kbin.earth meta

Traffic seems to have jumped quite high in the past few days for whatever reason and has caused major slowdowns, so unfortunately, I had to perform another server upgrade.

The server's resources were doubled, but the price of the server has more than doubled. Just a few days ago, I received my first sponsorship 🎉, so I just wanted to thank them if they are reading this. If anyone else would like to help pay for server costs, you can use one of the donation links on the about page.

I'm sure y'all have noticed, but over the past 2 days or so, kbin.earth has had hours at a time where it would just timeout all network requests (and therefore, not let you connect). I'm not exactly sure what's going on or what's causing this issue, but I am trying different things to hopefully fix it.

Please be patient in the meantime.

As the title says, several users have noticed issues with their posts and comments not federating. The pattern seems be that there are issues if you are posting to a Lemmy server that's on v0.19.5 (for example, federation to lemmy.world seems to be working fine, they're only on v0.19.3). Please be patient while we investigate.

Additionally, incoming federation seems to be working just fine, so you shouldn't notice a lack of posts or comments or anything like that.

Edit: please see my comment about the fix down below

Hey jwr1,

Since yesterday I am experiencing problems with images, avatars, icons, some thumbnails from my previous posts, my profile pictures and such not loading. Youtube is loading when I tap the little collapse button, but images don't work.

This happens on Android, PC and iOS with Vivaldi, Firefox and Safari.

I wonder if this rc2 is having a hiccup?

Cheers.

This server is now running Mbin v1.7.0. Let me know if you run into any issues.

Here are the user-facing changes listed below (copied from here):

• Full federation with PeerTube: threads are created for new uploads, synced likes, dislikes and comments
• Direct messages will work across servers now, supporting lemmy instances (mastodon private mentions are not working, yet). We added a button on the profile page of users as well
• we completely redesigned the messages view to resemble a chat interface
• Pinning and unpinning entries will now federate
• We now support push notifications. They can be enabled on the notifications page (/settings/notifications). If you do not see a button for enabling push notifications, that usually means that your browser does not support them
• New supported languages: Brazilian Portuguese, Danish, Filipino, Galician
• Modlog changes:
  • the instance wide modlog now includes the magazine in which the moderator action occurred
  • adding and removing a moderator are now shown in the modlog
• creating threads on magazines can now be restricted to moderators and we added support for remote magazines that already have this setting enabled
• Add a cake day display on the profile page and the user popup
• we increased the cookie lifetime, so you do not have to login as regular as before (7 days -> 3 weeks)
• you can now hide the related panels via the appearence settings
• there are now notifications for reports
  • created: admins, global mods, magazine mods
  • approved: reported user
• When editing a thread that is posted to a remote magazine hosted on an mbin instance the edit will now correctly federate
• We updated the federation page. It now shows federated, defederated and dead instances. It also shows the software and the version of it the instance is running on
• When editing your profile or a magazines profile, your changes should be visible on remote instances nearly instantly
• we show a leaf icon next to users and magazines which have been active for less than 30 days now
• when editing a thread you can now edit all fields
• fix the aggressive fetching of the URL field when editing it

This should be the last update of this one-week saga, but I just wanted to let y'all know that the issue has been resolved.

The issue itself turned out to be a bunch of bots hammering kbin.earth with requests, causing it to slow down and crash. I've been able to put up security measures to block them, and within the past 24 hours, I have blocked 100,000 requests, which, to put it in perspective, we usually get somewhere around 700,000 requests in a day. This turns out to be a reduction of about 14%.

Additionally, I've also upgraded the server during all this, and moved it so only kbin.earth is running on the server (no other services).

Just as a general reminder, if you ever notice any issues or anything weird going on, do not hesitate to reach out.

Also, since @Oofnik brought this up earlier, I was able to get set up on a few donation sites, so if you'd like to help pay for server costs, you can use one of the sponsor links on the About page.

One last thing, I wanted to publicly welcome @aasatru, to the kbin.earth mod team 🎉. Thanks for stepping up :)

Just another update: I am aware that the server has been crashing, even after the upgrade (though, when it works, things are loading faster than they were before at least).

I think the main issue is the fact that we're being pounded by bot requests, so I've enabled Cloudflare's AI bot protection (federation requests should still work), and I'll be setting up a log analyzer to look into any other sources of DDOSing, bots, and the like that may be harming server performance. If that doesn't work, I might just need to do another server upgrade.

And, as a reminder, our kbin.earth matrix room is available here.

Just another update: I am aware that the server has been crashing, even after the upgrade (though, when it works, things are loading faster than they were before at least).

I think the main issue is the fact that we're being pounded by bot requests, so I've enabled Cloudflare's AI bot protection (federation requests should still work), and I'll be setting up a log analyzer to look into any other sources of DDOSing and the like that may be harming server performance. If that doesn't work, I might just need to do another server upgrade.

And, as a reminder, our kbin.earth matrix room is available here.

I just finished the much needed server upgrade! So far, it seems to be running much faster, but let's see how it goes (if you notice any issues at all, please let me know). Just wanted to say thanks to those who stuck around.

Additionally, we have a new matrix room, where you can receive real time updates on kbin.earth announcements, ask for support, or just generally chat: #kbin.earth:matrix.org.

Finally, I'm looking for people who want to volunteer as admins (global mods). There's not much to do at the moment, but I think it would be good to have some backup in case I'm ever unavailable. Basically, just making sure everything on here is following the rules outlined on the About page.

I apologize to those experiencing the major slowdown from kbin.earth. Please bear with me as I decide the best route to go for a server upgrade.

