I just upgraded my instance to 0.18.0 using Ansible and I had to disable the option ‘Private instance’ directly on the database to get the lemmy docker up and running. I assume this is an intentional change, but should it really stop Lemmy from even running?
I’m not sure those two settings should be compatible? If it’s a private instance then it means it should not federate.
I guess it was an oversight regarding breaking changes. What error did you get? It might help some people who’re experience similar problems.
Thankfully the error was very explicit:
lemmy_1 | Error: LemmyError { message: Some("Cannot have both private instance and federation enabled."), inner: Cannot have both private instance and federation enabled., context: SpanTrace [] }ncgnzlcl_lemmy_1 exited with code 1With both options enabled, my instance operated as expected on 0.17.4: there was no anonymous access to anything, but once logged in you could subscribe to communities from any public instances. They don’t seem incompatible at all, and my posts and comments were federated correctly outside of my instance.
Prior to v18, a private instance that federates could see other instances’ content, but its own content would not federate. Not sure if they changed it on purpose.
At least on 0.17.4, with Private Instance and Federation enabled, the comments and posts I made to remote communities were federated correctly to other instances. The change seems very intentional, as shown by the error message I got after I upgraded:
lemmy_1 | Error: LemmyError { message: Some("Cannot have both private instance and federation enabled."), inner: Cannot have both private instance and federation enabled., context: SpanTrace [] }ncgnzlcl_lemmy_1 exited with code 1The check giving this error is pretty old, so it seems that you got it to work was not intentional: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/blame/63d3759c481ff2d7594d391ae86e881e2aeca56d/crates/api_common/src/utils.rs#L539
As far as I can see, 0.18 and its release candidates only added additional checks preventing such an instance to be set up in the first place.
I see, thank you for the insight. According to this comment, after an instance on 0.18.0 is running one can still set it to private with federation enabled, so it seems this check is only preventing the instance from starting in that state.
Yes, that’s what this check (and the later introduced changes) are meant for. On the reasoning why this configuration is not desired I can’t comment.