NodeBB v4.0.0 — Federate good times, come on!

[raul@mastodon.in4matics.cat]

@julian great job!

[dani@mastodon.dtalens.com]

@julian

[germ@deletethis.lol]

@julian I read this whole thing wondering how NodeBB posts would look from my instance and then clicked your link at the end and realized I'd been reading one the whole time lol. Super cool, hope this takes off!

[julian@community.nodebb.org]

@[email protected] thanks for the suggestion, that's definitely something I'd want to consider.

Sort of a post queue for federated content that needs automatic or manual review before it is automatically slotted in a category.

[projectmoon]

@[email protected] Thanks. Even something as simple as mappin topic tags to categories automatically would work I think.

[julian@community.nodebb.org]

@[email protected] careful with that though, not all tags are the same, some have a higher signal-to-noise ratio, but others would just be filled with garbage

[dandandin@mastodon.uno]

@julian so cool, can't wait to upgrade my nodebb forum to V4 (I'm exclusively on mobile for a few days)

[projectmoon]

@[email protected] said in NodeBB v4.0.0 — Federate good times, come on!:

@[email protected] careful with that though, not all tags are the same, some have a higher signal-to-noise ratio, but others would just be filled with garbage

I think the best way, then, would be to have rules that map various group actor URLs to categories, and possibly also tags. Nothing automatic. Only configured. Of course, once Lemmy fixes the ability of Group actors to follow other Group actors, this will be a non-issue.

One other possible solution, which is employed by Misskey et al., is a proxy actor. It's a special user that follows other users, and relays info within its own instance. It's used for doing things like adding a remote user to a list without directly following them. The proxy account follows the user, and then your local instance adds the remote user to your list. But all ActivityPub interactions go through the proxy user.

[julian@community.nodebb.org]

If you have deployed NodeBB v4, and you updated to v4.0.1, please update now to v4.0.2 which fixes a regression that silently broke outgoing user follows.

[projectmoon]

@[email protected] said in NodeBB v4.0.0 — Federate good times, come on!:
Do we need need to refollow?

[julian@community.nodebb.org]

@[email protected] if you browse to the account it will show as unfollowed, so you will need to refollow, yes.

[ju@pol.social]

@julian
Upgrading to 4.02 tonight. Let's see how it federates. Congrats and thank you for your work.

[jakub-urbanowicz@community.nodebb.org]

@julian I've been unable to get AP following to work in either direction. I mean it is sometimes possible to follow somebody and get followed by other sites, but no actual posts ever come into or out of my nodebb instance (forum.n66.pl). The only thing that works is importing posts directly by entering their URL in the search area, which is also temperamental – sometimes the same post can be imported and sometimes it can't. I also tried following people from individual categories. It never worked except for one instance where it seems to have been stuck with a "pending" message, but I have no way of accepting or rejecting the follow request on the other side (it should be accepted automatically). Sometimes the same happens when entering followed people's URLs in the search panel. Looking forward to fixes.

[julian@community.nodebb.org]

Hi @Jakub-Urbanowicz! Let's try to figure out these issues one by one.

Looking at your site it looks to be an upgrade from an existing NodeBB, yes? In that case, ActivityPub is disabled for you and will need re-enabling.

Please make sure that the global toggle is on from the Settings -> Federation page.

Secondly, all of your categories are not automatically federating by default. Go into Manage -> Privileges and make sure that:

• The "fediverse" pseudo-group has the "View Users" privilege
• The "fediverse" pseudo-group has all of the privileges checked in the "Uncategorized" category
• The "fediverse" pseudo-group has all of the privileges checked in each category (if you want that category to be accessible outside of your forum)

[eridanense@conversafiada.net]

@julian It is interesting to see a long form content in the Fediverse. I'm still not used to it.

Pretty cool.

[jakub-urbanowicz@community.nodebb.org]

Good Idea to give federation issues a separate topic. I have made the changes on your list resulting in posts and chat messages coming out of the forum, but still nothing can be pulled into it, no matter how many people or sites I follow or try to follow. Funny, I couldn't find how to access AP users that I am apparently following other than by re-following them. They are not listed among local forum users.

[jakub-urbanowicz@community.nodebb.org]

@julian Can you give me some ideas what to do next?

[julian@community.nodebb.org]

@Jakub-Urbanowicz can you give me a example of something that cannot be pulled in?

Also run the forum under dev mode (./nodebb dev) for some additional logging around ActivityPub.

