The default Mastodon search only returns results for posts that have federated with your server and include a hashtag. Mastodon supports ElasticSearch/Full-text search. When enabled, users on a Mastodon server can search posts related to themselves. Examples: Posts they published Posts they favourited Posts where they were mentioned Their direct messages This can be handy but requires a significant amount … Read More
Finding people to follow on Mastodon
Due to the decentralised nature of Mastodon, finding people to follow may be easier on large Mastodon servers but on smaller ones may require some looking around outside your server. In particular if you are joining a new server or smaller server that will be the case most often than not. If you have just installed a brand new Mastodon … Read More
Testing custom code to fight spam registration on Mastodon
Registration spam is a tricky problem. The common solution is to present a CAPTCHA but I do understand the hesitation to implement them and I also don’t like it. CAPTCHAs are an ugly solution, they bring the burden of a problem to the end user and cause problems with accessibility. Also, creating a good CAPTCHA that is not dependent on … Read More
Mastodon usernames different from the domain used for installation
By default when you install Mastodon on a domain, or subdomain, that will determine how the username of users on that Mastodon server will be. Example, if you install Mastodon on social.example.com a user on that server will be @myusername@social.example.com. This can be changed and you can install Mastodon on social.example.com but have your username be @myusername@example.com or even @myusername@differentdomain.com … Read More
Custom processing of videos and GIFs
Masto.host server resources are shared between Mastodon servers. This offers some optimisation in terms of resource usage for concurrent active users, as people access at different times and peak active users per Mastodon server is very different depending on the location of most of its users. Still, the sharing of resources also causes a problem in terms of federation. When … Read More
Sidekiq and Web limits
Both Sidekiq and Web limits only limit the concurrency, meaning how much “work” they can do simultaneously. As an example, a limit of 2 Sidekiq threads will only allow at any given time a maximum of 2 Sidekiq jobs to be running. The same goes for the Web process but the Web process allows for multiple workers. In theory a … Read More
I had to block some external instances
There is a bug that in a very specific situation, instances running version 2.3.x (not sure if others) can get a stuck Sidekiq request to /users/___username___/collections/featured This causes an endless loop of that request and could bring my servers to an halt. So, I had to make the decision to block several instances that were causing a massive amount of … Read More
Mastodon PgBouncer Guide
I did some changes to the initial commit by Nolan to the documentation of Mastodon PgBouncer Guide. As my pull request is still waiting to be approved, I leave it also here because I had some trouble to get it to work with the instructions that were initially shared. Installing PgBouncer On Ubuntu/Debian: sudo apt install pgbouncer Then: nano /etc/default/pgbouncer … Read More