Our instance is currently down and I can't get remote access to the servers. It appears that there might have been a hardware failure of the main firewall, which is the one thing I can't work around remotely.

I am still trying a few things, but I am not very optimistic that I can get access.

The really unfortunate part is that just now I am on one of my rare work deployments abroad, so I also can't access it physically during the next few weeks and my usual back up that could restart it is not available either.

As something like that never happened in 3 years operating the servers, I thought I can risk it, but murphy's law seems inescapable 😓

I will try to keep you posted here on any updates, but probably there will not be much I can do for a while. Really bad timing 😥

Edit: we might use this "opportunity" to migrate the instance to Piefed, which has been an idea for quite some time now. I will keep you posted on that.

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] LeighWeighTacoma@lemmy.world 4 points 20 hours ago

I appreciate the update was thoroughly confused

[–] pjusk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Thanks for all that you do for us and this community! A little downtime won't hurt anyone. I would also be in gavour of PieFed migration 💙

[–] solo@fedia.io 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I totally agree with everything you said :)

I just created an account in PieFed and it looks very interesting because there is the option to create your own feeds! I had the wrong impression that you can only choose from the existing ones. This is so exciting!!!

[–] AnarchistArtificer@lemmy.world 2 points 53 minutes ago (1 children)

That sounds pretty cool. I don't know much about Piefed — would we still be able to access posts from Lemmy instances?

[–] PirateFrog@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 9 minutes ago

Yes, they're 100% cross compatible. As an example, you can access !piefed_meta@piefed.social from your Lemmy instance seamlessly.

[–] nichtsowichtig@feddit.org 5 points 1 day ago

I'd probably make an account there if it moves to piefed.

[–] ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I this it’s a law that servers run 100% perfect until the literal day one leaves town with zero way to return home. One of the many reasons I got all my services off of unraid.

Very cool to learn you’re running your own machines. Do you go into detail about this anywhere?

[–] Kris@feddit.org 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

We have a small write up about the hardware on our wiki, but it is also down right now.

I think we will share a post-mortem write up of the actual improvements we will do to avoid this in the future.

One thing I will definitly do is to add a KVM remote management console to one of our server boards and move the main firewall into a VM with hardware passthrough of the NICs (this was anyways planned for a 10gbit network upgrade for the second half of 2025). This way I should be able to reboot and even reinstall the main ingress point remotely, so that only the fiber gateway remains as a failure point that requires physical access.

[–] Initiateofthevoid@lemmy.dbzer0.com 36 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Try not to stress too much about it while you're away! If nothing can be done, nothing can be done. Solarpunks need to be resilient to things like this anyway. Community over convenience.

[–] Kris@feddit.org 20 points 2 days ago

Thanks, I am trying, but it really is quite annoying to lose access like that.

[–] tofu@lemmy.nocturnal.garden 94 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Solarpunks can have a little downtime, as a treat

[–] evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world 60 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Seriously, I think a big part of solarpunk ethos is combating the notion that everything has to always be available 24/7. Society pays a lot to deliver every convenience like fruit out of season from the other side of the world.

[–] stabby_cicada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 25 points 3 days ago

And on the punk side of things, anybody familiar with volunteer community action, cooperative events, whatever, knows that sometimes a person doing shit for the community fails to do the shit they were supposed to do because some other shit happened in their life. It happens. We just move on to the backup shit-doer-person or find a workaround for the lack of shit.

And this is the cool thing about a distributed network like Lemmy. If a giant centralized database like FB goes down, its users can't do anything. If our favorite Lemmy node goes down, we can log into other nodes until our home base is back up.

[–] blazeknave@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I will no longer read that domain as "slurpink" thank you

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 2 points 23 hours ago

Oh you will. I know the name for a few months now and I still read it slurpnik

[–] qaz@lemmy.world 19 points 2 days ago

Thanks for the update, good luck with your trip.

[–] Sergio@lemmy.world 39 points 2 days ago

Sorry to hear that! My main account is on slrpnk.net. But don't let it stress you out, "solarpunk" says "punk" which implies "DIY" which means this sort of thing happens. Much better to have an instance run by an admin who truly cares, rather than some soulless corporation.

