Tech Tangents on Nostr: Hello! A TL;DR, I'm going to change Dialup.space over to Mastodon and it may cause ...

Hello! A TL;DR, I'm going to change Dialup.space over to Mastodon and it may cause weird issues while that happens.

The server I'm posting this from is one I run myself, exclusively for myself. When I decided to switch away from...the other site...I figured I may as well pay my own way for a fediverse presence since I am somewhat notable on the internet and could end up being a bigger burden on another server.

Well, it turns out I was right. Dialup.space has been running Pleroma and it's at the point now where every time I post the server is overwhelmed and becomes unresponsive. The postgres server in the backend pegs the CPUs for my rented server. So I need to upgrade. But I also own a server, so I figure rather than increasing my monthly expenses more, I'm just going to bring the site's hosting local and let it run unfettered.

But there is another catch, I used Pleroma. While I could theoretically just migrate the data files for it and move on. I don't really want to. The Pleroma experience has not been the best and I would rather not continue using it. I want to change to Mastodon proper to have the more mainstream experience. Which leads to the bigger problem, moving my account. Pleroma can't do that. Most other ActivityPub server's can and while it has "technically" been added to the API, it's not available to users.

I'm not exactly sure what would happen if I just pointed the dialup.space from the existing pleroma server to a new one running mastodon, instead I'm going to try doing this the "proper" way by moving my account to another instance first, and then back to dialup.space once I'm done.

So I'm going to have to go on a multi-step adventure to move the server and change the host environment. Here is my plan:

1. Convert Pleroma to Akkoma - this gains the front end option to move accounts
2. Initiate an account move to a new instance of Mastodon I will set up just to park my account temporarily.
3. Redirect dialup.space from Akkoma to the final Mastodon instance running on my faster server.
4. Initiate an account move *back* to dialup.space.

I have no idea if this will work as smoothly as I hop from the ActivityPub side. I've spent weeks relearning how to host software with Docker recently and have the setup for Mastodon down, so I'm not concerned about that aspect.

My plan is to spread out these steps over the next week rather than rush it. That should also allow time for propagation of changes to other instances as I go along. So I won't be taking any actions now for at least 24hrs. After that I'll be starting Step 1. I'll post about progress as I go to keep you updated as well. Posts do not get moved between accounts, so when I am settled in to my final solution I plan on reposting everything I have posted here. My hope is also to import my...other site...posts as well to have a complete backlog again.