Hey everyone,

I finally figured out how to get my Lemmy instance up and running. Everything seems to work great except for the fact that I can’t subscribe to any lemmy.ml communities; it just stays stuck at pending. All other communities on other instances subscribe successfully.

Is this an issue on my end or is there an issue with lemmy.ml?

  • Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz
    4·
    1 year ago

    Hey I just had a question on this exact thing this morning for my new account on mander. So the trick for getting communities active on a new instance is that you first need to search for the whole url (such as https://lemmy.ml/c/lemmy_support). It will of course fail, but then you can immediately search for “lemmy_support” and that will now be found.

      • Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz
        1·
        1 year ago

        Sorry to hear that. From the other replies it sounds like it’s going to be a configuration issue but I didn’t set up my own instance so that’s as much advice as I can offer. Good luck!

    • notdeadyet@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      1 year ago

      @scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech

      I’m just using the default one from the instructions, pasted it below. It may also be worth noting that I am using Nginx Proxy Manager on top of all this for ssl. I have set all custom locations (api, feeds, nodeinfo, pictrs) but I have left the advanced section blank.

      worker_processes 1; events { worker_connections 1024; } http { upstream lemmy { # this needs to map to the lemmy (server) docker service hostname server “lemmy:8536”; } upstream lemmy-ui { # this needs to map to the lemmy-ui docker service hostname server “lemmy-ui:1234”; }

      server {
    # this is the port inside docker, not the public one yet
    listen 80;
    # change if needed, this is facing the public web
    server_name localhost;
    server_tokens off;

    gzip on;
    gzip_types text/css application/javascript image/svg+xml;
    gzip_vary on;

    # Upload limit, relevant for pictrs
    client_max_body_size 20M;

    add_header X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN;
    add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff;
    add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";

    # frontend general requests
    location / {
        # distinguish between ui requests and backend
        # don't change lemmy-ui or lemmy here, they refer to the upstream definitions on top
        set $proxpass "http://lemmy-ui";

        if ($http_accept = "application/activity+json") {
          set $proxpass "http://lemmy";
        }
        if ($http_accept = "application/ld+json; profile=\"https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams\"") {
          set $proxpass "http://lemmy";
        }
        if ($request_method = POST) {
          set $proxpass "http://lemmy";
        }
        proxy_pass $proxpass;

        rewrite ^(.+)/+$ $1 permanent;
        # Send actual client IP upstream
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    }

    # backend
    location ~ ^/(api|pictrs|feeds|nodeinfo|.well-known) {
        proxy_pass "http://lemmy";
        # proxy common stuff
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";

        # Send actual client IP upstream
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    }
}

      }

      • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
        1·
        1 year ago

        So first off, yeah their nginx is not the greatest example. Most of it is fine but check out their ansible example

        So first off, I don’t see HTTPS. Federation will not work without HTTPS, that’s in the troubleshooting guide. You’ll need to get https up and running and have a valid cert. Certbot is very easy to get up and running, I followed this guide

        I don’t know if it matters, but add all of the extra security items from the example guide around HTTPS, I believe Lemmy does depend on some of the extra parameters like ssl_ciphers and protocols to make sure requests are using the correct ones.

        One key nugget of information is that in your http block you should add resolver 127.0.0.11 ipv6=off;, which tells nginx to use 127.0.0.11 as it’s DNS, which is imperative if you are using docker host names. That IP is Docker’s internal DNS, so things like http://lemmy and http://lemmy-ui work.

        server_name should be the external tld. For example, mine is poptalk.scrubbles.tech.

        My entire proxypass for / is as follows, I think yours should work, but this is known working:

             location / {

          # The default ports:
          # lemmy_ui_port: 1235
          # lemmy_port: 8536

            set $proxpass "http://lemmy-ui:1234";
            if ($http_accept ~ "^application/.*$") {
               set $proxpass "http://lemmy:8536";
            }
            if ($request_method = POST) {
               set $proxpass "http://lemmy:8536";
            }
            proxy_pass $proxpass;
            rewrite ^(.+)/+$ $1 permanent;
            proxy_http_version 1.1;
	    proxy_set_header  X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
            proxy_set_header  Host $host;
            proxy_set_header  X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
	    proxy_set_header  Upgrade $http_upgrade;
            proxy_set_header  Connection $connection_upgrade;
        }

        Make sure you’re also redirecting pictshare (which I believe is deprecated, but if you have issues with pictures:

                location ~ /pictshare/(.*)$ {
          return 301 /pictrs/image/$1;
        }
        • notdeadyet@lemmy.mlOP
          1·
          1 year ago

          @scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech

          Thanks for that info! Unfortunately, trying to get my instance up using that config is proving to be quite difficult with my setup. I found another user with a similar setup to me that posted a guide and even that gives me the same problem with ONLY communities on lemmy.ml

          https://lemmy.dcrich.net/post/1150

          I am using the nginx posted on there, as well as nginx proxy manager on top of it which manages my HTTPS / SSL.

          According to everyone that followed that guide, there are zero issues for them, but for me, nothing works on lemmy.ml which is unfortunate as there are a lot of communities I want to subscribe to on here.

  • Jeroen@lemmy.cock.social
    2·
    1 year ago

    I’ve had the same issue with my instance.

    If you’ve used the official Docker setup, add “lemmyexternalproxy” as a network to the lemmy service.

      • Jeroen@lemmy.cock.social
        1·
        1 year ago

        I’ve only added it to the lemmy service in the docker-compose.yml and that fixed it for me.

        At least it looks like it fixed everything for me, I’m posting from the instance.

  • mrmanager@lemmy.today
    1·
    1 year ago

    I whitelisted them in settings, but not sure if that is necessary? Only had my instance for a day.

    And for me it worked to subscribe.

  • Elbullazul@lemmy.ml
    1·
    1 year ago

    I had to restart the lemmy container after setting it up to get federation to work correctly