My friends, I'm so excited and happy to introduce a new project: the illumos Cafe!

The positive and constructive spirit of the BSD Cafe, created and maintained by all the friends who participated from day one in building a strong and friendly community, deserves to spread to other operating systems. Because there are other OSes that deserve attention, certainly more than they're getting right now.

Operating systems based on illumos (like SmartOS, OmniOS, Tribblix, OpenIndiana, etc.) are mature, stable, secure, and perfectly usable for a wide range of tasks. ZFS is native, zones are an excellent method for containerization, and bhyve and kvm coexist beautifully - and so much more, too much to list in a single post.

So from today, the illumos Cafe will stand alongside the BSD Cafe in creating a positive, respectful, and growth-oriented (but also relaxing!) environment, starting right here in the Fediverse with a Mastodon instance and a snac one.

I've written an introductory article about the project, including some technical details. I invite everyone interested to read it: https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/08/18/introducing-the-illumos-cafe/

Choose your table, take a seat and enjoy your time at the illumos Cafe!

#SysAdmin #IT #BSDCafe #illumosCafe #Community #OpenSource #OSS #illumos #SmartOS #OpenIndiana #ZFS #bhyve #kvm #Fediverse #Mastodon #snac #ITNotes

Running a single user (or small) instance in the Fediverse? Relay instances acting as a spreading proxy can help you to find your content and also to make your posts visible to others - and you can easily join with #Mastodon, #snac and many other ones!

The https://fedi-relay.gyptazy.com relay is mostly for tech related content and just got updates to the manpageblog design.

#mastodon #snac #relay #activitypub #fediverse #federated #bsd #devops #proxmox #ipv6 #opensource #community #debian #python

Alt...

Image of the activity pub relay instance by gyptazy

Here's something incredibly useless: a tool to convert your public #SNAC timeline into a #GopherProtocol tree.

https://codeberg.org/PurpleJillybeans/snac2gopher/src/branch/main

It's not very pretty at the moment but it *does* work. You can see it in action here:

SNAC: https://blog.n8fq.org/social/jillybeans
Gopher: gopher://lucifer.n8fq.org:70/1/phlog

#TooManyHobbiesTooLittleTime

Função muito supimpa do #SNAC que só recentemente constatei como é útil: podemos pôr no texto a ligação para uma imagem externa, que ele a transforma em anexo da "atividade" (a publicação no #ActivityPub), sem precisar armazená-la! Pode notar que essa foto do Locutus — Cap. Picard (Patrick Stewart) assimilado pelos Borg — é descarregada diretamente da Wikimedia Commons!

Não sei se outros sistemas, mesmo os que também já suportam #Markdown, fazem isso! Quem aí pode dizer?

Não rolou: a imagem é carregada como parte do corpo da publicação, no próprio #Akkoma e também no Snac, mas não é um anexo da atividade. O #Mastodon nem exibe a imagem do #Markdown assim.

Em ambos os casos em que ela aparece, porém, perdeu o "alt".

Conclusão: Como demonstrado antes, #Snac se saiu muito melhor nesse aspecto! ☑️

Alt...

Captura da publicação anterior renderizada por Mangane (Akkoma), com o logotipo "g GeoCities". Este era para ter o texto alternativo incluído mas não teve, portanto segue: GeoCities: logotipo por volta de 1997. É uma enorme letra "g" preta minúscula (não maiúscula), serifada com um ponto dentro. Abaixo dela, a palavra GeoCities, em caracteres negritos sem serifa, com suas partes "Geo" em azul e "Cities" em verde.

Alt...

Captura da publicação anterior renderizada pelo Mastodon, que coloca uma previsão do link para o Internet Archive "Welcome to GeoCities" no espaço em que esperava-se a exibição da imagem do logotipo colocada com Markdown, omitida por ele.

When I started developing snac, I realized I needed a default icon to show for those accounts that lacked an avatar, similar to the outlined elephant Mastodon has. Given the minimalistic nature of the software, I thought that having a heavily-pixelated one, even 8-bit-like, was a perfect match.

So, I started designing one, inspired by singer/composer Siouxsie Sioux, whom I'm a big fan of. I've done some pixelart before, but was not totally satisfied, so I asked a friend with more artistic skills, who did some tweaks, and I was finally happy with it.

Also, it's said that all cool software must have some easter eggs; so, Susie looks somewhat different sometimes, and once a year, in a special day, she looks very different. Easter eggs are like jokes and if you explain them they lose their power, so I'm leaving it here.

I submitted a Pull Request to update MacPorts' snac to 2.81 here:

https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/pull/29032

GitHub Actions' Continuous Integration checks has passed OK, which hopefully is a good sign?

