Unsolicited opinion: If #Mastodon wants to be a part of the #Fediverse that encourages small #selfhosted instances to be part of the whole, then it has to be a lean system able to be installed on second-hand/hand-me-down hardware and it should run reas...

Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸

Unsolicited opinion: If #Mastodon wants to be a part of the #Fediverse that encourages small #selfhosted instances to be part of the whole, then it has to be a lean system able to be installed on second-hand/hand-me-down hardware and it should run reasonably well.

ElasticSearch/Java is a barrier to that. It is a huge memory hog compared to the rest of the system.

#footiMac #Debian

everton137

@chris I don't think Mastodon is prepared for that. I tried to run it for one year on a tiny server, but there were several cache issues. I hope in the near future we will have some good alternative for that - maybe there is already and I just don't know.

Sheogorath

@chris that's why elasticsearch is optional. You don't need it to run Mastodon

Jérôme

@chris I worked in search tech since the early 2010s, it's always a very hungry thing to run. Takes lots of RAM, takes lots of space to index.

I don't know if there's truly anything Mastodon can do, beside offering to disable search on a specific instance, which I think you can do already.

But you can't have both.

Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸

@sheogorath Correct. However, a lot of people feel that having the ability to search is not optional for a modern micro-blogging platform. That is the dilemma.

Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸

@jerome I have a special hate in my heart for java and its ability to eat resources. So I really wonder if there is another alternative that doesn't rely on Java that might be more svelte.

Jérôme

@chris java is indeed eating lots of resources, but it's also very robust for that kind of usage. Elasticsearch is pretty much the default and main platform for search in the open-source world.

I suppose they could look at a very minimal search on a more tiny databases, wouldn't be as powerful but would be better than disabling search entirely.

Decentralization brings interesting challenges.

Good thread on alternatives here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33315237

Cadu Silva :v_blue:

@chris Puma is also very resource hungry.

I'm running bolha.one using two VMs, both eating around 10 GB of RAM (combined).

This includes Mastodon itself (Ruby, Puma, Node, etc), OpenSearch, PostgreSQL and Valkey.

I also had LibreTranslate installed, but it's now in another third-party server.

Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸

@cadusilva It’s a lot!

Cadu Silva :v_blue:

@chris absolutely!

People interested in running their own instance should instead look to GoToSocial, Akkoma, Snac2, some Misskey fork or Hollo.

All of those serves the purpose of single or multi-user instance and can even be run in an old Raspberry Pi with only 512 MB of RAM (GoToSocial with sqlite as database).

I don't think Mastodon will ever be lightweight because of its inner gears and additional software (ElasticSearch et al.).

Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸

@cadusilva if perhaps one day there is the ability to move one's posts/history over then people will find their preferred platform that suits their situation more closely.

Renaud Chaput

@chris @sheogorath This is part of why we are working on https://www.fediscovery.org
Ideally, once this is done, you could run your instance without ElasticSearch and get very good search results (even better than with ES).
You can not have a fully distributed system, with all features that modern social media has, while not using a lot of resources.

Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸

@renchap @sheogorath I had not heard of fediscovery.org! A good solution!

iobear

@jerome @chris At the company I work for, we are switching to Grafana Loki for the same reason, it is way easier to host (non java) and it also have lower hardware requirements.

Edwin G. :mapleleafroundel:

@chris I spent a couple of days without ElasticSearch… it was horrible for searching my own posts.

Now, I will have a look at OpenSearch (?). It might fit my purpose better than ES.

[email protected]

IRC, or XMPP at worst, should be the gold standard to follow here. Those things can be installed on Pentium IVs that you can get from rural school trash yards, and still run reasonably well.

Jérôme

@EdwinG @chris it's a fork of ElasticSearch, it's unlikely to make a big difference. It was mostly a licensing dispute.

SomethingGeneric

@chris id argue it should also try its best to become single exec, so ir can be OS/distro agnostic too, but that's a major PITA

Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸

@SomethingGeneric a long term but very worthy goal!

Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸

@EdwinG yes I saw mention of it in the last release notes. I will be interested in your experience!