Submitted 2 weeks ago by jamin@lemmy.zip to [deleted]
What happens when an instance shuts down. Can the spaces/subreddits whatver they are called be recreated? If so, how?
If you don't export or migrate your data elsewhere before this happens, your account goes bye-bye
Everything can be recreated if an entity that perfectly remembers or recorded everything about it otherwise it's gone forever
…but I get up again, you’re never gonna keep me down?
Apparently you maybe be able to migrate whole communities (and subscribers!?) to Piefed?!
https://lemmy.linuxuserspace.show/comment/2668181
Piefed is part of the fediverse, same as Lemmy.
Can the spaces/subreddits whatver they are called
They’re called communities or comms.
At least for Lemmy – I have no idea about kbin or other ActivityPub software – there isn’t a user-accessible way to back up one’s account on an instance, nor to preserve any communities that you’re a mod for. So yeah, if the instance goes down unexpectedly like due to data loss or an FBI raid, the communities and users that were on that instance will disappear.
It’s true that other servers will have a cache of some of the existing community posts and the users on the departed server. But it’s exactly that: a cache, which will eventually be evicted.
A similar situation occurs when a Lemmy instance changes domain name: all prior posts to the community (and the community itself) were homed to the old domain. So a new domain cannot have the same identity as the old; it will simply be a separate entity, even if all posts were somehow preserved and reposted on the new instance.
Is this Lemmy-specific? No, Mastodon and I think all other ActivityPub software, plus BlueSky have this property, because they anchor identities to DNS names. From that, the posts to a community are anchored to the instance, and the instance is anchored to DNS.
So if the domain is lost, then it’s game over. But if the domain is still there but the disk got wiped, then it would be a matter of recovery from a backup. You do have a 3-2-1 backup strategy, right?
I will note that Mastodon has a user-initiated export feature, which functions as a backup, something that Lemmy doesn’t have. A Mastodon user can export their data and then move their identity to a new instance. Lemmy can’t do that today, but it should be possible. Though in both cases, only the saved account is preserved. To restore a Lemmy community would require a disk-level backup image.
(this is all conjecture based on my limited knowledge of Lemmy. A better answer would come from an instance admin or one of the Lemmy devs)
We’ll soon find out: SDF’s Lemmy instance seems to have snuffed it permanently. It’s been performing really poorly - and been inaccessible - for as long as I’ve known it, but now I think SDF just doesn’t care at all anymore.
Unfortunately, I have 2 communities there that I was planning on migrating to Piefed soon, and it might be too late. Hopefully it’ll come back online long enough for me to save them at some point 🙁
Thats interesting. How would you go about saving a community?
The idea is to migrate the community to Piefed (which I suppose simply creates a local copy from the content in the remote community) then tell all the members that the community has moved.
That’s why I haven’t done it yet, because it’s a massive inconvenience to everybody, and I’m sure Piefed will lose content in the process. And the SDF instance is just functional enough that it’s not worth doing. But I’m really, REALLY close to pulling the trigger.
I think it depends on the backups. Im not sure how much is missed because I see very little gathering of info in communities. Like the reddit sto forums main value was in the sidebar and faq which listed all sorts of links to resources and faqs. If you wiped the whole thing but had those backed up it would allow anyone to quickly get into the game and the community could converse and answer questions not in the faw or resources that maybe would get integrated if it was important enough. Most communities I come across here you look at the sidebar and it does not even explain what the community is about. This one does but its not to common. So if the person or persons who mind this one have a backup of the sidebar then its good to get it going on a new instance if needed.
CameronDev@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
You go to the new instance, create an account and create the community.
jamin@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I mean are the posts in any way recreatable because they are also saved on other instances when accessed from there right? Of course you can create another community with the same topic :D
sexy_animal_fucker@kbin.melroy.org 2 weeks ago
Without a self cleanup the posts will remain in other communities but the account is effectively gone
CameronDev@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
I don’t believe there is a way to transfer posts. You could probably create a bot that scrapes and recreates them, but all the original users would be lost. Best to just start from scratch, nothing here needs to be permanent anyway.