@grunfink I submitted a Pull Request to update MacPorts' snac to 2.60 here:

https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/pull/26129

All GitHub Actions Continuous Integration checks passed OK.

I still am not in a place in my life where commit access is a responsibility I am willing to take on, so it is up to someone else to merge it.

Neat to see the improvements to Mastodon migration in this release! Maybe that will help facilitate more users?

Thank you, as usual! Also, nice to see a code push on a Thursday (in UTC at least?) not a Friday! ^_^

#snac #MacPorts #OpenSource #ActivityPub #Mastodon #NoDatabaseNeeded #NoJavaScript #NoCookiesEither #NotMuchBullShit #snacAnnounces

#FreeBSD is great and I’m a long-term user but there’s room for improvements and time to support modern solutions without loosing our identity.

https://gyptazy.com/freebsd-how-can-we-make-it-more-attractive-to-new-users/

#bsd #runbsd #bsdnetwork #bsdcafe #opensource #BoxyBSD

Please follow me on my new handle, this one won't be used anymore! Thanks
#freebsd #openbsd #netbsd #eurobsdcon #eurobsdcon2024 #eurobsdcon24 #dragonflybsd #midnightbsd #boxybsd #runbsd #bsdams #bsdcafe #bsdnetwork #linux #debian #proxlb #qualvosec #gyptazy #container #docker #riscv #rv64 #riscv64 #opensource #community #conference

@grunfink I submitted a PR to update MacPorts' snac to 2.59 here:

https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/pull/25774

Passed the GitHub Actions CI checks.

As usual, I don't have commit access so it's up to someone else to merge it.

Thank you for your continued improvements and bug fixes! I see even since the 2.59 release there's already been changes to the repo.

Also, while I am not the biggest VNV Nation fan, I have seen them perform live at least once, groovy to see some resonance in audio inspiration too! ^_^

#snac #MacPorts #OpenSource #ActivityPub #Mastodon #NoDatabaseNeeded #NoJavaScript #NoCookiesEither #NotMuchBullShit #snacAnnounces

A small compendium of the Fediverse platforms I use/know well.

In the past few days, I revisited some of my old Fediverse instances since some friends asked me to help them set up a new one. I also took the chance to perform maintenance on some leftover instances. Here's my experience:

Akkoma: My oldest instance still running, opened in 2022. It was offline for a few months (3/4). I updated everything to the latest version and restarted it. I’m not sure why, but it’s extremely slow, with a heavy load on Postgres and many queries just to open the main page. I like Akkoma - I'll investigate further.

GoToSocial: I updated a friend's instance - GoToSocial itself was up-to-date, but the underlying system wasn’t. I noticed that once it exceeds 2000 followings, it becomes a bit slow. The database is PostgreSQL, but that's not the issue. The GoToSocial process becomes somewhat heavy on the VPS. Still, it's very usable and a software with great potential, in my opinion. The Mastodon API is implemented quite well and works with the major software.

Mitra: It seems well-built. The person had around 1000 followers and followings on a Mastodon account, which they moved from a large instance. No speed issues, though sending a message makes the server “heavy” for a bit, but it’s temporary. The Mastodon API is partially implemented, but the software is advancing quickly, and I find its native interface quite pleasant.

Snac2: I've always had a soft spot for Snac2. The lack of a database and some design choices make it an excellent solution for small instances. For example, sending posts to all known instances increases visibility and interaction. Its basic, JavaScript-free interface is very clear, though it might not be the best for those used to Mastodon. But the Mastodon API is improving version by version, and I think the developer is doing an excellent job. It struggles a bit with larger numbers, but that's due to the underlying file system, not the software itself. If "move" support (both in and out) were added, I would recommend it to anyone starting self-hosting for single-user or small community instances because "move" is one of the options that gives the most freedom in Fediverse software.

