It is my 3rd month of running #snac #snac2 instance. I wanted to share a few words about how awesome this software is.

Few points that make snac icredibly good for my usecase are:

• No database needed - means easy migration for me


• No javascript - not a big fan of JS


• No cookies - so users are not tracked


• It only stores locally data about users on the local instance it doesnt download stuff from instances it federates with


• Extremely low resource usage

After 3 month of posting (2 active users and 3 semi active users) my data dir is ~500MB and memory usage is ~200MB
it means i can keep running it on my infrastructure without even thinking too much about load

@grunfink@comam.es thanks for such a awesome piece of software 🩷🩷🩷

Coming next week: a post about the FediMeteo bot, how it works, how it has evolved, and the overall structure of jails. The following week: caching the BSD Cafe Mastodon instances on nginx.

Stay tuned on ITNotes!

#ITNotes #haproxy #nginx #FreeBSD #Mastodon #snac

Also, I think it's important to remember that #snac also allows following hashtags by those RSS feeds provided by several Fediverse implementations (like Mastodon), avoiding the need of subscribing to a relay. E.g., you can add https://mastodon.social/tags/snac to the followed hashtags field, and it will periodically poll that RSS from the big instance and add to your timeline those posts tagged with #snac.

CC: @astro@c3d2.social

The usual solution is to use an ActivityPub relay. This, however, resulted in receiving looots of posts, hitting file size and inode limits on this small VM. Thus, I gave up this experiment a while ago.

Now, I just stumbled about https://relay.fedi.buzz/ from @astro@c3d2.social, which allows to only follow certain hashtags, which is kinda exactly what I wanted ❤️

After following the Subscribing to Fediverse Relays section from snac(8), I came up with the following jq(1) command to subscribe each hashtag I am already following on my #snac instance. And yes, this would be way faster to do by hand for those six hashtags in total.

$ # Create multiple snac follow commands for each hashtag the "xz"
$ # user follows. The "data" directory is the $SNAC_BASEDIR.
$ jq -j \
  '.followed_hashtags.[] | "snac follow data relay https://relay.fedi.buzz/tag/",.[1:],"; "' \
  < data/user/xz/user.json
snac follow data relay https://relay.fedi.buzz/tag/openbsd; snac follow data relay https://relay.fedi.buzz/tag/snac; [ . . . ]

Finally, I am able to doomscroll #biketooter for weird and ridiculously expensive bikes from my instance; yay!

@Black_Flag @khleedril @veronica

We popularize #snac and #gotosocial for the individual, easy to deploy, diy freedom.
Friends not techies? Help 'em out and lend them an account. We need eachother more than ever these days.

Does anyone’s else use #takesama as client? it works pretty well with this #mastodon instance and #snac

But, you can have snac running from a subdirectory of your main domain (which, as far as I know, no other fediverse implementation does). I.e. you can have your snac root in example.com/social and then you can identify as you@example.com . So you have no unnecessary subdomain just to be you.

Which is what I do for this very domain.

CC: @mms@bsd.cafe

#snac doesn't support split domains ;-(

I was *so* close.

#FediMeteo #FediMeteoAnnouncements #FediMeteoUpdates #snac #snac2

Addendum: I also just learned about using the setgid bit on a directory. That was used, too. Cool! https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/Directory-Setuid-and-Setgid.html

It took two years for me to realise that Snac has the ability to show replies.

The obscure hamburger (⋯) in the footer area does not present a pointing finger cursor when pointed at.

If you click whilst the I-beam cursor (⌶) is visible, replies appear.

#Snac #UX

Alt...

Screenshot: an I-beam cursor (⌶) over the obscure hamburger (⋯) above the last line of the footer in Snac.

