Hi all, apologies for the long first post, but I’m running around in circles trying to get my Lemmy instance up and running.

The instance runs, I can log in, but federation is just not working for me.

I can search for instances, they’ll return the first 20 items like laid out here: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/administration/federation_getting_started.html but that’s as far as I can get. If I click “subscribe” it’ll sit on subscribe pending and the logs will show combinations of timeouts, server rejected, or unexpected EOF

lemmy-lemmy-1 | 2023-06-02T16:23:39.499641Z INFO HTTP request{http.method=GET http.scheme="http" http.host=<<myhost>> http.target=/api/v3/ws otel.kind="server" request_id=08d649ec-6662-4e8d-98bd-e48201f9f4bf http.status_code=101 otel.status_code="OK"}:send:send_lemmy_activity: activitypub_federation::core::activity_queue: Unable to connect to https://beehaw.org/inbox, aborting task <<myhost>>/activities/follow/1794b0b6-eefa-489e-b39f-41d05a217ac9: Request error: error sending request for url (https://beehaw.org/inbox): error trying to connect: unexpected EOF

INFO HTTP request{http.method=GET http.scheme="http" http.host=<<myhost>> http.target=/api/v3/ws otel.kind="server" request_id=08d649ec-6662-4e8d-98bd-e48201f9f4bf http.status_code=101 otel.status_code="OK"}:send:send_lemmy_activity: activitypub_federation::core::activity_queue: Unable to connect to https://beehaw.org/inbox, aborting task <<myhost>>/activities/undo/b3847def-0844-42ae-88c8-7c99aa9166ef: Request error: error sending request for url (https://beehaw.org/inbox): operation timed out

I have no idea what’s happening honestly, and I’m tearing my hair out. I’ve read the docs, I think everything is turned on, https is working, blacklists and whitelists are emptied, I’m not sure what else to try.

For sanity here’s my lemmy.ljson and docker-compose.

Any help is appreciated

{
  # for more info about the config, check out the documentation
  # https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/administration/configuration.html
  # only few config options are covered in this example config

  setup: {
    # username for the admin user
    admin_username: "<<user>>"
    # password for the admin user
    admin_password: "<<password>>"
    # name of the site (can be changed later)
    site_name: "<<custom site name>>"
  }

  # the domain name of your instance (eg "lemmy.ml")
  hostname: "<<mydomain>>"
  # address where lemmy should listen for incoming requests
  bind: "0.0.0.0"
  # port where lemmy should listen for incoming requests
  port: 8536
  # Whether the site is available over TLS. Needs to be true for federation to work.
  tls_enabled: true

  # pictrs host
  pictrs: {
    url: "http://pictrs:8080/"
    # api_key: "API_KEY"
  }

  # settings related to the postgresql database
  database: {
    # name of the postgres database for lemmy
    database: "lemmy"
    # username to connect to postgres
    user: "lemmy"
    # password to connect to postgres
    password: "<<mydbpassword>>"
    # host where postgres is running
    host: "postgres"
    # port where postgres can be accessed
    port: 5432
    # maximum number of active sql connections
    pool_size: 5
  }
}

version: "3.3"

networks:
  # communication to web and clients
  lemmyexternalproxy:
  # communication between lemmy services
  lemmyinternal:
    driver: bridge
    internal: true

services:
  proxy:
    image: nginx:1-alpine
    networks:
      - lemmyinternal
      - lemmyexternalproxy
    ports:
      # only ports facing any connection from outside
      - 80:80 
      - 443:443
    volumes:
      - ./proxy/nginx.conf:/etc/nginx/nginx.conf:ro
      - ./proxy/proxy.conf:/etc/nginx/proxy.conf:ro
      - /cert:/cert:ro
      # setup your certbot and letsencrypt config 
    restart: always
    depends_on:
      - pictrs
      - lemmy-ui

