Mastodon has a single-user instance mode: https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/blob/8392ddbf87f5522c4...

Most instances would federate with you immediately since they're on a blacklist model, but some instances (such as awoo.space) operate on a whitelist, meaning they'd have to vet you first.

I’m sure I can dig this up at some point, but just in case anyone knows off hand - can a single user instance run well enough on a small (1 cpu, 512mb ram) VPS running a few other lightweight services?

One CPU would be fine with just one user, but that's not enough RAM. I would consider 2GB the bare minimum, with one app server instance and one background worker process (sidekiq) running.

hugogameiro seemed to say otherwise a month ago[0]. According to his post, it takes <1GB of RAM. Have things changed since then?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15213203

It would probably be possible to run the app server and background worker with about 1 GB of RAM. You might have to restart the workers daily to avoid OOMs (ruby/rails/puma will leak memory, you'll just accept that at some point), but that's more or less acceptable.

That still leaves postgres, redis, your web server and all other system processes. Fitting those on the same server with a total of 1 GB of RAM available is a very, very tight fit. You will probably get OOMs regularly, and upgrading Mastodon, doing backups and things like that will be painful (building assets, for example, tends to eat a lot of memory).

hugogameiro, from what I understand, runs a lot of mastodon instances on shared infrastructure. That eliminates a lot of that overhead and if you look at just the instance-specific processes, 1 GB seems realistic. If you have existing infrastructure (i.e. something like postgres, redis, nginx) and can allocate about 1 GB of RAM to Mastodon, or use something like a Heroku 2x dyno, where these components are separated as well, that might work. Otherwise, I'd opt for 2 GB of RAM.

So I decided to test this out on a 1CPU/512M DO droplet, just for fun.

I did indeed hit OOM during the setup (`bundle install` and `yarn` steps). After the first one I added a 1G swap and made it all the way through the 1.6.1 install (although the webpack precompile step damn near used up the whole swap!). Anyway 1.6.1 idles around 600M without any attempt to optimize.

I next tested an upgrade from 1.6.1 to 2.0.0 and was able to get it done (with the precompile again cutting it close - it hit 1015M of the swap, hah!). No change in memory usage, perhaps a bit more even.

Off topic - the install process was easy enough but seems like it could really do well to be (much) more automated. Do you know if anyone is working towards this? I suppose that is what Docker is for...

The last time I set one up the install/setup process ran out of memory when you had less than the 2GB Droplet on digital ocean, but when actually running it didn't need the full amount. Could have been improved since then.

Ruby is not a great choice for a 'decentralized' app. Setup and config is harder, usually requires an entire build environment and can quickly throw you into dependency hell. Server requirements and maintenance are also a lot higher.

As straightforward as mastodon is to setup currently on a server, my hope is that future versions are so very simple, and include plenty of automation, that even non-techies could setup and operate their single-user instance. Basically like installing SIMPLE software on a conventional desktop. And, that's not a simple task...but if/when that's done, then the barrier to entry and use will be low enough to allow for floods of users - arriving on their own single-user instance/server - to join the network.

So, for now, yeah it takes a little work in setting up your own single-user instance, but as another person posted already, mastodon supports that mode. Like all homesteading, it takes a little elbow grease. ;-) Cheers!

It doesn't seem to offer a single-user version, but https://masto.host/ can give you a managed Mastodon instance at the click of a button.

I set up a Mastodon instance last weekend. It took me about 3-4h, mostly because I made some mistakes and restarted from scratch - if setting up Docker containers is old hat to you, it'll take two hours out of your life at most.

I haven't gotten outgoing email working yet, so it's effectively a single-user instance. And it works fine. I can follow people on other instances, they can follow me, conversations can happen.

Everyone is pretty much ready to federate with any new server until such time as said server starts being a problem; if you don't start acting like a 4channer then I doubt you're gonna get blocked.

Federation is opt-out. New instances are automatically federated with, it's only abusive ones that are culled.