit /etc/subuid and /etc/subgid to get containers to run:

https://github.com/containers/podman/blob/main/docs/tutorials/rootless_tutorial.md#etcsubuid-and-etcsubgid-configuration

More than likely, this might have something to do with podman being unprivileged, and this wanting to bind to port 80 in the container (a privileged port). You may need to specify a --userns flag to podman.

Running in interactive mode will give you the logs you want and will hopefully point you in the right direction.

Hi :)

If you’re already running an instance, you’re not going to have a good time of this on the same server unfortunately. The webserver config I ship assumes a single instance, and all of the handling assumes only one domain. You would have to basically modify my entire script to support something like this.

You can take a look at my advanced configuration page to figure out what files you can edit, but this would be a very manual process for what you want to do.

Apologies, but you would be better off deploying a new server.

It’s really hard to take calls to action like this seriously, when they unironically talk like this:

You cannot pass this invasive “browser check” without enabling JavaScript. This is a waste of five(or more) seconds of your valuable life.

Most of the other points are either grasping, misleading, or make the classic FOSS-centric assumption that we live in a fantasy land where all hosting is free and companies don’t need to exist.

I’m not out here trying to say Cloudflare is vital to society, but come on, these arguments are toothless.

I’ve seen people have similar issues on my issue tracker. Turns out it was caused by Cloudflare’s JS minimization or rocket-loader being enabled. Something changed in 0.18.3 that made it incompatible with those Cloudflare features. If you use the Cloudflare proxy to serve your site, you will need to turn those off.

Aw, thanks! :D

You’re welcome!

If you’re not already, I recommend trying to host this on a cloud VPS service, such as Vultr, Linode, or DigitalOcean. This would give you a reliable, always online Lemmy instance, which means you won’t miss any federation data. Even a cheap $5 VPS instance would be enough to get you started, though a $10 would give you more breathing room.

If you’re hosting at home, it’s generally not a good idea to do that, especially for an application like Lemmy. Most consumer grade network equipment at home might not be equipped to deal with the unrelenting 24/7 flood of data coming in due to federation. And if your power or internet ever goes out, you will be missing any comments, posts, or votes that were sent out during your downtime.

Hey there, please note that running behind a reverse proxy is not supported. You can do it if you want, but you are kinda on your own, sorry.

If it helps, you will probably need to disable Caddy’s TLS in the config, and you will need to make sure that the request reaches Caddy via the correct host. You can’t reverse proxy directly to port 80 over an IP, it needs to think it’s coming from an actual domain.

You can also check out my advanced configuration page to learn how to override the Caddyfile template and roll your own config that is more compatible for your use case.

Good luck!

Their cheapest $5 Linux VPS isn’t any better than one from a reputable host like Vultr. This isn’t really a deal, just use a trusted hoster instead.

I plan to support this for as long as I’m using Lemmy, which should be a good while.

All the script really does is generate a docker-compose.yml stack that’s best for your desired setup. So even if I do stop supporting the script, you’re not locked into using it. You can always manage the Docker Compose stack manually and do your own updates, which is what people not using my script will have to do anyway.

Also, I don’t bake Lemmy versions directly into this script, I just pull the latest Lemmy version from GitHub and deploy that. So in theory, unless the Lemmy team changes something major, this should continue working for a long time after I stop supporting it.

If you want to be prepared, I would recommend reading up on Docker Compose and getting familiar with it!

Shameless self plug:

https://github.com/ubergeek77/Lemmy-Easy-Deploy

All you need is a server, a domain, and your DNS records set to your server’s IP address. After that, my script takes care of the rest!

Please let me know if you have any issues! I am constantly keeping this updated based on people’s feedback!

Try again with the latest version of Lemmy Easy Deploy.

I am now building multiarch images for 0.18.x, and my script will now default to my multiarch images, so there is no longer a need to build it yourself :)

Thanks!

I’ve got that included in a staging version I’m preparing to release, if you wanted to take a look at the changes:

https://github.com/ubergeek77/Lemmy-Easy-Deploy/issues/17

I see. Thanks a lot for this!

I really don’t have the capacity to support a bunch of different email services, so it sounds like the best I can do right now is make the SMTP settings accessible without also running the postfix server. So if someone wants to run their own email somewhere else, they can configure it. But otherwise, I’ll leave it to the user to figure out what happens after an email request leaves Lemmy.

Does that sound fair, and like something you would have used? Essentially just an interface in config.env that puts the right SMTP address/credentials in lemmy.hjson.

Before this week, I would have told you no. But I have big plans for the 0.18.1 update.

The Lemmy team has completely broken ARM support with seemingly no plan to support it again. They switched to a base Docker image that only supports x86_64. This is why your build fails. I still don’t understand why they would move from a multiarch image to an x86_64-only one.

I’ve been working on this for about a week, and just yesterday I finished a GitHub Actions pipeline that builds multiarch images for x64/arm/arm64. I currently have successful builds for 0.18.1-rc.2. In a future update for my script, I will have it use these, that way ARM users don’t need to compile it anymore. I just ask for a little patience, I haven’t been able to do any work on Lemmy Easy Deploy since I’ve been working on this pipeline :)

I also do want to qualify - don’t get your hopes up until you see it running for yourself. Ultimately, I am just a DevOps guy, not a Lemmy maintainer. I haven’t tested my ARM images yet, and while I did my best to get these to build properly, I can’t fix everything. If anything else breaks due to running on ARM, it will be up to the Lemmy team to fix those issues (which is not likely anytime soon, if their updated x86_64 Dockerfiles are any indication).

But, fingers crossed everything goes smoothly! Keep an eye out for an update, I’m working hard on it, hopefully I can get it out in time for 0.18.1!

EDIT:

Putting my notes on this progress here:

https://github.com/ubergeek77/Lemmy-Easy-Deploy/issues/17

I haven’t actually used the embedded postfix server at all, I keep mine disabled. I only include it because it’s “included” in the official Docker deployment files, and I try to keep this deployment as close to that as possible.

I’m considering adding support for an external email service, as you mentioned, but I have nearly zero experience in using managed email services, and I’m not sure if non-technical users would be able to navigate the configuration of things I can’t do for them (i.e. on a web dashboard somewhere). And if I can’t do it for them, it means more issues for me, so I hesitate to add support for it at all.

I’d love to hear your experience in setting up sendgrid and how easy that was. And the tracking stuff you mentioned as well.

I’m glad to hear that! Thanks for letting me know, it’s nice to hear people were able to use my script to get up and running :)