Slrpnk.net is unexpectatly back online π₯³
this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2025
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"unforseen hardware failure"
somebody didn't check their backups!
The backups are most likely fine π
yes, that's why it's been down for this long...
Why is this a jpg?
Just be happy that the jpg is not embedded in docx
ikr
svg, lossless webp, or png are way better options for an image of text
JPEG XL would be the true future format, unfortunately Google killed it
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Because fuck blind people, that's why
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After a month and a half downtime all the users will have moved on to other instances. This is essentially a death sentence for the instance and its communities.
You underestimate the userbase. I made a temp account in the mean time, but we are a hyper tight knit community. We will probably lose accounts - no question - but the core userbase will return
Time to come back, it is working again. Lucky break π
Thanks for the speed and the work !
The local communities are such a great mix of uplifting and informative posts that I am sure to return.
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You may underestimate user dedication. I love my instance and totally would come back after a few months away temporarily.
You got me on the communities though.
Fediverse is designed to handle servers with less than stellar reliability.
Idk, quite a few (me included) made alt accounts for the time being, and we'll return when it becomes possible, especially if we really do migrate to piefed.
Lets see. I think a relaunch on Piefed might interest some people to come back, and most slrpnk communities are rather niche and will probably stay. /c/climate might move though.
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Alt text:
Slrpnk.net is currently offline due to an unforseen hardware failure in combination with the main system-administrators having no physical access to the server location until mid July due to work or summer-holiday related travels.
We are very sorry for this unforseen down-time, but slrpnk.net will return for sure and we already have some plans for a nice relaunch, so stay tuned!
Assuming slrpnk stands for solar punk - that produces funny little theories in my mind about the server location.
Their servers are located in Portugal I believe and do indeed run on solar power! They gave details of their set up on their wiki page but... that was on the server that's gone down so... have a read in July I guess?
it's on archive.org
Server hosting
This is a work in progress
Slrpnk.net is hosted by F-hub.org, a volunteer driven and non-commercial effort to host federated community services in a resource efficient and ethical way. F-hub.org grew out of a community of open-source game developers (freegamedev.net) that has existed since the early 2000s.
All the servers are operated and maintained (as a hobby) by one of the founding members and are currently located on the Azores in Portugal. Connectivity is provided through a dedicated high-speed fibreglass connection.
Hardware
The F-hub.org servers are based on second-hand consumer PC and data-centre hardware, but optimized for low energy consumption. Battery backup power is provided and data is stored with triple redundancy (off-site backups are still a work in progress). Electricity is currently provided by the utility grid (about 60% green-energy, mostly from a geothermal power-plant) but it is a work in progress to upgrade to a on-site solar PV system for near 100% renewable power.
Slrpnk.net itself currently runs on a dedicated 6th gen Intel CPU server with 8 threads, 16GB RAM and SATA SSD storage in raid configuration. Image uploads are stored on a large HDD raid array. All data is snapshotted and transferred for backup to a second shared server on daily basis.
External services
Given how difficult it is to have outgoing email accepted by the large email providers, all emails are currently routed through an external SMTP server hosted by OVH in France (same as the domain registration and DNS routing).
There are backup plans to move the servers to a co-location data-center owned by Altice, should this be required for scaling. However, monthly rent of rack-space is quite costly (starts at around 300β¬/month), thus this will require a substantial regular donation base to be possible.
I think they're located in the Azores, and yes, running their own servers on solar (of course) and other renewable energy. Coolest instance out there.
I hope they come back :)
We will, promise! :D
Thank you so much for the update - I hadn't had access for about a week and was getting worried. Couldn't reach them on XMPP either.
Yeah, the xmpp server is down too. That is something that bugs me quite a bit and I will probably move that one to an external small VPS to retain a more secure backup communication channel.
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What is so special about piefed? I see a few communities moving there. The interface looks different from the original lemmy interface.
For regular users there is not a huge difference, but the web-interface is significantly faster and you can subscribe to topics that combine multiple communities. The disadvantage is less mobile app support. Right now only Interstellar supports Piefed.
The real advantage is for moderators and admins, as the Piefed developers actually listened to community feedback and implemented a lot of nice moderation features that require bots or annoying work-arounds on Lemmy.
And there are a few technical differences that make Piefed easier to administrate and troubleshoot from a sysadmin perspective.
Our sysadmin explained some technical advantages here: https://feddit.org/post/13613230/7063696
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Wondering if a volunteer could go to the physical location necessary to restore service. If it's in Athens Greece, I can make the trip.
Edit: The server is located in Azores, the flight would cost 415eur, I cannot afford that, maybe someone in Portugal could help?
Off topic, but in Portugal was the first time me, a Central European, ever ate a ripe Papaya. Yum! Thanks to the Azores. The shit you get in the supermarkets round here is useless. Same for mangoes, usually.
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Is it in a data centre or someone's house? If the latter, would they let a stranger in?
Surely they would need a backup and replicate db to so in case of hardware failure they switch over.
Sounds like they could improve their setup.
Too much of a single point of failure.
Slrpnk.net admin here.
The failure seems to have been in the main firewall, if it had been the server itself we could have easily restored it on another server from the backups on another machine. But as it stands, remote access is entirely cut off.
There usually is another person with hardware access, but they are on summer holidays. This seemed like an acceptable risk at the time...
An off-site backup would have been nice of course, but due to the costs involved in running an Lemmy instance of that size on a rented server, it would have not been a great option either.
I have plans to add a KVM to the main firewall via a secondary connection, but even that might have not helped in this case. I'll know more when I have physical access again.
Is it run out of a private residence? How could it happen if itβs in a real data centerβ¦?
It is run from a private residence in the DIY punk spririt (and this also allows us to run of a local solar PV system), but more or less the same would happen if you rent rack-space in a "real" data-center. Only if you rent a managed server or VPS someone else will be responsible to fix such issue and this comes at a significantly higher cost at the scale we operate at (slrpnk is part of a bigger project that also hosts other services).
If you rent rack space, you can at least call the DC to send someone to reboot it or smt.
Sure, but they will not replace hardware and set up remote access for you, which seems like this would have been required in this case.
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I'll be back when they get back up.
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