We've got "Better Boston" up and running as a Mastodon instance, especially for bike/transpo/policy peeps in #GreaterBoston and #Massachusetts, but it can also be a good MA/Boston server in general too.

@meptrsn was the force getting things rolling, and I've got the server running

https://better.boston

Better Boston

A server for people in Greater Boston and Massachusetts interested in a more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable region.

Mastodon hosted on better.boston

Please keep in mind, the server is running on extra cloud space I had already. We may need to upgrade if it gets busy.

Registrations currently require approval just for safety, please leave a short note on the registration page and we'll get everyone approved.

@flyyn that's great! Can you share the tech details (such as cloud provider, vCPU etc)?

@EgbertS I got a super cheap deal from RackNerd, it's like $100/year for 10gb RAM, 4 cores. Email is Mailgun, uploaded images are Wasabi.

If we gain steady traffic, we can start moving services (Elasticsearch, Postgres, Redis) to other similarly cheap/long-term machines to keep things cheap.

We can always hop on a cloud in an emergency - may take a little downtime, but I've run through the Mastodon install 3 times now and it's not bad.

@flyyn thats pretty cool! Like to learn from your 3x experience! Any recommendations re installation guides?how to?

@EgbertS not running in Docker FYI

This was the main guide I used for making sure all 3 instances share Redis/Postgres/Elastic: https://nfgworld.com/multiple-mastodon-instances-on-a-single-server/

and ofc official "Install from Source"

There's a few places where the install from source guide breaks, especially when it comes to nginx/certbot, but I hit those for the first instance, too. hurts more when you mess up and it kills a prev. instance running fine

also, running 1st instance w/out redis/pg ns, and 2+3 w/ ns worked fine (afaik)

Multiple Mastodon Instances on a Single Server

Back when I still ran a Mastodon server, I had a brief need to run two of them on one server. With Gargron's help, I worked out how.

NFGworld
@flyyn very helpful!! thanks for sharing!!
@EgbertS of course, more than happy to help!
@flyyn @EgbertS that’s def. a nice deal for a box like that
@flyyn @meptrsn This is awesome! I'll be sticking where I am but I'm looking forward to seeing the server grow, I would love to meet more cool folks in MA.

@tom @meptrsn Thanks! I'm also staying where I'm at, because bikes are, ya know, cool :)

Also hoping to stay connected to MA peeps, even if I haven't moved to the server.

@flyyn @meptrsn

Well now I have to figure out how to migrate!