A pleasant technical read this has been

The notes have been absorbed

@itnotes

#Programming #BSD #snac #Proxy #networking #rules #FediVerse #wisdom #KISS

FediMeteo, HAProxy, and the art of not wasting snac threads

How FediMeteo uses HAProxy caching, static pages, and small FreeBSD jails to keep snac quiet and serve ActivityPub traffic efficiently.

https://it-notes.dragas.net/2026/05/18/fedimeteo-haproxy-and-the-art-of-not-wasting-snac-threads/

#FediMeteo #snac #snac2 #haproxy #freebsd #it #sysadmin #ITNotes

When I wrote about FediMeteo (https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/02/26/fedimeteo-how-a-tiny-freebsd-vps-became-a-global-weather-service-for-thousands/) for the first time, I told the story from the beginning: the idea born almost by chance while checking the weather for a holiday, the memory of my grandfather, who for years had been my personal meteorologist, the decision to build something small and useful, and then the surprise of seeing people actually use it. What began as a personal experiment quickly became a small global service, still running with the same philosophy: FreeBSD, jails, simple scripts, snac, text, emoji, and a lot of small pieces doing their work quietly.

That article was mostly about the birth and growth of the project. This one is about one of the less romantic parts of the same story, although I have to admit that I find a certain beauty in it too: keeping the service light as it grows.

FediMeteo (https://fedimeteo.com) is still intentionally simple from the outside. A homepage, some numbers, a list of countries, and many ActivityPub accounts publishing weather forecasts. The posts are text and emoji. There is no JavaScript requirement to read the pages, no heavy frontend, no unnecessary media attached to every forecast, and no dynamic homepage recalculated at every visit just to show the same numbers. This is not accidental. It is the way I wanted the service to behave from the beginning.

But the more the service is used, the more the small details matter. A request that looks harmless when there are ten followers may become a repeated request when there are thousands of followers, remote instances, crawlers, previews, and other servers fetching the same public objects. In the Fediverse, the same small thing can be asked many times by many different places, each one with a perfectly legitimate reason. The backend doesn't care: it just needs to deal with the requests.

And in FediMeteo, the backend is snac (https://codeberg.org/grunfink/snac2).

I like snac very much precisely because it is small, clear, and efficient. It is not a giant application that tries to be everything. It does a focused job and does it well. But this also means that I want to respect its shape. I do not want to waste its threads on work that the reverse proxy can safely do. A snac thread serving the same public avatar again and again is not a tragedy, but it is still a waste. A snac thread answering the same public ActivityPub object several times in the same minute is doing real work, but often not necessary work.

This is the reason behind the HAProxy (https://www.haproxy.org) tuning I am currently using in front of FediMeteo.

It is not about making the configuration look clever. It is about keeping snac quiet.

A continuation of the same idea

This is especially important because snac uses a limited number of threads. I like that. Limits are healthy. They force us to understand what the service is doing, and they prevent a small program from pretending to be an infinite resource. But limits also make waste visible. If a few threads are busy serving files that could have been served from cache, those threads are not available for something more useful.

With FediMeteo the implementation is different because the reverse proxy is HAProxy, but the reasoning is the same. I have many small snac instances, each one in its own FreeBSD (Bastille (https://github.com/BastilleBSD/bastille)) jail, and one public entry point that has to route, terminate TLS, compress, cache, and generally remove as much repetitive work as possible from the backends.

This is, in a way, the natural continuation of the original FediMeteo design. In the first article I wrote that I wanted to manage everything according to the Unix philosophy: small pieces working together. This is another piece of that same puzzle. HAProxy does the edge work. snac does the ActivityPub work. Scripts generate forecasts. cron launches updates. ZFS gives me snapshots. FreeBSD jails keep countries separated. Nothing is particularly heroic by itself, but the whole system becomes pleasant because each part has a clear responsibility.

Why there is almost no media

FediMeteo does not use media in its forecasts.

No images attached to the posts, no generated weather cards, no maps for each city, no decorative banners. The forecasts are text and emoji. This was a deliberate decision. Weather information does not become more useful just because it is put inside an image, and every media file used by the service would become something to store, serve, cache, federate, expire, back up, and occasionally debug.

Text and emoji are enough. They are accessible, light, readable in text browsers, friendly to timelines, and understandable even when someone does not know the local language perfectly. This was one of the original design principles of FediMeteo, and it also helps the infrastructure. Less media means less work, fewer cache entries, fewer repeated fetches, fewer surprises.

There is one exception: the avatar.

All FediMeteo accounts use the same avatar, and this is also intentional. I could have used a different avatar for each country, or for each city, or created something visually richer. It would have been nicer in some screenshots, perhaps. It would also have been operationally worse.

