Luckily, I was able to mitigate it within the week it started, by setting up specific Cloudflare firewall rules. I just haven't remembered to downgrade the server since it happened :)
jwr1
joined 2 years ago
MODERATOR OF
The experience for setting up an Mbin server has greatly improved with the latest Docker setup rework. So now, it shouldn't take more than a few minutes to get a simple Mbin setup running.
As for resource usage, my server (kbin.earth) doesn't have anywhere close to the user base fedia.io does, but I've been able to run my server (which has ~150 active and ~600 total users) on a decently low-resource server. In the past month or so, it's been a server with 16 vCPUs and 32 GB RAM, but previously it was running on 8 vCPUs and 16 GB RAM (had to upgrade due to DDOS).
I've been running my server for about 1.5 years (since December 2023), and most of the time it is a set-and-forget type of thing, of course, until you need to update things or troubleshoot some issue. But overall, it's been working great, and when you do run into an issue, the Mbin devs are usually quick to help troubleshoot with you.
It is true that Mbin doesn't have an "official" instance, but there are multiple servers that are run by the Mbin devs, including thebrainbin.org, gehirneimer.de, and kbin.melroy.org (and kbin.earth if you count me).
I think it would make sense to have communities in an alphabetical order
Unfortunately, that's just not possible with either Mbin, Lemmy, or PieFed, as there's no way to request a list of communities sorted alphabetically. The stars feature will be your best bet, as it's kind of meant to fix having to dig through your subscriptions list.
Beyond those two things you've done an excellent job with the app.
Thank you!
Wow, thanks for putting so much time into this! We should definitely be able to implement some of these. I especially like the idea of having a diverse set of "muted" content, and having a way to quickly mute something through the overflow menu. Honestly, I like your terminology of "muted" content much better than "filter list"; so maybe I'll rename "filter lists" to "mute lists". Also adding more copy/share/block options seems good too.
Lots of other great ideas here that I'll try to keep in mind! Thanks for the feedback!
I'll take a look at things when I get a chance. The notifications are actually supposed to be sorted by new, so I'll definitely need to fix it if they're not.
On Interstellar, all of your posts and comments would be under Account -> Overview. Any replies to your posts and comments should be under Account -> Notifications.
Also an easy way to search thru my own comments/posts by text would be great too. In Thunder I can search filter by user which makes it easy
I could see that being useful, yeah.
no clue if that limits the capabilities compared to a piefed account
I believe you're correct here, we'd only be able to filter search results by user on Lemmy and Mbin, not PieFed yet.
Not sure if we could do this already, but could we sort the communities in alphabetical order in the pull out drawer?
The starred communities and users in the nav drawer are already alphabetically sorted. However, neither the Lemmy, Mbin, or PieFed APIs allow you to get a list of communities sorted alphabetically; so that wouldn't be possible for the subscribed communities list.
Could we add an option to show some of the 'action buttons' in compact mode? I generally prefer using compact mode as opposed to a full card. And it would be nice to be able to upvote/downvote a thread quickly. I think the compact threads are a bit crammed as is, so it might require some adjusting to make it work and look nice. Just a suggestion though.
The compact mode card ... the titles are always cut off at the thumb nail. Perhaps it would be better to just make the card taller to accommodate the title. They could just be varying card heights depending on the title of the thread.
It sounds like maybe an option in between compact and non-compact would be best for you.
Maybe some colored text highlighting to separate either the user or instance, rather than have everything just one color.
That's definitely something we could add. I know Thunder already has an option like that, right?
Anyways, thanks again for all your work and finding a way for us to give feedback. I don't want to come off as demanding or anything as you don't owe us anything.
You're good, you don't come off as demanding. Asking for feedback and suggestions was the whole point of the post :) Thanks!
been using the app this week and is being great so far, but one point that irks me is if I'm in the notifications section and press the back button, I expect to go back to the feed or previous section I was, but it just closes the app and I have to see my reflection on the screen.
It works like that because you went to a completely different page via the navigation bar. You'd have to use the same navigation bar to get back to Feeds. I will say, somebody else recommended requiring two back presses in order to actually exit the screen (which we'll likely implement), so that would at least mitigate your issue of accidentally exiting the app.
thanks for this app!
You're welcome, and thanks for the feedback!
text on it is small
Feel free to bump up the "Global text scale" option in Display settings a notch or two; that might help.
It would be better if searching had more sort options
I'll see what we can do, but we might already be using all the sort options available by the PieFed API.
