From Mastodon to snac: A Lighter Fediverse Stack

Permalink 3 min read Published: 2026-05-20

infrastructure #snac #Mastodon #Fediverse #ActivityPub #VolSync #Restic #Kubernetes #GitOps

Why the lab dropped PostgreSQL, Redis, and object storage for a filesystem-backed snac instance — with VolSync restic backups.

The lab used to run Mastodon on Kubernetes: PostgreSQL, a Redis-compatible cache, and S3-shaped media storage on top of the usual edge stack. That worked, but it was heavy for a small personal instance — more moving parts than the workload justified.

The fediverse home at this-is-fine.social now runs snac instead: a minimal ActivityPub server in portable C, no database, all state on a single filesystem tree, backed up off-cluster with the same VolSync + restic pattern as other stateful apps.

Running Mastodon in the Lab (Fediverse Stack)

Permalink 2 min read Published: 2025-11-21

infrastructure #Mastodon #Fediverse #Kubernetes #Helm #Flux #PostgreSQL #Dragonfly #Rook-Ceph

What Mastodon needs under the hood — and how a small Kubernetes stack covers it with GitOps.

Mastodon is a federated microblog server: local timelines plus ActivityPub links to other instances. Running it means managing state (PostgreSQL, media, cache) and edge (HTTPS and /.well-known for discovery). The lab instance is at https://mastodon.this-is-fine.social.

It ships as a Helm release through Flux, same GitOps style as the rest of the lab.

Federation is the interesting part socially and technically. Other servers discover you through HTTPS hostnames and /.well-known endpoints; if DNS or TLS drifts, federation breaks even when the pod is healthy. That is why the lab treats edge (Gateway API, cert-manager, external-dns) as first-class dependencies, not an afterthought.