With one shared avatar, the reverse proxy has one very useful object to cache. It is public, identical for everyone, small, requested often, and therefore almost always hot in cache. HAProxy can serve it directly instead of asking each snac instance to return the same file. Since avatars are requested by remote instances, browsers, profile previews, and all sorts of federation-related fetches, this single decision removes a surprising amount of pointless backend traffic.

So the avatar is not only a visual identity. It is part of the architecture.

This is the kind of optimization I like most, because it starts before the software. It starts with deciding not to create a problem.

The homepage is static because it can be static

It is a static HTML page generated from a template. Once per hour, a cron script updates the numbers and statistics. It counts the data I want to show, regenerates the page, and then the page remains static until the next run.

This is not because I cannot make a dynamic page. It is because I do not need one. Boring is good.

The homepage does not need to query all the country instances on every visit. It does not need a database request for each user who opens it. It does not need to ask snac anything in real time. The numbers are useful, but they do not need to be updated every second. Once per hour is enough, and it also fits the spirit of the whole project: do the work when it is needed, then serve the result cheaply.

I have seen too many small services become heavy because the first implementation was convenient rather than appropriate. A cron job and a template are not fashionable, but they are often exactly what a page like this needs.

Many countries, one entry point

fedimeteo.com
www.fedimeteo.com
it.fedimeteo.com
uk.fedimeteo.com
jp.fedimeteo.com
us.fedimeteo.com
usa.fedimeteo.com
can.fedimeteo.com
canada.fedimeteo.com

At the beginning, it is always tempting to write one ACL after another in the HAProxy frontend. It is quick, it is explicit, and for five hostnames it is perfectly fine. But FediMeteo did not remain at five hostnames. As countries and aliases grew, a long chain of ACLs would have turned the frontend into a list of names instead of a description of how the proxy behaves.

So I moved the hostname to backend mapping into a map file:

fedimeteo.com        backend_fedimeteo
www.fedimeteo.com    backend_fedimeteo
it.fedimeteo.com     backend_it
uk.fedimeteo.com     backend_uk
jp.fedimeteo.com     backend_jp
us.fedimeteo.com     backend_us
usa.fedimeteo.com    backend_us
can.fedimeteo.com    backend_ca
canada.fedimeteo.com backend_ca

use_backend %[req.hdr(host),field(1,:),lower,map(/usr/local/etc/fedimeteo.map,backend_fedimeteo)]

I like this because it keeps the configuration honest. The frontend contains the policy. The map contains the data. Adding a country means adding an entry to the map and defining a backend. I do not need to make the frontend more complicated every time the service grows.

Backends as small compartments

backend backend_it
    mode http
    http-reuse safe
    server srv1 10.0.0.2:8001 maxconn 30
backend backend_uk
    mode http
    http-reuse safe
    server srv1 10.0.0.7:8001 maxconn 30
backend backend_jp
    mode http
    http-reuse safe
    server srv1 10.0.0.32:8001 maxconn 30

The maxconn 30 value is not a magic number. It is a ceiling. I want each small backend to have a visible limit in front of it. If something starts hammering a country instance, I prefer the pressure to appear at the HAProxy layer instead of becoming unlimited concurrent work inside snac.

http-reuse safe lets HAProxy reuse backend connections where appropriate. This is another small reduction in unnecessary work. Opening connections repeatedly is not the biggest problem in the world, but avoiding it is still better, especially when many small services sit behind the same proxy.

The front door

frontend https_in
    bind :::443 v4v6 ssl crt /usr/local/etc/certs/ alpn h2,http/1.1
    mode http
    option http-keep-alive

ssl-default-bind-ciphersuites TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256:TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:TLS_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256
ssl-default-bind-options no-sslv3 no-tlsv10 no-tlsv11 no-tls-tickets

acl letsencrypt-acl path_beg /.well-known/acme-challenge/
http-request redirect scheme https code 301 unless letsencrypt-acl
use_backend letsencrypt-backend if letsencrypt-acl

http-request set-header X-Real-IP %[src]
http-request set-header X-Forwarded-Proto https

http-response set-header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload"

Two caches, because the requests are different

cache mediacache
  total-max-size 128
  max-object-size 10000000
  max-age 3600
  process-vary on
  max-secondary-entries 12
cache jsoncache
  total-max-size 16
  max-object-size 1000000
  max-age 60
  process-vary on
  max-secondary-entries 12

The media cache is larger and has a longer maximum age. In FediMeteo, this mostly means the shared avatar and a few static-looking objects. Since there is intentionally almost no media, the important cached object is requested very often and remains warm.