Mastodon: My “old” personal instance was stuck at version 4.1.x and had been offline for a few months. I updated the FreeBSD Jail and upgraded Mastodon to 4.2.12 and then to 4.3.0-beta1. No issues. I also helped a friend (who had an old Pleroma-based instance they barely used) migrate. This user has around 5000 followers and followings - Mastodon is running on FreeBSD on a VPS (arm64) for just over 3 euros a month, with no significant issues (apart from media storage, but that's not Mastodon’s fault). Mastodon is sometimes said to be heavy, and that's partly true, but its modularity ensures that even in cases of overload, queues may slow down, but navigation and the local timeline remain reasonably fast. I think this is a good thing for any larger-scale use of an instance.

In short, I think things are moving in the right direction, and the software is evolving nicely. Well done, devs!

#Fediverse #Akkoma #GoToSocial #Mitra #Snac2 #Snac #Mastodon #SelfHosting #InstanceManagement #FreeBSD #OpenSource

happy to hear and thank you very much - really appreciated! The project started initially for another one of my project (BoxyBSD.com - which offers free VMs for the opensource community, education and IPv6 learning) where VMs are used in completely different ways. Some VMs simply idle, some are just being used for testing, some are heavily beding used for opensource projects including compiling etc. So, this was the reason to me to create something like a load balancer. BoxyBSD is mostly based on #Proxmox and #bhyve (on #FreeBSD).

Later, a customer asked me if there's something similar to #DRS (in #VMware) for Proxmox. This made me to polish it up and make it available to everyone. I think it's a great opportunity to make a huge movement to opensource products in the current situation. I also said it at the #FrOSCon #conference last week, we can now really make a change in the virtualization section and set a baseline to #opensource products - just like the most of the base infrastructure in the internet.

In diesem Sinne - vielen Dank noch mal und einen schönen Abend :)

@fnwbr@chaos.social

simply use -b (--best-node) to get the best node for your placement! Also soon available on the ProxLB API! Perfect for Ansible & Terraform 🎉

Find out more: https://proxlb.de

#vmware #alternatives #esx #esxi #cloud #harvester #opensource #vm #virtualmachine #hosting #vm #container #lxc #ansible #terraform #proxlb

#froscon19 #froscon24 #froscon2024 #opensource

ProxLB is a Load Balancer for #Proxmox clusters, which rebalances your VM/CT workloads across nodes in your cluster.

https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/releases/tag/v1.0.2

#virtualization #virtualisation #vmware #esxi #esx #kvm #qemu #xcpng #xen #xenserver #alternatives #opensource #free #fediverse #support #migration #VM #virtualmachines #virtualmachines #container #containers #LXC

This ensures, that nodes in a Proxmox cluster are being automatically patched. Therefore, ProxLB now also comes with its own API which provides other nodes to identify the current state of other nodes in cluster. By this, we're finally able to keep nodes aware of potential maintenance windows when being patched and to move workloads away to other nodes in a balanced way and honouring the resources. Also, we can identify if a system reboot for the newly installed packages is required and skip moving those workloads away. However, I want to have everything done by the Proxmox API or ProxLB API which requires me to extend the Proxmox API by the new features. I try to get those into upstream to avoid maintaining a dedicated packages providing this extended features in the Proxmox API. I'm happy to see people testing this feature, please do NOT use this on production systems right now.

PR:
https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/pull/48

#vmware #proxmox #xcpng #updates #security #opensource #infrastructure #virtualization

@grunfink I submitted a PR to update MacPorts' snac to 2.57 here:

https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/pull/25258

GitHub Actions CI went OK!

I don't have commit access, so it's up to someone else to merge it.

Thank you for continuing to improve and iterate snac!

#snac #MacPorts #OpenSource #ActivityPub #Mastodon #NoDatabaseNeeded #NoJavaScript #NoCookiesEither #NotMuchBullShit #snacAnnounces

When people ask me how I can provide such a service, they mostly inly think about the hardware and the costs. Trust me, that’s the least of the problems! Running such a service is more about avoiding and handling service abuses. Free services tend to be abused by people and this is the most difficult part - protection!

