Running your own Mastodon instance? (On a Pi?)

Software
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There’s quite an interesting discussion on this forum about Mastodon, but since the original question is about clients I did not want to “pollute” that topic.

Is anyone here running her/his own Mastodon instance?

On which hardware?

Using which instructions?

I have a Raspberry Pi 4 with 8 GB memory that’s already running Homebridge and a MQTT broker; I wonder whether it can -additionally?- run a Mastodon instance. If I would do this, it would be just for me (one or a few accounts; no heavy load of users).

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I think, @stefan mentioned, that he set up his own instance?!

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There’s loads of info at the Mastodon GitHub, and a quick Google of “Mastodon server on raspberry pi” returned several how-tos and how-I-dids

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On the topic of instances, I’m curious if anyone is aware of any instances that might be of interest to the typical MPU user?

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https://twit.social/ seems like a good choice for folks who have an interest in tech. I also like that Leo Laporte has been a consistent advocate of Mastodon, and seems to really understand the underlying point of the Fediverse.

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Take look at Mastodon Docker Setup · GitHub
It requires to know docker a bit besides that it’s straight forward.

The instance contains several containers web, database etc. needs ~ 1.5 GB memory and storage. As the instance will cache every posts and images of people you follow the cache grows even on an single instance.
Right now ~ 400 MB/day. So make sure to cleanup via cron or externalize this storage to some S3 or B2.

I would suggest to try it out on the pi and see what happens. Should work I guess. :slight_smile:

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My hardware setup currently.

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Oh, that might be the deal breaker for me: high chance of wearing out the microSD card even faster than they usually do… :cry:

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I’m running my own instance on Cloudron without any issues.

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good point!!

@onepointzero didn’t even know they are offering 2 apps for free?? :slight_smile:

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Message me for an invite to writers.exchange.

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Thank you. Does anyone know, if someone moves instances, does his toots etc. follow him to the new instance, or is it like starting from scratch?

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You start a new account from scratch. Then, optionally, there is a way to transfer – I haven’t done it, but have seen people link to the instructions, I think in the main Mastodon documentation.

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Also, just saw this on Mastodon:

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Edit Profile
Scroll down
See instructions
After you create the second account and before you do anything, save your Following lists and announce the transfer

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When migrating to an other instance

  • your followers are automatically changed to follow your new account
  • your old account gets an redirect message set up
  • you can export the accounts you are following, bans, mute lists etc. from old instance and import into new instance manually
  • your posts will not be transferred

See also How To Use Mastodon and the Fediverse: Basic Tips | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse

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Yes, just enough to run mastodon and pixelfed :slight_smile:

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Right now, at least on really loaded servers, this isn’t happening. In my case, it seems to have dropped about half. In other users’ experience, no followers were moved and no automated announcement happened, possibly because of overload.

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Mastodon is hard. Why not just go back to Twitter?

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Not that hard - just different, in my whole one week’s experience

Twitter’s getting worse (IMO) - I’m ;less likely to go back every day

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