  lemmy:
    image: dessalines/lemmy:0.17.3
    hostname: lemmy
    networks:
      #- lemmyexternalproxy
      - lemmyinternal
    restart: always
    environment:
      - RUST_LOG="debug,lemmy_server=debug,lemmy_api=debug,lemmy_api_common=debug,lemmy_api_crud=debug,lemmy_apub=debug,lemmy_db_schema=debug,lemmy_db_views=debug,lemmy_db_views_actor=debug,lemmy_db_views_moderator=debug,lemmy_routes=debug,lemmy_utils=debug,lemmy_websocket=debug"
      #- RUST_LOG=verbose
      # - RUST_LOG="verbose,lemmy_server=info,lemmy_api=info,lemmy_api_common=info,lemmy_api_crud=info,lemmy_apub=info,lemmy_db_schema=info,lemmy_db_views=info,lemmy_db_views_actor=info,lemmy_db_views_moderator=info,lemmy_routes=info,lemmy_utils=info,lemmy_websocket=info"
    volumes:
      - ./lemmy.hjson:/config/config.hjson
    depends_on:
      - postgres
      - pictrs

  lemmy-ui:
    image: dessalines/lemmy-ui:0.17.3
    networks:
      - lemmyinternal
    environment:
      # this needs to match the hostname defined in the lemmy service
      - LEMMY_UI_LEMMY_INTERNAL_HOST=lemmy:8536
      # set the outside hostname here
      - LEMMY_UI_LEMMY_EXTERNAL_HOST=lemmy
      - LEMMY_HTTPS=true
    depends_on:
      - lemmy
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - ./volumes/lemmy-ui/extra_themes:/app/extra_themes

  pictrs:
    image: asonix/pictrs:0.3.1
    # this needs to match the pictrs url in lemmy.hjson
    hostname: pictrs
    # we can set options to pictrs like this, here we set max. image size and forced format for conversion
    # entrypoint: /sbin/tini -- /usr/local/bin/pict-rs -p /mnt -m 4 --image-format webp
    networks:
      - lemmyinternal
    environment:
      - PICTRS__API_KEY=API_KEY
    user: 991:991
    volumes:
      - ./volumes/pictrs:/mnt
    restart: always

  postgres:
    image: postgres:15-alpine
    # this needs to match the database host in lemmy.hson
    hostname: postgres
    networks:
      - lemmyinternal
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_USER=lemmy
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=<<mydbpassword>>
      - POSTGRES_DB=lemmy
    volumes:
      - ./volumes/postgres:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    restart: always

    • HorseRadishOP
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      1 year ago

      Yes, I’ve also tried lemmy.ml and feddit.de and same issue. I have done some debugging, and it looks like it’s mostly my container reaching out. If I add the commented - lemmyextrernalproxy on, thats where these errors happen. If it is commented out and only internal, then it can’t reach out at all and no search results come back

    • HorseRadishOP
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      1 year ago

      and I did! Obscure issue, I was using my standard wildcard cert on my nginx conf. Well, my wildcard didn’t have the full chain, something that my browser takes care of. I set up certbot instead, and bam, started working immediately.

      • jstsmthrgk@lemmy.jstsmthrgk.eu
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        1 year ago

        Fun stuff, I also had a problem with mine, for me it was that I did not correctly configure my reverse proxy so that POST requests were not routed to the backend but just timed out, as soon as I fixed that everything worked perfectly.

        • HorseRadishOP
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          1 year ago

          I’m sure devs are under a ton of pressure making it, but a nice todo would be some basic troubleshooting in the logs. So if posts aren’t getting through specifically but GETs are it’d be nice to see "Check that POSTs are routed to the Lemmy backend in your proxy conf. Same with mine, “Federation appears to be configured correctly, but other servers can’t access yours, check your external connection”

  • jax@lemmy.cloudhub.social
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    1 year ago

    Have you ever seen an issue where browsing the same post between your local instance and where it was posted has a different number of comments shown? There is one post in particular that I found where the main server has 20+ comments on a thread, but my server only shows 2 of them.

    This wouldn’t be so bad if there was an indication that the remote server had more comments on it…

    • HorseRadishOP
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      1 year ago

      Yes, that’s what was happening with mine, after reading and rereading the documentation, I finally understood what they were saying. Only new items will be coming through to your instances. So you get new comments, but you won’t get the old ones. I’m guessing it’s because after the initial 20 items it’ll only receive via protocol updates. So I went on a subscribe spree for me