As discussed earlier in the previous post, I thought it'd be a great idea to give kbin.earth its own icon. I ended up going with the version that is the Mbin icon with an Earth (globe) pattern inside. This makes it straightforward to tell that we're still running Mbin software but also makes it easy to tell apart from other Mbin servers. I also thought it would add a little fun to the mix :)

If you have any feedback on the branding itself, like the favicon or header logo, feel free to post in the comments.

kbin.earth now has 102 users (and 61 monthly active users at the moment)! I know this isn't a lot compared to the other big fediverse servers, but I still think it's a milestone to celebrate. Additionally, according to FediDB, kbin.earth is actually the 3rd most active Mbin server, behind kbin.run and fedia.io!

As a way to celebrate, I thought we should give kbin.earth its own icon. Attached to this post are the (very) rough drafts of a few icon designs I came up with. Please comment which ones you prefer and what kind of improvements/changes you think could be made. If you'd like, feel free to come up with your own designs too. (Also, as a disclaimer, I did take some inspiration from lemmy.world's icon.)

For me personally, I think 2 & 5 have too much color, so I'd say they're my least favorite. Honestly, I think I'd prefer either 1, 4, or 7.

Profile 'subscriptions' page returns 500 Internal Server Error. Not sure if it has been reported.

#kbinEarth

As explained in the last post, I was trying to get s3 (R2) set up with kbin.earth, and now it's complete. Now storage costs should be significantly lower (with more capacity) and maybe images will load even faster now.

Also, think of this as an experiment; if it doesn't work out, I'll switch it back to file storage.

Sorry for the past 90 minutes of downtime; I've been trying to set up s3 storage for kbin.earth, but was unfortunately unsuccessful. I'll likely try again tomorrow (in case you notice it down again).

kbin.earth is now running Mbin! Please let me know here if you run into any problems.

Hello kbin.earth users,

I think, at this point, it's clear that Kbin is not being actively developed; the last commit by the lead developer was four months ago, and the latest commit, period, was two months ago. There are many bugs/issues present that make not only using the platform difficult but also hosting and administrating it (even worse, there was a recent issue that affected many non-Kbin servers in the fediverse).

Given the situation, I see three options for moving forward:

1 - Wait It Out ----------

We could continue using Kbin as is, knowing there will be ongoing issues, and hope that maybe one day there will be an update.

Pros:

• We get to keep the same system we're used to.
• If any more updates come out for Kbin, we can update kbin.earth and start using them immediately.

Cons:

• Kbin is no longer supported, and many bugs are present. This also means any features we'd want will likely not be added.
• Administrating a Kbin server is not the easiest. Even after the initial setup (which was a nightmare), there are still problems that pop up occasionally that can get annoying, and I can only imagine this would get worse as more users join.

2 - Migrate to Mbin ----------

Alternatively, we could migrate kbin.earth to Mbin, a fork of Kbin that is actually supported by its developers and are actively fixing issues and adding features. I was initially skeptical of Mbin when it first came out, but at this point, it's had many improvements that likely make it more suitable than the current Kbin system.

Pros:

• Mbin is supported by its developers and has had numerous improvements added since the fork. I'll put a few below, but here are links to the complete list: GUI improvements, enhancements, and bug fixes.
• A subscription panel that lists your subscribed magazines.
• Better filter options.
• Many more settings and options for you to customize.
• Federated magazines correctly display their moderators.
• Federated magazines correctly display subscription count, not just those who subscribed locally.
• User/magazine deletion overhaul.
• Incoming downvotes from the fediverse are counted.

Cons:

• Kbin has magazine collections that allow you to combine related magazines into one view. Mbin has not ported this feature and doesn't have anything similar yet.
• Kbin has an aggregated content view, allowing you to view threads and microblogs simultaneously. Again, Mbin has not ported this feature and doesn't have anything similar yet.
• Mbin has removed the ability to view downvote (reduce) activities. Since anybody could scrap this information anyway, I think it's best to show downvoters just so they realize it's public information.

3 - Shutdown Server ----------

As a last resort, we could just shut down the server. kbin.earth was initially created to help develop the Interstellar app for kbin (since kbin.social didn't, and still doesn't, support the API). Still, at this point, the initial purpose has been served, and further updates to the app could be tested on an already existing Mbin server.

Pros:

• Energy and resources spent on kbin.earth could be used elsewhere, such as the Interstellar app.
• Current kbin.earth users could choose where to migrate to, whether that's to an Mbin server, to a Lemmy server, or even back to kbin.social.
• Several Mbin servers already exist, so maybe it wouldn't make sense to add yet another.

Cons:

• Obviously, users and magazines hosted here would have to migrate somewhere else. This includes the Interstellar magazine.

---

To conclude, we could either not change anything (and stay on Kbin), switch to Mbin, or shut down kbin.earth. For me personally, I think option 1 is ruled out; we've already been waiting on Kbin long enough, and I don't think much is going to change. We could potentially try option 2 (Mbin) for at least a little while and see how it goes; if people like it, we could keep kbin.earth for the time being (running Mbin); if people don't like it, we could just go to option 3 (shutdown). What do you all think? If someone has anything to add to the pros/cons, feel free to share.

Recently, I've noticed federated threads/comments/votes were lagging behind, and it turns out kbin.earth was being spammed (hundreds in a minute, leading to a couple thousand queued messages after only half an hour) by a Lemmy server with the same exact activity pub message. After blocking the server (feddit.de), federation should now work correctly. If the admins of the server ever fix the issue, I'll be glad to unblock it.

Edit: turns out, this was probably actually a kbin issue, but at least it's fixed the issues temporarily.

Due to the increased usage and number of posts on kbin.earth, we have recently been reaching the system resource limit, and the server has frozen a few times in the past week. Sometime today (or hopefully by at least the end of tomorrow), I'll be moving kbin.earth to a new server with more ram. The expected downtime should be less than an hour.