It's up to someone else with commit access to merge it.

(As a total aside, given the comam.es .es TLD; I'm guessin you're in Spain? I have tentative plans to attend the MIRA Festival [mostly to see Amnesia Scanner] in November. Albeit, that's in Barcelona and I vaguely understand there are linguistic, cultural and socio-political differences? I've never visited before; but thought I would mention it as a possibility to meet up AFK maybe!)

#snac #MacPorts #OpenSource #ActivityPub #Mastodon #NoDatabaseNeeded
#NoJavaScript #NoCookiesEither #NotMuchBullShit

By the way, my #snac instance now runs on #DockerSwarm along with #Traefik, the reverse proxy which I've used since the start of this server. If you think it could be helpful, I’d be happy to submit a pull request with an example file like examples/docker-swarm_stack_traefik.yml.

I’ve also pushed the container image I built to Codeberg. Additionally, I could share a script that automates this setup.

If the propagate_local_purge configuration variable is set to true in server.json, purged local posts generate a Delete activity that is sent everywhere, instead of only deleted from the filesystem.

Included a small tweak to avoid being confused by implementations that return valid webfinger queries for non-account URLs (like i.e. the Wordpress ActivityPub plugin in some configurations). This helps in searching by URL.

Added Ukrainian translation (contributed by wincentbalin).

New command-line option muted, to list all MUTEd actors.

Mastodon API: Fixed metadata and follower approval flag when editing the account.

https://comam.es/what-is-snac

If you find #snac useful, please consider buying grunfink a coffee or contributing via LiberaPay.

#snacAnnounces #FrugalFediverse

CC: @strk@floss.social

Interesting, I never noticed #snac completely renders federated WordPress posts.
Another small marvel from truly excellent software.

#Fediverse #Wordpress #snac2

If you want to change the domain, you must move all your accounts from the old server to the new one, while both instances are operative.

https://comam.es/snac-doc/snac.8.html#Migrating_from_snac_to_Mastodon

and this

https://comam.es/snac-doc/snac.8.html#Migrating_from_Mastodon_to_snac

If you want to move from one #snac to another, it's mostly the same.

MUTE: silences an author forever. You'll never read anything from this poster anymore. Like block in Mastodon and other implementations, but without sending a Block activity.

Hide: hides a post and everything hyerarchically below (i.e. the full tree). The conversation won't be shown to you forever, and any incoming post in any of the levels will be dropped. No other part is informed about it, it's just a local operation.

Delete: deletes a post from your timeline. If it's part of a conversation, the branches below are left dangling, but are still shown in you timeline. Also, if you are the author of the post, a Delete activity is sent to everyone involved, so your post (hopefully) disappears everywhere.

CC: @justine@snac.smithies.me.uk

CC: @pernia@schizophreniabunker.vip @mint@ryona.agency @sysrq@lab.nyanide.com

CC: @stefano@bsd.cafe @shmok@snac.bsd.cafe

CC: @stefano@bsd.cafe

Updating Mastodon: 20 minutes
Updating snac2: 2 minutes

#fediverse #mastodon #snac #snac2 #activitypub

Mastodon API: fixed a regression (introduced in previous version in the "boosts disappear in Tusky" fix) that interrupted timelines.

https://comam.es/what-is-snac

If you find #snac useful, please consider buying grunfink a coffee or contributing via LiberaPay.

#snacAnnounces #FrugalFediverse

Added a server-wide Webmention hook; this way, if somebody out there (that supports Webmention) links to a user or post in this instance, a notification is sent (this is the complementary of what was implemented in version 2.76).

Fixed regression while sending email via pipe on OpenBSD.

Fixed Markdown parsing when the URL has parenthesis.

Always show the 'pending follow confirmations' section if there are any (even if the toggle is off).

If a metadata value is an account handler, it's also tried to be validated (rel="me" links).

Another search by URL tweak (this time for Pixelfed links).

Mastodon API: fixed a bug that made some boosts disappear after being shown in apps like Tusky, added followed hashtags maintenance, other minor changes.

Renamed command-line actions create_list to list_create and delete_list to list_remove.

The default favicon URL can be changed from the server configuration.

New command-line option export_posts, to export all posts by a user in a JSON format compatible with the one generated by Mastodon.

The command-line options to send notes also allow an optional -r argument, to set the URL of a Fediverse post this note is a reply to.

https://comam.es/what-is-snac

If you find #snac useful, please consider buying grunfink a coffee or contributing via LiberaPay.

#snacAnnounces #FrugalFediverse