[–] grysbok@lemmy.sdf.org 33 points 2 days ago (13 children)

This is making me want to create an alt on slrpnk.net , since you're so chill and communicative about issues.

[–] LeighWeighTacoma@lemmy.world 3 points 20 hours ago

He's pretty awesome. He has a monthly thread with updates and actually responds to you too.

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah me too, I'd wanted to for a while but never got around to it. Now I probably never will (unless they get the servers back up at some point in the future).

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 2 points 23 hours ago

it seems they will, just not too soon

[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (7 children)

communicative about issues

Aren't most admins this way?

*glances at your instance name*

Ah...

load more comments (7 replies)

load more comments (10 replies)

[–] ZonenRanslite@feddit.org 46 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Work trip and server problems. Where have I seen this before?

[–] mad_lentil@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

I've had the opposite--personal trip and work server problems.

[–] Kris@feddit.org 31 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Yeah, but at least I have not disappeared yet 😅

load more comments (4 replies)

[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 21 points 2 days ago (2 children)

This is actually great timing, i'd say. Just now most of the northern hemisphere is starting into summer. At least i deeply feel it on a personal level that summer is arriving. I take this as a gift from the universe that directs me towards touching grass, and going swimming. Enjoy your summer, you all! Connect with your local community, if you can.

[–] Kris@feddit.org 15 points 2 days ago

Glad that at least someone sees a positive side of it, because I sure don't... well at least it gives me a bunch of ideas how to avoid such situations in the future 🤷

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 16 points 2 days ago

thirty minutes later

Okay I touched grass and now I'm bored and itchy

[–] PirateFrog@lemmy.dbzer0.com 35 points 3 days ago (9 children)

Alt of ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net chiming in, thanks for giving us the sitrep, poVoq!

This is an unusually unlucky set of circumstances, but for the Solarpunks who find their way here, let's try to make the best of it. If you don't already have an alternative account somewhere, you may want to create one to use until we're back up and running. lemmy.dbzer0.com, sopuli.xyz, or lemmy.cafe are some solid choices to consider. After that, you may want to favorite poVoq's post here so you can check back on any news.

Even without our home base, we can still share the solarpunky stuff we find and create around the threadiverse (though as Tofu mentioned, maybe this could be a time to take a breather to be refreshed when we come back 😄).

Besides, if the past is any indication, time will fly by and we'll be back before you know it!

load more comments (9 replies)

[–] compostgoblin@sh.itjust.works 12 points 2 days ago

Thanks for letting us know! Try not to worry about it too much, it’s all good

[–] Sergio@lemmy.world 19 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Hey fellow slrpnk.net refugees... if you're looking to recreate your list of subscribed communities, here's a good place to start:

click here for a list of communities that are NOT politics, tech, or meme -related.

Most are currently active (except for the ones with a * which were less active last I checked) Sometimes politics, tech or memes sneak in but they're not the focus.

GENERAL DISCUSSION / QUESTIONS

ART / PHOTOS

ANIMALS

COMICS / GRAPHIC NOVELS

ENTERTAINMENT

GENRES / STYLES

HISTORY

INFORMATION / KNOWLEDGE

OTHER

FEDIVERSE

FINDING NEW/GOOD COMMUNITIES ON LEMMY

click here for a list of (mostly non-political) meme communities

MEMES, SOCIAL MEDIA REPOSTS, AND HUMOR

Most of these are currently active. (except for the ones with a * which were less active last I checked). Sometimes these include politics but that's not the sole focus.

(luckily I was posting this to newcomers whenever I had the chance...)

[–] DeathByDenim@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You will unfortunately have to get rid of the lemmy.ee links since they are closing down very soon.

https://lemm.ee/post/65824884

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 4 points 1 day ago

Many of the .ee communities are in the process of migrating, so hopefully the list can be updated with their new homes.

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al 28 points 3 days ago

Thanks for letting us know

load more comments