Not so long ago I updated the Rogue Project's Friendica Instance to the latest version. Other than a few tweaks and aggravations it went rather smoothly. Friendica has a habit of breaking. There are many issues under the hood that need attention. I unfortunately do not have the time I wish I did to fix a lot of these issues. Though most of them are just nuance and do not stop the show. I have a script on my VPS that checks every 5 minutes to see if all the services that Friendica needs are still running. If not it starts them. Recently, since the upgrade, My php-fpm kept dying. I checked the logs and it was due to OOM-Killer, which is a task that kills processes that threaten to shutdown the system due to trying to use to much memory. Okay, so I know the symptom, now what is the problem? It turns out that with the new version of Friendica the way the worker.php has been changed can lead to this issue. So I added constraints to the configuration to eliminate this. Then I found out I had a poison pill in my database. A transaction that just kept causing the worker to use up all the memory and trigger a OOM error. So I cleared the queue and hopefully now all is well on the Instance, until the next issue of course.

Okay, this is the rant part. I am going to be honest and very candid. I usually prefer tact but I am more than just a little irate. When I decided to join the Fediverse I tried Mastodon, did not like it and did not expect to. I hate micro blogging environments which is why I was never on Twitter or X. I discovered Friendica and I loved it. I decided to start my own Instance and I decided to support the community of the greater Fediverse and open my Instance to the general public.

It seems as though some users do not understand that Fediverse Instance are not corporate owned (well most of them anyway). Myself and hundreds of thousands of other admins setup, maintain and support these individual Instance on the Fediverse. Every Instance is typically owned and operated by one person or a very small team. Rogue Project's Friendica is owned and operated by me, myself and I. I get zero contributions of any kind from anyone. My time and finances exclusively keep this Instance up and available for the 80+ users (yes we are a small Instance) that are on the Instance. So when I log in and see a user whining about an issue on the Instance without even contacting me to let me know there is an issue. It upsets me. No, I did not delete their account, even though they make me feel like they are very ungrateful for all I do for them for nothing (except their whining) in return. To add insult to injury this user keeps referring to the Instance by Rogue's Project Friendica instead of its proper name Rogue Project's Friendica. I am not sure if that is supposed to be a passive aggressive insult to me or not as I have continually corrected them on that misidentification of the Instance. By stating the real name in a comment on their posts.

Spending hours fixing an Instance, when I actually do not even use Social Media that much is frustrating enough. To see that my work and financial contribution is not even appreciated really makes me ask myself "why am I doing this?" Why not just re-purpose the VPS to something more useful to me and move on? Then I calm down, everything is fixed and I move on. No, I will not be shutting down Rogue Project's Friendica anytime soon. As I do still have plenty of users that are not whining and complaining. That do apparently appreciate my effort. So I will continue to put out fires, and pay the bills. I just wish more users on the Fediverse would appreciate the work and financial sacrifices that the Owners and Administrators of their Instance contribute so they can have an Instance to be a part of the Fediverse. Rant Over!

If any other Friendica Instance Admin has an issue with OOM error on their Instance since the upgrade please feel free to contact me and I will be glad to help you out.

Unus Nemo

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#Friendica #Rogue Projects Friendica #Server Update #Killer Of OOM Killer