The JSON cache is smaller and short-lived. It is there for public ActivityPub GET requests, not to store federation state forever. A 60 second cache is enough to collapse many repeated requests that arrive close together in time, without pretending that ActivityPub responses should be treated like immutable files.

This distinction is important. Caching is not one decision. It is a set of small decisions about what a response means, who can see it, how often it changes, and what happens if it is served again.

Recognizing media

acl is_media path_end -i .jpg .jpeg .png .gif .webp .svg .ico .mp4 .webm .mp3 .ogg .wav .flac .mov .avi .mkv .m4v

http-request set-var(txn.is_media) bool(true) if is_media

http-request cache-use mediacache if { var(txn.is_media) -m bool true }

http-response set-header Cache-Control "max-age=3600, public" if { var(txn.is_media) -m bool true }
http-response del-header Set-Cookie if { var(txn.is_media) -m bool true }
http-response del-header Vary if { var(txn.is_media) -m bool true }
http-response cache-store mediacache if { var(txn.is_media) -m bool true }

This is aggressive only if removed from its context. In this service, with this media policy, it is a reasonable choice. FediMeteo is not serving private media under these paths. It is mostly serving the same public avatar over and over.

For the same reason, I clean the request before it reaches the backend:

http-request del-header Authorization if { var(txn.is_media) -m bool true }
http-request del-header Cookie        if { var(txn.is_media) -m bool true }

The result is exactly what I want: the shared avatar becomes an almost perfect cache object. Small, public, repeatedly requested, and served by HAProxy instead of snac.

ActivityPub JSON microcaching

acl is_ap_json   req.hdr(Accept),lower -m sub application/activity+json
acl is_ap_ldjson req.hdr(Accept),lower -m sub application/ld+json
acl is_outbox    path_end /outbox
acl is_get       method GET
acl has_auth     req.hdr(Authorization) -m found
acl has_cookie   req.hdr(Cookie) -m found

So I only mark public ActivityPub GET requests as cacheable:

http-request set-var(txn.is_activitypub) bool(true) if is_get !is_outbox is_ap_json !has_auth !has_cookie
http-request set-var(txn.is_activitypub) bool(true) if is_get !is_outbox is_ap_ldjson !has_auth !has_cookie

It must be a GET, because I am not caching deliveries or anything that changes state. It must not be /outbox, because outbox collections are not the traffic I want to cache here. It must not have Authorization, and it must not have cookies, because authenticated or user-specific requests do not belong in a shared public cache.

Then the cache can be used and populated:

http-request cache-use jsoncache if { var(txn.is_activitypub) -m bool true }
http-response set-header Cache-Control "max-age=60, public" if { var(txn.is_activitypub) -m bool true }
http-response cache-store jsoncache if { var(txn.is_activitypub) -m bool true }

This is microcaching in the most practical sense. It reduces repeated work without changing the nature of the service.

Static media paths

acl is_short_path path_reg ^/[^/]+/s/
http-request cache-use mediacache if is_short_path

In FediMeteo this is less central than on a normal social instance, because I deliberately do not use media except for the avatar and basic static objects. Still, the rule fits the general policy: let HAProxy handle repeatable edge work, and let snac spend its threads where they are actually needed.

Vary, but not without limits

process-vary on
max-secondary-entries 12

For media, I remove Vary before storing the response. A shared avatar does not need to vary by Accept. For ActivityPub JSON, I am more careful because the representation matters.

Again, the important thing is not the number itself. It is the decision to make variation explicit and limited.

Seeing whether it works

http-response set-header X-Cache-Status HIT if !{ srv_id -m found }
http-response set-header X-Cache-Status MISS if { srv_id -m found }

Did this request reach snac?

