feddit.ch Instance Announcements

Hi everyone

I just upgraded feddit.ch to the most recent Lemmy Version v.0.19.2 and hope it fixes some ongoing issues with lemmy. Together with the upgrade this instance to a little performance boost to cope with the higher load.

If you want to know more about Lemmy v.0.19.2, here you go.

The pictr-rs migration is still pending and will probably cause some downtime too, but i'll keep you posted.

If you have any questions or issues, please let me know.

Hi everyone

I just upgraded feddit.ch to the most recent Lemmy Version v.0.19.1. The new version brings a lot of new features. For example, you can now block entire instances, if you don't like their content, enhanced post ranking, reworked 2fa and much more. I think the new update brings many great improvement, take a look at their change log.

I installed Version 0.19.1 over 0.19.0 because was causing some federation issues. If you like to know more, here are the recent changes to lemmy.

With the update, i also restored image uploads, so you can post your favorite images again.

The update caused some downtime, since the database somehow used all the remaining disk space and needed to do some clean up afterwards.

The next step will be to relocate the pict-rs to a different datastore, since it is using a lot of space together with the db.

If you have any questions, just let me know. If you like to contribute, you'll have some information about that in the sidebar.

Happy Xmas and enjoy your time with your loved ones.

Regarding the ongoing CSAM problem on the lemmy instances, i will temporary disable image upload for this instance.

With this action, i hope i can also restrict possible CSAM content being cached to feddit.ch. I know this is a rather harsh measure, but i want to keep the instance running as long as i can.

There devs seem to acknowledge the issue and a lot of mods are looking for options to cope with this problem. As soon as there will be a better solution for this issue, we will be back to normal.

For now, if you want to upload images to a post or a comment, there are various sites that offer free image upload.

I hope you understand.

Edit: typos

As of right now, i temporarily removed the community from federating with our instance because of CSAM, which was and still is posted on this community. As soon as the issue is resolved, we federate again.

Sorry for any inconvenience, but this is for better for us all.

Edit: The purge command seemed to lock up the db and the instance was unresponsive for some time. I hope we god rid of the content for now. There might be some other actions taken. I hope you understand.

Sorry for any interruptions caused.

Edit 2: All files which were uploaded to the feddit.ch instance from 27.08. until now were deleted. Sorry if i disrupted any of your posts or comments. We really don't want any CSAM content on this instance an hope we got away with some cached content.

After a short downtime, feddit.ch is now running on v0.18.4. The upgrade went flawless and the services seem to be running fine. Enjoy!

feddit.ch was down for about 10-15min due to the upgrade to lemmy v.0.18.3. See the lemmy release notes for the newest changes and improvements.

I hope it runs smoothly, have fun.

Hi everyone, _Frog here

I wanted to give you an update on the current status of feddit.ch and the first month since the creation of the platform.

Where i came from:

Reddit was my home for the last 8 years or so and i loved how you just could look for anything you like and find it there. I brought many friends over, since "there's something for everyone".

But reddit changed and not in a good way. I never liked the way they tried to monetize their platform and our information on it. With ads spreading in recent year, the situation got worse. Even more trackers got implemented and reddit evolved in a massive data octopus.

Since reddit announced the their new api pricing model, i was looking for alternatives to this massive platform with thousands of subreddits and millions of users. Through various other users and subreddits and some research i came across the fediverse and really liked the idea.

I always wanted to contribute something to an open community but never had a project, i really could help with. Then i came along the idea of creating feddit.ch a lemmy instance in the fediverse. With this, i hope i can contribute to a open network and give back something to the user, the community, to you.

So here we are, one month in on the project and i'm still happy i did it.

Now comes the technical part, for anybody wondering on what and how feddit.ch actually works.

My infrastructure runs on Microsoft Azure in Zurich, Switzerland

The instance started originally with: Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS, B2s VM (2-Core, 4GB RAM), 32GB Standard SSD (OS) [server-side-encrypted], 16GB Premium Disk (Lemmy Data) [server-side-encrypted], Public IPv4

Estimated estimated costs: ~44 CHF

Instance details right now:

Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS, B2ms VM (2-Core, 8GB RAM), 32GB Standard SSD (OS), 64GB Premium Disk, ~20GB used (Lemmy Data and DB), Public IPv4 & IPv6 (thanks to @[email protected], SMTP over mailersend.com

Estimated monthly costs: ~88 CHF

In the image of the post, you can see the network traffic and disk i/o of the last 30 days.

I did some reservations on azure to bring down the costs, time will tell how much it really costs.

The management of the vm can only be done through a on demand jump host and the configuration is done with the lemmy ansible setup method. There is a daily backup for the worst case scenario.

