April 2025
Published on April 12, 2025 by Patrick Dersjant
Hi there,
Sorry for the delay of this quarterly update, but life intervened a bit and I only today get around to writing the update.
The drum has been running fine for the last couple of months. Of the 285 accounts, just more than 100 are regular actives, creating more than 17,000 interactions on a monthly basis. Great!
Technical developments
In the beginning of January, the Drum switched to IFTAS for our do-not-interact blocklists. IFTAS (iftas.org) procures a reviewed and labelled list of unsafe domains, so it makes the life of our moderation crew a lot easier. Still, give them thanks for handling more than 60 abuse reports this quarter alone!
Also, in the last quarter the Mastodon team published some updates, bringing the newest version to 4.3.7 and 4.2.20 where the Drum is still running 4.2.10. There is a reason for that which I'll explain, but rest assured that I've assessed the updates and none of them is critical for the Drum as it is run now.
The Drum - as I've written before - runs on a Yunohost (Debian-based) server. This allows for easy updates, but has one drawback where Mastodon is concerned. That is, the update is done by first copying the files you want to keep across the update, then deleting the old version, then installing the new version, then copying back the files you want to keep. With Mastodon on the Drum, this is in the order of 115-150 GB of files, taking (almost) forever. Each update therefor - and if you're with us for longer you'll know - means serious downtime.
To address this issue, this week (so strictly, in Q2) these user files - think images and videos - were moved to bucket storage. Still with Hetzner in Germany, so no Amazon or US providers involved. This means quicker updates as the aforementioned copying is no longer necessary!
But first - and this is for the coming weeks - I'll have to make sure that the new location can also be found when referring to older posts. I also want to reorganize our storage a bit to also get some monetary saving out of this (the current storage is on a mounted disk that costs about 11 euros per month, compared to 5-7 euros for the new storage. When that is done, the Drum will be updated to 4.3.7 (or later, if available).
Finances
Financially, the Drum is still going strong. Thank you all for your continuing contributions! This quarters financials:
Income
Sorry for the delay of this quarterly update, but life intervened a bit and I only today get around to writing the update.
The drum has been running fine for the last couple of months. Of the 285 accounts, just more than 100 are regular actives, creating more than 17,000 interactions on a monthly basis. Great!
Technical developments
In the beginning of January, the Drum switched to IFTAS for our do-not-interact blocklists. IFTAS (iftas.org) procures a reviewed and labelled list of unsafe domains, so it makes the life of our moderation crew a lot easier. Still, give them thanks for handling more than 60 abuse reports this quarter alone!
Also, in the last quarter the Mastodon team published some updates, bringing the newest version to 4.3.7 and 4.2.20 where the Drum is still running 4.2.10. There is a reason for that which I'll explain, but rest assured that I've assessed the updates and none of them is critical for the Drum as it is run now.
The Drum - as I've written before - runs on a Yunohost (Debian-based) server. This allows for easy updates, but has one drawback where Mastodon is concerned. That is, the update is done by first copying the files you want to keep across the update, then deleting the old version, then installing the new version, then copying back the files you want to keep. With Mastodon on the Drum, this is in the order of 115-150 GB of files, taking (almost) forever. Each update therefor - and if you're with us for longer you'll know - means serious downtime.
To address this issue, this week (so strictly, in Q2) these user files - think images and videos - were moved to bucket storage. Still with Hetzner in Germany, so no Amazon or US providers involved. This means quicker updates as the aforementioned copying is no longer necessary!
But first - and this is for the coming weeks - I'll have to make sure that the new location can also be found when referring to older posts. I also want to reorganize our storage a bit to also get some monetary saving out of this (the current storage is on a mounted disk that costs about 11 euros per month, compared to 5-7 euros for the new storage. When that is done, the Drum will be updated to 4.3.7 (or later, if available).
Finances
Financially, the Drum is still going strong. Thank you all for your continuing contributions! This quarters financials:
Income
Donations € 309,45
Expenses
Hosting costs € 130,57
Payment costs € 58,83
Donations €0
Total expenses € 189,40
Total buffer: € 718,67 (15 months of hosting costs)
Expenses
Hosting costs € 130,57
Payment costs € 58,83
Donations €0
Total expenses € 189,40
Total buffer: € 718,67 (15 months of hosting costs)
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