Feel free to comment on this post if there's anything in particular you think Interstellar is missing: https://kbin.earth/m/fediverse@piefed.social/t/1469625
Feel free to comment on this post if there's anything in particular you think Interstellar is missing: https://kbin.earth/m/fediverse@piefed.social/t/1469625
25
New
- Update navigation handling so pages keep state when switching between them; by @olorin99.
- Add support for listing private messages in PieFed and Lemmy; by @olorin99 and @jwr1.
- Interstellar is now available to download natively for Arch Linux via the AUR: interstellar-bin. Now you can download Interstellar in style 😎.
- Add Lemmy private message creation.
- Add notification support for Lemmy.
- Add Mbin support for choosing a top sort timeframe, and move top sort options to a submenu; by @olorin99.
PieFed support
Support for PieFed's alpha API was added by @jwr1 and @olorin99! Keep in mind that the API is currently limited in its capabilities, and we were not able to implement all the features Interstellar provides; this is the case wherever you see a screen or pop-up message that says "Unimplemented" error. Additionally, the alpha API could easily change at any moment, so don't expect it to work without issues.
If you'd like to try it out despite it being an "alpha" feature, then when you go to sign-in, enter preferred.social as the Instance Host. See this post (https://piefed.social/post/484755) if you'd like more information about that instance and general PieFed API info.
New Timeline feed view
A new "Timeline" Feed View is available for Mbin that displays both thread and microblog posts in reverse chronological order (newest first). No other sort options work for this view, as sorting is done on the client side.
Fixes
- Fix configs magazine browser link in about page.
- Fix alt text not showing for Lemmy posts.
- Fix user profile edit screen so avatar and cover deletion works on Lemmy.
- Fix the message thread screen so it uses an infinite scroll view and can load messages past the first page.
- Fix notifications for messages not being clickable.
- Hide user follow button for Lemmy and PieFed.
- Display server software names with correct casing.
Full Changelog: https://github.com/jwr1/interstellar/compare/v0.8.0...v0.9.0
18
Cross-posted from: https://kbin.earth/m/interstellar/t/980482
Warning: Due to the extra permission needed for bookmarking, all your Mbin accounts will need their oauth clients regenerated. To do so, for each Mbin server that you have accounts for, you will need to sign out of all accounts (including guest), which will trigger Interstellar to delete the related oauth client. From there, you can sign back in as usual. Alternatively, if you don't mind, it would probably be easier to just clear all your data from the app instead.
New
- Add copy-paste option for desktop oauth login (in case the system has issues launching the browser).
- Add notification control support for magazines, users, and posts; which was introduced in Mbin 1.8.0.
- Add bookmarking support for posts and comments. Saving posts/comments is available on Lemmy, and bookmark lists are available on Mbin (introduced in Mbin 1.8.0).
- Allow adding alt text on image upload; by @olorin99.
- Display a file picker dialog when downloading an image.
- Move post & comment overflow menu to top right corner.
Config Sharing
- Create a config sharing, export & import functionality for Profiles & Filter Lists.
- A new magazine (interstellar_configs) is available to publicly share your configs to. Here are some usage instructions copied from the new magazine's description:
How to Share
- Open Interstellar and go to the Settings page.
- Click either Switch profiles or Filter lists.
- Tap the Share button next to the item you'd like to share.
- Add a short description.
- Hit Submit to create a new thread in this magazine.
To share in other places (e.g., other magazines, in comments, microblogs, direct messages, etc.) or share multiple configs at a time, use the Share button in the markdown editor's toolbar.
Keep in Mind
-
Prefix your thread title with
[Profile]or[Filter List]to indicate what type of config you are sharing. -
While sharing, do not modify the markdown code block containing your config. Interstellar verifies its contents with a hash to ensure the data remains unaltered.
Create New ... Screen
- Overhaul post creation screen to have tabs for each of the different post types: Text, Image, Link, and Microblog.
- Add a new magazine picker that will provide autocomplete options for the magazine as you type. Once you have selected a magazine, the corresponding icon will display next to the name, and a button on the side will appear which allows you to open the magazine in a new page to view it.
- Add a magazine creation tab to the same page (works for Mbin and Lemmy). (There might be a bug that causes a 500 Internal Error while attempting to create a magazine on Mbin ATM, but hopefully it will be fixed soon.)
- The Link tab has a new button that will fetch the link's title and description from the internet (similar to Mbin). It can additionally be triggered by pressing enter (or submitting) on the link text field (as long as both the title and body fields are empty).
- The Microblog tab will now default to using the "random" magazine if you haven't specified one. This is due to the fact that Mbin uses "random" to store uncategorized microblogs.
Builds
- Add Linux ARM support! Includes a .tar.gz file, an .AppImage file, and Flathub support (same as x86_64 version).