But let’s have a short look at the things…

Passion (why?):
The passion and idea behind this project is probably the most interesting part. I can clearly remember the time back in the days when I started in tech and had even then an outdated, slow and rarely working system. It was pure pain to work with it, but luckily it did somehow its job. However, doing more difficult thinks were mostly impossible: Higher loads led into shutdowns - I had to undervolt the system, write kernel modules for undervolting support (which were really appreciated in the community) but also all other resources didn’t gave me the possibility to run more exiting things. Renting a „cheap“ server (back in that day virtual server were not really known and the first implementations based on chroots like OpenVZ were coming years later) was impossible to me. So, learning in real-life scenarios was mostly impossible to me and made everything more difficult. I really know and remember these times where I had to deal somehow with limitations. This is good but also bad. The good thing is, you become really creative into finding solutions and get really nit picky about improving things. The other thing is, it makes your life really hard. With BoxyBSD I want to provide passionated and interested people the opportunity to get at least a system where they can learn and educate. They get a fully usable VM where they can configure, run and use the system how they like (unless they’re not violating the ToS). They have a public IPv6 address (and even a whole additional /64 network) to also learn and practice more complex network solutions. They can run servers, learn how things for their future. Often they quickly find out why a PTR is needed for sending mails (sure, you can also define your reverse DNS at BoxyBSD) but also why firewalling ICMP6 isn’t a great idea (at least you want to have RA & ND active). Things you mostly learn the hard wary in real life setups. But BoxyBSD is also about more - it’s also about supporting the #opensource community. BoxyBSD also sponsors opensource projects like #Freeway, #Telescope & #GameOfTrees. And everything at zero costs!

Resources (how?):

Resources are probably the thing that mostly pops up in the mind of people when hearing about this service and yes - it of course requires a lot of resources since I’m providing full VMs for each user without any over provisioning in memory or disk which are too volatile in this project. But the resources are often already present. In this case, I already have my own labs based on #Proxmox and #bhyve which are built in a fully productional way. This gives me the possibility to provide resource left overs to this project. Also, there are sponsors like Moritz from @nerdscavehosting@mastodon.social who sponsors nodes which are dedicated used to this project. Next to this, the question is about another resource - time! The whole infrastructure if fully automated by simply choosing the desired OS and pressing „create VM“ everything else in handled fully automatically. A desired node is obtained by my side project (ProxLB - in a customised version to also support bhyve hosts), the VM created and a the IP address returned. That’s it - easy!

Protection (the real issue):
The real issue is about people that’s going to abuse the service. This was something I had to learn the hard way. In the first iteration it was simply fully #FreeBSD #Jails based with a very simple interface where you just inserted your SSH pub key and immediately got returned an address of a Jail (if you’re interested, that was the first version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geOS4LTCwok). This was a way too easy and people immediately used it for sending spam mails. I had to take some actions but also didn’t want to block whole ports to make services unusable. Therefore, I had some other ideas which worked out very well, like forcing to use a relay with rate limiting. Today, BoxyBSD grew up, is running ob full fledged VMs providing users and developers the possibility to modify kernel and to have more deep possibilities to learn and test. By only providing images for #FreeBSD, #OpenBSD and #NetBSD (and #illumos / #OpenSolaris) the community and targeted people is smaller than usual. Also software that is written by Scriptkiddies often does not work out of the box on BSD based systems and needs (honestly only small) adjustments. But that’s also often already a reason not to abuse such services. It still may occur that someone is unintentionally doing bad things, generating a lot of traffic (like two weeks ago where someone made 2Gbps traffic for over 12 hours) but usually, this isn’t any problem. Proactive monitoring already notifies me (that’s the only thing where I need to step in) and validate to take actions if someone might be harmed or services affected.

