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Need Help with Lemmy Instance Federation

Hey friends!

I’ve recently set up my own Lemmy instance at chinese.lol:8536 and it’s been working well so far. According to what I know, I should be able to subscribe to other federated communities, but it seems like I’m having some trouble.

In the settings, I’ve enabled “Federation” and added “lemmy.world” and “programming.dev” to the list of allowed instances. However, when I search for communities, I still can’t seem to find any from these instances.

Has anyone else encountered this issue? Am I missing a step or a setting somewhere? I’d really appreciate any guidance or advice you can offer.

Thank you in advance for your help! 🙏

I also posted it in Reddit and hope I can fix it.

reddit.com/…/need_help_with_lemmy_instance_federa…

Dave ,
@Dave@lemmy.nz avatar

I’m not certain that federation works if you aren’t running over the standard HTTP ports. Any reason you are using port 8536?

lovechickenfeet OP ,

thanks for reply! The default port of lemmy instance is 8536, so I just leave it there. also my 80/443 port have been taken by another app. may i ask where can i get the federation information for this? ( also may I ask can I use other ports for making HTTPS?

ShittyKopper , (edited )

Learn about reverse proxies such as Nginx or Caddy. The various selfhosted communities on Lemmy should be able to help with your questions. That’ll fix the port conflict problem. (Though I recommend wiping your Lemmy DB and starting from scratch when changing domains. Federation is really finicky in situations like that)

My second recommendation would be to use blocklists to deny the crap parts as opposed to allowlisting as that will impact your view of the threadiverse. (Which by itself isn’t a bad thing, but is the wrong tool for the job in most cases I’ve seen people asking about it)

lovechickenfeet OP ,

thx Kopper! thanks for the advice, it may resolve the issue for ports confliction. but I’m still wondering why my http one with port 8536 cannot get into the federation

Dave ,
@Dave@lemmy.nz avatar

Lemmy has many different containers all running in docker. It includes a reverse proxy that listens on port 80 and redirects traffic to the appropriate container.

And yes, you can direct traffic to the right place based on the URL being accessed. This is called a reverse proxy. It’s easiest to allow Lemmy’s reverse proxy to stay as is except change the docker external port to something else (e.g. 8080), then have another reverse proxy to handle traffic to your different services.

Some common reverse proxies are Caddy, Traefik, NPM, or just using nginx though that may be more difficult to configure if you aren’t familiar. Search up a tutorial, which is best depends on what else you have running (e.g. traefik automatically detects how to connect to each docker container, but gets a lot trickier if all your services aren’t in docker).

lovechickenfeet OP ,

got it got it. I saw this federation test from the offical git, github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/tree/main/…/federation. but seems it’s a local federation validation… I’ll do more search for that and may set up with my own nginx, thanks for the reply!

Dave ,
@Dave@lemmy.nz avatar

Sorry I have found the docker-compose files are not quite how I remember them (and they have had many changes since I last saw them). The instructions now direct you to install the ansible copy of the docker-compose file which doesn’t have a post specified for the proxy (unless you actually run it using ansible).

Hopefully you’re able to work it out :)

lovechickenfeet OP ,

thanks~ these are the instructions I followed to. The setup process is quite fast, haha. I’m just not sure why I couldn’t join the federation… Still thanks for the reply! I’ll go back and take a closer look at the documentation.

Dave ,
@Dave@lemmy.nz avatar

It’s possible it’s not covered. I think it probably needs to be accessible on HTTP ports (preferably 443 with HTTPS) as that’s how other servers will try to contact your server.

Probably leave your lemmy server on 8536, then set up a reverse proxy to direct 80/443 to 8536. Only port forward 80/443, other ports don’t need to be externally accessible. Some reverse proxies will set up HTTPS for you as well.

DrJenkem ,
@DrJenkem@lemmy.blugatch.tube avatar

Pretty sure https is a requirement for federation. Not sure about non-standard port number, but I would try and move to 443. I know you mention in a comment port 443 is already in use, in which case, I recommend setting up a reverse proxy (I like nginx-proxy-manager), and configure a subdomain for the lemmy instance.

willya ,
@willya@lemmyf.uk avatar

You have to use SSL to federate.

lovechickenfeet OP ,

seems i can directly reach out to other commnities with http. just dont know whether i’m in the federation now…

lovechickenfeet OP ,

thanks eveyone for the help! I think I’m able to access other commnities now! the search engine was a little bit slow! although i’m using http. but I’m not sure whether others can subscribe my community.

hsl ,
@hsl@wayfarershaven.eu avatar

This is a support question related to using (and hosting) Lemmy. Please see the sidebar for suggestions on communities where you can find support in the sidebar. Removing per rule #3.

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