To clarify, when you or another user in your server follows a remote user, from that moment on, all new posts from that remote user start to federate with your server. By federate, you can think of a copy of those posts are stored in the database. If you follow 1000 remote users and another user on your server follows … Read More
How is database disk space calculated on Masto.host?
The Mastodon database includes many PostgreSQL indexes. Indexes aim to make the database more responsive when performing queries against large data sets. There is a particularity with the way PostgreSQL indexes work. They do not release disk space once some data is deleted from a table. For example, let’s say you have a PostgreSQL database with 1000 records and a … Read More
Why is the database size smaller in backups?
Most databases need indexes. Indexes aim to make the database more responsive when performing queries against large data sets. In the case of the Mastodon database, many indexes are necessary to make Mastodon faster to retrieve data. The more indexes one creates, the more disk space is needed, even if the data on the database is the same. When generating … Read More