A test can be as simple as:

curl -I https://it.fedimeteo.com/path/to/avatar.png
curl -I https://it.fedimeteo.com/path/to/avatar.png

For ActivityPub JSON, the test must use the right Accept header:

curl -I \
  -H 'Accept: application/activity+json' \
  https://it.fedimeteo.com/some/activitypub/object

curl -I \
  -H 'Cookie: test=value' \
  -H 'Accept: application/activity+json' \
  https://it.fedimeteo.com/some/activitypub/object
curl -I \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer fake' \
  -H 'Accept: application/activity+json' \
  https://it.fedimeteo.com/some/activitypub/object

Compression and operational paths

filter compression
compression algo gzip
compression type text/css text/html text/javascript application/javascript text/plain text/xml application/json application/activity+json

There is also a local Prometheus exporter:

frontend prometheus
  bind 127.0.0.1:8405
  mode http
  http-request use-service prometheus-exporter
  no log

What this changes in practice

The map keeps hostname routing manageable. The backend definitions keep each country isolated and limited. The static homepage avoids dynamic work for something that changes once per hour. The shared avatar gives HAProxy one very hot media object to serve directly. The media cache keeps public files away from snac. The JSON microcache absorbs short ActivityPub bursts. Header cleanup prevents useless variation. Connection reuse avoids unnecessary backend connection churn.

But all of this is only a longer way of saying one thing:

fewer requests reach snac.

That is the metric I care about here.

Not because snac is slow. If anything, FediMeteo exists in its current form because snac is efficient enough to make this kind of project possible on a very small VPS. But precisely because the whole architecture is small and pleasant, I do not want to waste resources where there is no need.

This is also consistent with the rest of the project. Forecasts are serialized by scripts. Updates happen every six hours. The homepage is regenerated hourly. Countries live in separate jails. Snapshots and backups are handled outside the application. No single component tries to be the entire system.

HAProxy is just another small piece, but it sits in the right place to remove a lot of repeated work.

Caveats

It matches FediMeteo as it is now: almost no media, one shared avatar, static homepage, public forecasts, many small snac instances, and ActivityPub traffic that can benefit from a short public cache when there are no cookies or authorization headers.

If I decide one day to use media in forecasts, the media cache rules will need to be reviewed. If I use different avatars for each city or country, the cache will still work, but I will lose the very nice property of one shared, always-hot avatar. If ActivityPub responses become actor-dependent, public JSON caching must be reconsidered. If one country grows a very different traffic pattern from the others, it may deserve a different limit or policy.

This is why I do not like presenting configurations as magic. A good configuration is a written form of the assumptions behind a service. When the assumptions change, the configuration must change too.

Conclusion

The HAProxy layer follows this idea. It terminates TLS, routes hostnames through a map, reuses backend connections, serves the shared avatar from cache, microcaches public ActivityPub JSON, avoids authenticated and cookie-based traffic, and gives me a small diagnostic header to see what is happening.

There is no single brilliant directive here. There is only the usual work of matching infrastructure to reality.

FediMeteo publishes weather forecasts as text and emoji. The homepage is static HTML updated every hour. The accounts share the same avatar because it is enough, and because it is better for the cache. Each country has its own snac instance in its own FreeBSD jail. HAProxy stands in front of them and tries, quietly, not to bother them unless it has to.

I like this kind of infrastructure.

Not because it is invisible, but because when it works well, it leaves very little to say.

https://it-notes.dragas.net/2026/05/18/fedimeteo-haproxy-and-the-art-of-not-wasting-snac-threads/

#ITNotes #NoteHUB #fediverse #freebsd #haproxy #hosting #jail #networking #ownyourdata #server #snac #snac2 #social #web

https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/pull/32773

GitHub Continuous Integration checks passed!

It's up to someone else with commit access to merge it.

Thanks to you and la_ninpre, trondd555, sergiodj, kpm, zen, pmjv and anyone else I may have missed for the improvements in this release!

My apologies for taking so long to get around to submitting a PR. I check repology.org multiple times a day, most days, but for some reason only saw snac needed attention a few hours ago! This may inspire me to rejigger MacPorts' livecheck stuff for local/sanity check/resilience/not putting all my eggs into one basket/etc.

