Would there be any benifit to host another instance?

Mirriad@reddthat.com to Fediverse@lemmy.world – 110 points –

As the question states. I have the skiils and know how to setup a new instsnce and from looking through the documentation its relatively straight forward. Im just wondering would it actually help the fediverse and lemmy as a whole? There seems to already be plenty of instances to choose from. What are your guys thoughts?

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I created mine because I am a systems engineer by trade and I moved on from Reddit. Nobody else has used my instance except for me, but I think it's worth it. I like being in control of my own account and can be assured my instance wont impose rules that i dont agree with or worse, just disappear. If other people find it useful, then that's even better.

How much storage does it take to host your own instance that’s federated with large servers? I am really curious about hosting my own instance but I don’t really understand how the storage works and don’t want my computer filled with thousands of strangers comments.

If you're the only user on your instance, your server will only know about and fetch from communities you're personally subscribed to. If there's a second user, add the communities that user is subscribed to, etc.

In the month I've been running my server, I have accumulated about 8GB of data. I've subscribed to about 30 communities or so, but my server only has be actively using it.

@bionicspud, I've been thinking of doing the same thing for the same reasons. How much storage does your instance use? I haven't looked in to how asset caching works yet. It seems like it could easily get out of hand.

Running the Instance for 3 Days now. Added multiple new Subs and cleared pictrs (but not Postgres) folder yesterday. My instance is mostly used by me.

87M ./pictrs

335M ./postgres

Edit: Small update. Original Post was posted ~9AM. Now its ~11AM

112M ./pictrs

351M ./postgres

As far as i know, images shouldn't be stored locally if not posted from the local instance. This looks to be a proxing problem as far as i understood.

what happens when you clear pictrs? you mean just deleting the folder? does that break stuff?

for comparison, my instance is only communities and no users (FAQ here: https://programming.dev/post/442419 )

it's about 5 days old but not much activity

# du -h --max-depth=2 ./
73M     ./volumes/postgres
7.8M    ./volumes/pictrs
8.0K    ./volumes/lemmy-ui
81M     ./volumes
81M     ./

the latest backup is only 7.4 MB zipped, I use this backup script

#! /bin/bash
# https://join-lemmy.org/docs/administration/backup_and_restore.html#a-sample-backup-script
now=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H.%M.%S")

cd ~/lemmy && (docker-compose exec -T postgres pg_dumpall -c -U lemmy 1> dump.sql 2> dump.errors)
cd ~/lemmy && zip -r9 ~/bak-lemmy-$now.zip ./ --exclude "volumes/postgres/*"
rm -f ~/lemmy/dump.sql

like I said though, not much activity

and here's how my backup zip files have grown in size over time

6.6M bak-lemmy-2023-07-08_03.00.01.zip
6.6M bak-lemmy-2023-07-08_06.00.01.zip
6.6M bak-lemmy-2023-07-08_09.00.01.zip
6.6M bak-lemmy-2023-07-08_12.00.01.zip
6.6M bak-lemmy-2023-07-08_15.00.01.zip
6.6M bak-lemmy-2023-07-08_18.00.01.zip
6.6M bak-lemmy-2023-07-08_21.00.01.zip
6.6M bak-lemmy-2023-07-09_00.00.02.zip
6.6M bak-lemmy-2023-07-09_03.00.01.zip
6.6M bak-lemmy-2023-07-09_06.00.01.zip
6.6M bak-lemmy-2023-07-09_09.00.01.zip
6.6M bak-lemmy-2023-07-09_12.00.01.zip
6.6M bak-lemmy-2023-07-09_15.00.01.zip
6.6M bak-lemmy-2023-07-09_18.00.01.zip
6.6M bak-lemmy-2023-07-09_21.00.01.zip
6.7M bak-lemmy-2023-07-10_00.00.01.zip
6.7M bak-lemmy-2023-07-10_03.00.01.zip
6.7M bak-lemmy-2023-07-10_06.00.01.zip
6.7M bak-lemmy-2023-07-10_09.00.01.zip
6.8M bak-lemmy-2023-07-10_12.00.01.zip
6.8M bak-lemmy-2023-07-10_15.00.01.zip
7.0M bak-lemmy-2023-07-10_18.00.01.zip
7.0M bak-lemmy-2023-07-10_21.00.01.zip
7.0M bak-lemmy-2023-07-11_00.00.01.zip
7.0M bak-lemmy-2023-07-11_03.00.01.zip
7.0M bak-lemmy-2023-07-11_06.00.01.zip
7.0M bak-lemmy-2023-07-11_09.00.01.zip
7.0M bak-lemmy-2023-07-11_12.00.01.zip
7.0M bak-lemmy-2023-07-11_15.00.01.zip
7.4M bak-lemmy-2023-07-11_18.00.01.zip

Tested deleting the pictrs/files/001 which was at that point at ~150mb. And yes, it broke stuff. For example my Avatar and a local test community logo. To "purge" it, something would need to compare it to the database i guess. My size probably comes from /c/memes 😅
I thought remote images aren't cached localy 🤔

I think it might just be thumbnails that are cached locally? And obviously your own banner and local images

Looks like random? Both images are from meme@lemmy.ml didn't post on any of these 2 threads. It would be nice to know why sometimes its get copied. https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/b2e8d1e4-b638-4d04-9710-9fa28756261d.jpeg?format=webp https://lemmy.gwa.app/pictrs/image/962b1734-d524-468c-b3f9-4d615f91f094.png?format=webp

The interesting thing is, both posts originated from .world and when opened from the original sources are also hosted the.

https://lemmy.world/post/1318708

https://lemmy.gwa.app/post/1437

https://lemmy.world/post/1348802

https://lemmy.gwa.app/post/2310