this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2023
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Lemmy Support

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Support / questions about Lemmy.

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The documentation give clear instructions for installing and setting up a Lemmy instance, but it doesn't really tell me what I need to do so beyond the implication that I need some computer running Linux.

I have a QNAP NAS device which is running a flavor of linux; how much storage space is recommended for a public instance? Do I need my own website?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You primarily need Docker, specifically (unless you want to set it all up by hand) Docker Compose. All installation options for Lemmy utilize Docker to host the components (db, API, UI, etc.). Depending if you go the Ansible or Docker/manual route you will need Nginx as well.

You will need disk space to store content (including pictures). The CPU/RAM needs are super low unless you have a lot of people on your instance.

You will need a domain for federation to work (like my instance is at lemmy.wizjenkins.com).

Lastly you will need an SSL certificate but Lemmy can generate this for you assuming you have your domain pointed to your server before you start everything up.

I'm not familiar with QNAP but generally NAS servers don't support Docker Compose so you might be better off with a raspberry pi or VM or something.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

EKS also seems like a good option here. I was actually just looking into the exact same question OP asked and I'm thinking about getting one up and running on EKS to take advantage of Autoscaling Groups

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

EKS is great if you know Kubernetes. Might be overkill to just set up an instance to try it out.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I was thinking along the lines of a deployment platform that would be scalable as it seems there have been reports of scaling issues recently. (Un)fortunately I work on Kubernetes all day every day for my work so the complexity isn't the main issue, it's just carving out some time to work on it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Oh yeah a Helm chart for Lemmy would be sick! Some of the more popular instances are in definite need of it from what I've seen.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

If you're hosting QNAP at home, you'll need to setup the port forwards to allow outside access and point your domain to it. That might not be allowed by your ISP.

Lemmy is lite on resource usage. For space, it really depends on how much content you sync in, or directly upload. For reference, my own Lemmy instance is using 7.4GB of space after being active for two months.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You need a domain as well. Not much storage space is needed, 50gb is plenty.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If I were to create Communities around art/photography, am I correct to assume that all those image files would be living on my instance's storage?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

You are correct - it will live on the instance it is uploaded to and federate out to instances subbed to it