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

#FediMeteoUpdates #FediMeteoAnnouncements

#snac2 #fediverse #frugalfediverse

Changed default: for newly created instances, disable_inbox_collection is set to true (see snac(8) for more information). The reason is because it seems to be used for harrasing people.

Changed default: for newly created instances, disable_history is set to true (see snac(8) for more information). The reason is because archived history files don't reflect reality after posts are deleted or modified (they always have been an ugly kludge).

Changed default: in previous versions, posts with a scope of unlisted were shown in public pages and RSS feeds. Now, they are no longer shown. If you want to get back to previous behaviour, use a new toggle in the User Settings section (see snac(1) for more information).

New admin configuration option: if the purge_static value is set to true in server.json, each user's static directory is explored and those files there that are no longer attached to any post or referenced anywhere are deleted. See snac(8) for more information about those cases where you may not want to enable this option.

Allow serving files from subdirectories of the static/ subdirectory (contributed by la_ninpre).

Minor tweak to webfinger code to handle Hubzilla's peculiarities.

Fixed a search case where URLs to GotoSocial statuses were misidentified as accounts.

Accounts that follow you are now marked with a thumb-up emoji, because followers are adorable people.

Fixed some account export errors.

Fixed an incorrect hash in post links.

Show an account's location link in the people page, if they have one.

Mastodon API: Fixed hashtags loosing the link after editing a post, minor tweak in access token processing (contributed by trondd555).

Drop usage of PATH_MAX (contributed by sergiodj).

New Polish translation (contributed by kpm).

Updated German and Czech translations (contributed by zen and pmjv).

https://comam.es/what-is-snac

If you find #snac useful, please consider buying grunfink a coffee or contributing via LiberaPay.

#snacAnnounces #FrugalFediverse

Like on resources. I can run this on a potato if I want and it would still run great (I'm not, but I could*.)

• Backups are easy. Tar up the directory. Done.
• Migrations are easy. Install nginx, build snac, untag backup. Done.
• Quirky web interface. It takes a little to get used to it, but it is very functional and it's got character. I thought I would use Phanpy with it more, but I'm not. I enjoy the snac web interface.
• Works (mostly) with Mastodon clients.
• No crazy caching of photos, avatars and other media. This is a really big deal because my disk usage is so much lower than when I ran Mastodon.
• No database. NO DATABASE. So good.
• Fast. snac is really fast doing everything. It's nice.
• @grunfink@comam.es is awesome. Friendly and responsive.

Looks like it has basic Markdown -> HTML converting. Neat.

That

works

for

me.

• (I'm not gonna show it all)

And of course, no post or poll length limit :)

#Snac #SnacServer #SelfHosting

Hashtag following also allow URLs to RSS feeds of ActivityPub objects (like e.g. https://mastodon.social/tags/ThankYouTuesday).

Users can now configure a webhook to receive an HTTP POST for every notification. This can be useful for implementing bots that react to activities, like autorepliers, chatbots or interactive textual games (see snac(1) for more information).

The number of pending follow confirmations is shown next to the "people" link.

Faster performance metrics (contributed by dandelions).

Improved lowercasing in hashtags (contributed by postscriptum).

A search-by-url tweak for implementations that return 200 for invalid webfinger queries (e.g. piefed).

Mastodon API: added follow confirmation endpoints, fixed collisions in attachment file names.

Fixed potential crashes in attachment uploads.

https://comam.es/what-is-snac

If you find #snac useful, please consider buying grunfink a coffee or contributing via LiberaPay.

#snacAnnounces #FrugalFediverse

Notifications are now shown in a more compact way (i.e. all reactions are shown just above your post, instead of repeating the post ad nauseam for every reaction).

New command-line option unmute to, well, no-longer-mute an actor.

The private timeline now includes an approximate mark between new posts and "already seen" ones.

Fixed a spurious 404 error in the instance root URL for some configurations.

https://comam.es/what-is-snac

If you find #snac useful, please consider contributing via LiberaPay: https://liberapay.com/grunfink/

#snacAnnounces

This release has been inspired by the song The Answers to the Questions by #Christabell and #DavidLynch.

https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/01/29/improving-snac-performance-with-nginx-proxy-cache/