- Improve AppImages by using sharun to bundle dependencies. Now the AppImages will truly work on any Linux distro you throw at it. Huge thanks to Samueru-sama for providing many examples and troubleshooting everything with me.
- Windows support is officially added! There's now a portable .zip file and a .exe setup file.
Fixes
- Fix sub-level comments not showing on the user screen while viewing with a Lemmy account.
- Hide OC and Tags fields on Lemmy.
- Change the markdown editor toolbar to scroll horizontally instead of wrap, which caused problems by making the actual editable field shrink in height.
- Fix infinite scroll views to give useful error messages instead of the generic "app encountered unknown error".
- Fix full screen image view bleeding into the status bar on Android.
- Fix lengthy usernames and magazine names from shoving UI elements off screen.
13
Warning: Due to the extra permission needed for bookmarking, all your Mbin accounts will need their oauth clients regenerated. To do so, for each Mbin server that you have accounts for, you will need to sign out of all accounts (including guest), which will trigger Interstellar to delete the related oauth client. From there, you can sign back in as usual. Alternatively, if you don't mind, it would probably be easier to just clear all your data from the app instead.
New
- Add copy-paste option for desktop oauth login (in case the system has issues launching the browser).
- Add notification control support for magazines, users, and posts; which was introduced in Mbin 1.8.0.
- Add bookmarking support for posts and comments. Saving posts/comments is available on Lemmy, and bookmark lists are available on Mbin (introduced in Mbin 1.8.0).
- Allow adding alt text on image upload; by @olorin99.
- Display a file picker dialog when downloading an image.
- Move post & comment overflow menu to top right corner.
Config Sharing
- Create a config sharing, export & import functionality for Profiles & Filter Lists.
- A new magazine (interstellar_configs) is available to publicly share your configs to. Here are some usage instructions copied from the new magazine's description:
How to Share
- Open Interstellar and go to the Settings page.
- Click either Switch profiles or Filter lists.
- Tap the Share button next to the item you'd like to share.
- Add a short description.
- Hit Submit to create a new thread in this magazine.
To share in other places (e.g., other magazines, in comments, microblogs, direct messages, etc.) or share multiple configs at a time, use the Share button in the markdown editor's toolbar.
Keep in Mind
-
Prefix your thread title with
[Profile]or[Filter List]to indicate what type of config you are sharing. -
While sharing, do not modify the markdown code block containing your config. Interstellar verifies its contents with a hash to ensure the data remains unaltered.
Create New ... Screen
- Overhaul post creation screen to have tabs for each of the different post types: Text, Image, Link, and Microblog.
- Add a new magazine picker that will provide autocomplete options for the magazine as you type. Once you have selected a magazine, the corresponding icon will display next to the name, and a button on the side will appear which allows you to open the magazine in a new page to view it.
- Add a magazine creation tab to the same page (works for Mbin and Lemmy). (There might be a bug that causes a 500 Internal Error while attempting to create a magazine on Mbin ATM, but hopefully it will be fixed soon.)
- The Link tab has a new button that will fetch the link's title and description from the internet (similar to Mbin). It can additionally be triggered by pressing enter (or submitting) on the link text field (as long as both the title and body fields are empty).
- The Microblog tab will now default to using the "random" magazine if you haven't specified one. This is due to the fact that Mbin uses "random" to store uncategorized microblogs.
Builds
- Add Linux ARM support! Includes a .tar.gz file, an .AppImage file, and Flathub support (same as x86_64 version).
- Improve AppImages by using sharun to bundle dependencies. Now the AppImages will truly work on any Linux distro you throw at it. Huge thanks to Samueru-sama for providing many examples and troubleshooting everything with me.
- Windows support is officially added! There's now a portable .zip file and a .exe setup file.
Fixes
- Fix sub-level comments not showing on the user screen while viewing with a Lemmy account.
- Hide OC and Tags fields on Lemmy.
- Change the markdown editor toolbar to scroll horizontally instead of wrap, which caused problems by making the actual editable field shrink in height.
- Fix infinite scroll views to give useful error messages instead of the generic "app encountered unknown error".
- Fix full screen image view bleeding into the status bar on Android.
- Fix lengthy usernames and magazine names from shoving UI elements off screen.
I'll say within the past few months there hasn't been as much activity as there usually has been, so there's not like a lot of new features coming in like there is for PieFed. Part of that is likely due to the fact that Mbin's low on devs ATM, especially since one of the previous devs went AWOL. Still, I'll say Mbin is already quite polished and works well, even if the dev team isn't as active as they once were.