In the end, I like to see that the community is more like a family where things are being used like their own ones. People even come in touch with me and letting me know that they don’t need the VM anymore and to free up the resources for other ones - that’s something I really love to see! Sometimes they come simply back when they need something again and get their new VM. I really love the BSD community and especially the #BSDCafe (https://bsd.cafe) and #BSDNetwork (https://bsd.network). Things can be simple!

PS: At the #FrOSCon you can grab some #BoxyBSD stickers. Just poke me when you see me :)

Ressources:
Call Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEHL4skVq3U&t
BoxyBSD Jail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geOS4LTCwok
Papers: https://cdn.gyptazy.ch/tech-talks/BoxyBSD-A_free_VM_hosting_service_for_education_and_research/BoxyBSD-A_free_VM_hosting_service_for_education_and_research.html
Website: https://boxybsd.com

#esx #esxi #homelab #virtualization #dpm #opensource #cluster

https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB

@BoxyBSD@bsd.cafe @BoxyBSD@bsd.cafe

Maybe we see each other in one of the talks. I'll also share some #BoxyBSD and #BSDCafe stickers, as well as the #Jails sheets from @Padukajorat@bsd.cafe Happy to see you all again!

#FrOSCon2024 #conference #socializing #socialising #conferences #opensource #freebsd #bsdcafe #boxybsd

* vm
* ct
* all

Keep in mind that containers can't be live migrated!

#virtualization #enterprise #homelab #opensource #vm #virtualmachines

https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB

* Used Resources: Rebalances VMs for the optimal resource usage by their currently used resources for efficiency

* Assigned Resources: Rebalances VMs by their max. assigned resources to guarantee the resources (avoid overprovisioning)

#proxmox #virtualmachines #hosting #kvm #qemu #esx #esxi #drs #cluster #vm #vms #virtualisation #virtualization #virtualisierung #opensource

https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB

#kvm #qemu #vmware #virt #vm #virtualization #virtualisation #virtualisierung #opensource

https://gyptazy.ch/blog/proxlb-rebalance-vm-workloads-across-nodes-in-proxmox-clusters/

#opensource #vm #virtualmachine #automation #ci #cicd #esx #esxi #drs #kvm #qemu #management

Excited to announce the release of NotiMail 1.0!

📧 NotiMail now includes:

* Log rotation based on size or time for efficient log management.
* Thread-safe email processing for seamless multi-account handling.
* Enhanced configuration validation to ensure smooth operations.
* Continued support for multiple push providers including Apprise, NTFY, Gotify, and Pushover.

Upgrade now and experience extended battery life, swift notifications, and reduced data consumption.

Check out the full changelog and installation guide on our GitHub!

https://github.com/draga79/NotiMail

#NotiMail #Email #Notifications #Tech #OpenSource #Python #Apprise #NTFY #Gotify #Pushover #SQLite #OwnYourData

Let’s continue to create great projects & code and contribute back to the #opensource community! Happy #coding! Have fun!

This has been (and still is) a very special week. The past 7 days have been emotionally (and, to a lesser extent, work-wise) very challenging. And even when I'm tired, I realize that, in my opinion, I have the best job in the world. Because working with open-source tools provides everyone with the same opportunities, in the most open and free manner possible. Few fields offer the same conditions, and I feel like I belong to a great group, a group of passionate and constructive people, without any distinctions of any kind.

#OpenSource #BestJobEver #Community #Inclusivity #TechLife

I'm thrilled to announce that my talk for EuroBSDcon 2024 has been accepted! I am incredibly happy and honored. It will be a fantastic experience. Thank you to the team for your trust!

#EuroBSDcon #TechConference #OpenSource #BSDCommunity #RunBSD #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #DragonFlyBSD

I have made a web tool that can import Mastodon lists into a different instance. Hopefully this will be added into the actual app, but it was faster to make an external tool.

https://www.eliotlash.com/masto-list-importer/

A #CommandLine tool is also available if you click through to the GitHub Page.

#MastoDev #MastoMeta #MastoMigration #MastodonMigration #OpenSource