I want to be transparent on how i'm doing things and what you get if you register on this instance. So if you have any questions, adjustments or ideas i'm open to hear them, just let me know.

_Frog

PS: If you like to contribute and support this instance, i setup librepay where you can donate.

As a reaction on the XSS attacks yesterday, the devs released the version v0.18.2 for the front end and now for the back end as well.

To hopefully mitigate all the open issues, that existed yesterday and allowed possible attack vectors, i now updated the instance to this latest release. With the security fixes, there are other minor improvements to the system.

Hi guys, _Frog again.

We had a minor downtime, because Microsoft decided, that my free credits would run own... now. I just got the notice via mail and some 5min later, Microsoft decided the stop all my services.

This has nothing to do with the ongoing XSS attack on some instance, but more like Microsoft trolling me.

Sorry guys, shouldn't happen again - hopefully.

As you might have noticed, there are a couple of other instances, which went dark. This is because of an active exploit in the user user frontend, through custom emojis.

The attacker can than put custom javascript code into custom emojis and publish a post or a comment. Then, for everyone that opens that post/comment (currently on browser only), will then upload their JWT token to the attacker, which is used for the site to know, you are authenticated.

This token can then be used from the attacker to use your user account and do whatever they want with it - they have then gained your session.

Right now, feddit.ch does not have any form of custom emojis implemented, which are used through this attack.

A fix for this issue seems on the way. https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/pull/1900

The fix will be implement, when fully approved.

Here is some info on that regards Lemmy.ml posts with info regarding the issue: https://lemmy.ml/post/1896249 https://lemmy.ml/post/1895271

What does this mean to you? For the current attack, normal users are not in the main focus, since they try to "troll" the instances while using the admin accounts to gain access to the site and spread the information on sidebar, taglines, etc.

If your scared someone would take over your account - log out and lurk for some time. The fix will be there soon.

The admin account will go offline until the issue has been fixed.

I'll update you as soon as i know more.

Update 10.07.2023 14.52h

The lemmy-ui has been patched by the devs, the vulnerability should be fixed for now. The UI-Version is now v.0.18.2-rc1, as you can see at the bottom of the page.

You should now be able to normally continue with your user account. If you concerned, please reset your password and login again with your new credentials.

Info about the PR for the lemmy-ui https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/pull/1897

The instance was updated to the latest version v0.18.1 of lemmy. The update brings some design changes, stability updates and they removed lots of unnecessary request and error messages.

Enjoy!

Hi guys

As you might noticed, the instance had some stability issues since 05.07.2023. The web service was sometimes unresponsive or not reachable at all. First, i thought it was just a hiccup and the server needed a reboot. But the issue came up some time later.

The resource graph showed very high disk usage, other a long time period - in which the service was not reachable at all. A reboot fixed the issue.

After further investigations, i increased the available RAM and pretty quickly discovered, that the current application is quite a "memory hog". And the downtime was probably because of swapping.

My goal is to use as many resources as i actually need, to deliver the service, as energy efficient as possible.

I hope the services will run smoother for some time, but rest assured, if more resources are needed, the instance will get it.

For now, i keep an eye on it.

Apologies my feddit.ch lemmings. If you encounter stability or service issues, feel free to contact me.

Edit: Further updates

The issue seems to be know by the bigger lemmy instances and are under constant work to get resolved. I hope for a new stable release pretty soon.

Here's some info from lemmy.wold Post Update 05.07.2023 Lemmy.world status update 2023-07-04

The ongoing email issues could be temporarily solved. You should now be able to add an mail address to your account and reset the password of it, if you lost it.

The mails are sent through mailersend.net over port 587 (TLS), as long as the proton mail server for the instance is not ready. Mails are sent through with the address [email protected].

It is a sending address only, so no need in trying to send emails to it.

Sorry for any issues caused.

Edit: Spelling

feddit.ch currently has an issue in sending out emails. So if you try to "forget my password" or verify your email address, you will be greeted by an error message, that the mail could not been sent.

As soon as the issue has been fixed, I'll update the post.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

Update 27.06.23, 23.50

As a temporary workaround, i tried to implement a alternative SMTP server, so people could verify their email or reset their password. This resulted in instance hangs and felt like a crash. The SMTP Server is now again disabled and an error occurs until a find a different solution or a bugfix from the lemmy devs arrives. They seem to have lots of issues in the release v0.18.0, which is still a very early stage.

My testings resulted in a few minor outages, i'm sorry guys.

Update 03.07.23, 21.40

I tried to find the issue again on the email issue and could temporarily resolve the issue until the planned proton mail server is ready and working. You should now be able to reset your password and set an email address to your account.

Sorry for any caused issues.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.ch/post/35044

See the link for all the new features. I hope the site now runs smoother. Enjoy.