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Lemmy Administration @lemmy.ml Signfeld @lemm.ee

[SOLVED] Cannot have both private instance and federation enabled

After using Ansible to upgrade Lemmy following the instructions (https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ansible) I am now getting the error

Error: LemmyError { message: Some("Cannot have both private instance and federation enabled."), inner: Cannot have both private instance and federation enabled., context: "SpanTrace" }

I am not sure how to change either private to requiring approval or public OR disable federation now. I don't see anything about it in the relevant documentation (https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/administration/configuration.html) but I could be missing something.

The docker container keeps trying to restart and fails each time. Any help with this would be really appreciated!

EDIT: solved it by ssh'ing into the postgres docker container, running psql and UPDATE local_site SET private_instance = 'f' WHERE id = 1;

Also, I changed it back to private in the admin settings and it's fine now... really weird. Going to need to remember to do this every update I guess.

2
2 comments
  • this stumped for for a couple hours when I first set it up.

  • I don't think you understand the point of federation or why you had to hack this. You cannot have federation - which is in fact putting yourself out there, making yourself publically known and open to send and receive messages - and also private, closed off, hosting your own instance.

    I think all you wanted really was to close registrations and be on your own server, but that's not private, that's still a public server in terms of the 'verse. You'll still be discoverable, just no one can sign up.

    Private instances are for like companies who want to host their own internal lemmy instance for them to have a community. Maybe a marginalized group wants to have a completely private instance completely shut off from the rest of the fediverse that they don't want to have shared with anyone.