If it's a personal server for yourself and maybe some friends and family, I would rather use GoToSocial, as it is much more lightweight and is less complex to set up and maintain.
this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
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I ran my own Mastodon for a while. While it does work, it takes up a ton of storage (every image and video you see is cached by your own server). It also doesn't work great for viewing stuff like replies and older posts, since backfilling is still not a thing. I ended up just browsing on remote servers instead. A great blog post about this: https://jvns.ca/blog/2023/08/11/some-notes-on-mastodon/
every image and video you see is cached by your own server
Even videos and images you never see get cached. I barely use Mastodon and my server still uses around 50GB space.
Lemmy is A Lot better in this aspect
Don't do it with an SD card. It will corrupt and crash after a few months.
With an SSD, yeah it would totally work well. :)
Check out https://masto.host/ for managed hosting.
You can migrate away from them if you ever want to.
If you self host instead, make sure your server is on its own vlan. Servers are a target for exploitation, and you don’t want the rest of your home devices exposed if your server is compromised.
Note: A Pi probably has the CPU power, but the caching from the server may be more space than an SD card will hold.
SD card is a hard no. Need to cram an NVMe hat on it or an external SSD or HDD. They need diskio and a fair bit of quickly recyclable space.
A VLAN is not a security feature. Be sure that your firewalls and routers are configured properly and kept up to date.
Yeah, this is an important point tbh. Vlans alone don't add any security if your firewall doesn't do something to prevent it, as your router will happily forward packets to the next vlan. It should be on a DMZ vlan, meaning traffic is allowed in at the firewall but not to any other internal vlans.
as your router will happily forward packets to the next vlan.
If you allow it. Good routers should block forwarding by default, other than VLAN1 to WAN.
Yeah, I meant: isolated vlan
Pretty sure that'd rip your microsd in half really quick.
Have you looked into nostr? It offers most of the same features of Mastodon except that:
- Your identity is not tied to your instance. If your instance closes up shop, you keep all your followers, followees, DMs, etc
- You can send encrypted DMs, so your instance admin can't read them
- Cool tipping functionality so you can tip people if you like their posts. Or don't use it. It's optional.
- Most nostr clients have some built-in filtering functionality to block out things that are NSFW, crypto-related, etc. Different relays have different moderation policies, much like mastodon instances.
You can run your own relay of course.
Your identity is not tied to your instance. If your instance closes up shop, you keep all your followers, followees, DMs, etc
This is one of the major advantages Bluesky's protocol (AT Protocol) has over ActivityPub. ActivityPub doesn't have anything built-in to support this. On Bluesky, you can use your own domain name as your username, and freely move from one server to another while keeping the same username (once they open up federation). It's configured through a DNS TXT record.
Still doesn't beat nostr imo.
Bluesky:
- Identity not tied to instance
- You have to buy and administer a domain name, which is technically complex and costs $10.
- DNS is also subject to censorship by firewalls
Nostr:
- Identity is not tied to an instance
- Your private keys (identity) are generated by your app. No purchase or administration required
- Censorship is much more difficult
Can it federate with fediverse?
No, but some functionality could be bolted onto it for that purpose. But it is a federated network, just within it's own protocol. Fediverse (Mastodon, Lemmy, Kbin, etc) run on an underlying protocol: ActivityPub, so they can all federate with each other within ActivityPub.
Nostr runs on an underlying protocol also confusingly called nostr. Nostr's main "interface" is a twitter clone, but the underlying protocol supports things like video streaming sites etc and some interfaces have been built for that purpose.
I'm not sure if its true for Mastodon as well, but I read that self hosting a Lemmy instance was actually more work for the other servers to federate unless you had many users on your instance. Just something to keep in mind.
I would not suggest mastodon for such low powered hardware, its also overkill for a personal instance. Akkoma or GotoSocial would work much better on a Pi. The annual cost is pretty much just 3-15$/year for the domain name.
Going for Yunohost on your Pi4 can make things easier, just follow the Yunohost documentation, and later you can ask help in the Yunohost forum if needed : https://yunohost.org/en/install/hardware:rpi34 Instead of Mastodon you can install sometimes more light weight and simple, like GoToSocial : https://apps.yunohost.org/catalog?category=social_media
A raspberry pi isn't fit for hosting public services. Your likely looking for a VPS.
Maybe not high traffic services, if it's being self hosted the limiting factor is probably the upload bandwidth anyway. I'm not sure how resource intensive Mastodon is to host though.