Good morning Fedi friends!
Another day begins! I cannot do much today because I’m flying back to France with my little one… We are going to spend the second half of the school holidays with the paternal grandparents. I only brought my iPad and my Raspi (with Ubuntu) with me to Italy because I have a desktop computer at my parents’ (my old Mac Mini). It looks like the Raspi will be my main computer for the rest of the week at my in-laws’ (I brought with me my external keyboard, mouse and HDMI cable). So happy Linux week to me!
Now, where were we in my attempting to self-host Sharkey saga?
After 4 days of Herculean struggles and a sprinkle of luck, I finally managed to get my instance up and running. A fairy tale ending, all smooth sailing from here?
NAH! Think again.
I’m stranded on a desert island with my self-hosted Sharkey instance because search doesn’t work at all and following anyone is super hard.
I don’t exactly remember how I managed to follow 11 accounts… I simply attempted to follow my GoToSocial account first… it didn’t work. Then I randomly saw one of my GoToSocial posts in the Global feed and followed myself from there.
You may be wondering: can I follow on Sharkey the accounts I follow on GoToSocial? NOPE. Every single account I follow on Sharkey only shows one follower: me. Because I’m not properly federating yet.
I even DM’d myself a toot where I recommended interesting accounts to follow, so I could follow them.
“Following list” import doesn’t work. Yes, I exported the list of accounts I follow on Mastodon and pruned it, only keeping about 100 accounts I really want to interact with. I attempted to import it into Sharkey and the interface says it’s processing the action, but it’s not following any accounts I want to add. Not even 12 hours later.
I’m basically stranded on a tiny Fedi island, clicking on “Global” to hope to see an account I recognize so I can follow it. And worry not, the global feed is not a “global feed” in the Mastodon sense of the way. It’s just accounts I sometimes interact with from my GoToSocial account (since I’m successfully following it now). Sometimes the feed shows toots from 5 months ago… I even found a toot from 7 years ago in there (I kid you not).
Sure, I could publicize the username of my Sharkey instance but that would be nonsensical because the whole purpose of my Sharkey account is to keep it small and have interactions with Fedi people I know… away from the noise of Mastodon and GoToSocial. I even turned on manual follow approvals.
I’m glad this dumpster fire is happening 10 months into my self-hosting journey because it would have tainted the experience to be honest. I feel so grateful for my other self-hosted apps like GoToSocial, PeerTube and NextCloud, working as intended. My self-hosted Pixelfed is also a tiny desert island but I don’t mind so much - pasting URLs in its search bar works. Sharkey doesn't have the same workarounds as far as I can tell. This is the reality for some self-hosted accounts with no extra relays that do not federate properly.
Now every time I’m in Sharkey and I press the “Global” feed menu item I feel as if I’m pulling down the lever of a slot machine. Which familiar account may I be able to add now? I had a list of about 100 accounts I’m really fond of. 10 done, 90 to go.
The lesson: setting up a self-hosted Fedi account that you want to keep private may not be so easy because search is super tricky for new instances - especially those set up to keep things small.
And I’m sorry if I have been in this weird mood lately but 4-5 straight days of self-hosting struggles will do this to you.
I have nothing but love and admiration for YunoHost (thank you for empowering me to self-host!!!) and for all the instances I’m running. Sharkey is proving to be a lemon, but I will attempt to make limoncello out of it.
And now: off to finish packing my suitcase.
a presto,
Ele
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