[jakub-urbanowicz@community.nodebb.org]

@julian Some of the users I am following (or so it reads on each user's page):

@[email protected] (Mastodon)
@[email protected] (Friendica)
@[email protected]
@[email protected]
@julian@community.nodebb.org
https://community.nodebb.org/post/102755 – imported by link (can't post remotely)

Nothing special happens when running dev mode. Just some plugin incompatibilities get printed:

2025-02-15T05:36:53.950Z [4567/3360] - warn: [plugins/load] The following plugins may not be compatible with your version of NodeBB. This may cause unintended behaviour or crashing. In the event of an unresponsive NodeBB caused by this plugin, run ./nodebb reset -p PLUGINNAME to disable it.

• nodebb-plugin-soundpack-default
• nodebb-plugin-emoji-android
• nodebb-widget-essentials
• nodebb-rewards-essentials
• nodebb-plugin-who-read-it
• nodebb-plugin-question-and-answer
• nodebb-plugin-poll
• nodebb-plugin-dbsearch
• nodebb-plugin-custom-pages
• nodebb-plugin-composer-default

I've been able to npm unl / npm i nodebb-theme-harmony, but I wasn't successful with plugin-composer-default or plugin-custom-pages, so I gave up on the rest of them. Every time I ran npm I saw a warning that my nodejs was outside requirements (probably too new, if I got it right).

./nodebb log

    ../../../bootstrap/scss/forms/_form-control.scss 40:7  @import
    bootstrap/scss/_forms.scss 3:9                         @import
    - 19:9                                                 root stylesheet

WARNING: The keyword 'none' must be used as a single argument.
    ../../../bootstrap/scss/mixins/_box-shadow.scss 10:9  box-shadow()
    ../../../bootstrap/scss/forms/_form-select.scss 32:7  @import
    bootstrap/scss/_forms.scss 4:9                        @import
    - 19:9                                                root stylesheet

./nodebb build
  started
2025-02-15T05:33:08.136Z [4567/2898] - info: [build] Building in parallel mode
2025-02-15T05:33:08.138Z [4567/2898] - info: [build]         plugin static dirs  build started
2025-02-15T05:33:08.139Z [4567/2898] - info: [build]          requirejs modules  build started
2025-02-15T05:33:08.139Z [4567/2898] - info: [build]           client js bundle  build started
2025-02-15T05:33:08.140Z [4567/2898] - info: [build]            admin js bundle  build started
2025-02-15T05:33:08.140Z [4567/2898] - info: [build]         client side styles  build started
2025-02-15T05:33:08.140Z [4567/2898] - info: [build] admin control panel styles  build started
2025-02-15T05:33:08.142Z [4567/2898] - info: [build]                  templates  build started
2025-02-15T05:33:08.142Z [4567/2898] - info: [build]                  languages  build started
2025-02-15T05:33:08.665Z [4567/2898] - info: [build]         plugin static dirs  build completed in 0.527sec
2025-02-15T05:33:09.350Z [4567/2898] - info: [build]           client js bundle  build completed in 1.211sec
2025-02-15T05:33:09.368Z [4567/2898] - info: [build]            admin js bundle  build completed in 1.228sec
2025-02-15T05:33:11.753Z [4567/2898] - info: [build]                  languages  build completed in 3.611sec
2025-02-15T05:33:11.807Z [4567/2898] - info: [build]          requirejs modules  build completed in 3.668sec
2025-02-15T05:33:11.807Z [4567/2898] - info: [build] Bundling with Webpack.
[10%] building (0/0 modules)
2025-02-15T05:33:13.983Z [4567/2898] - info: [build]         client side styles  build completed in 5.842sec
[10%] building (398/608 modules)
2025-02-15T05:33:25.087Z [4567/2898] - info: [build] Bundling took 10113 ms
2025-02-15T05:33:25.089Z [4567/2898] - info: [build] Asset compilation successful. Completed in 16.951sec.

sudo systemctl status nodebb
● nodebb.service - NodeBB
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/nodebb.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Sat 2025-02-15 06:39:50 CET; 12s ago
       Docs: https://docs.nodebb.org
    Process: 3477 ExecStart=/usr/bin/node loader.js (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   Main PID: 3488 (node)
      Tasks: 36 (limit: 9348)
     Memory: 375.1M
        CPU: 20.494s
     CGroup: /system.slice/nodebb.service
             ├─3488 /usr/bin/node /home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/loader.js
             ├─3499 /usr/bin/node /home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/app.js
             └─3527 /usr/bin/node /home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/src/meta/minifier.js

Feb 15 06:39:50 sv systemd[1]: Starting NodeBB...
Feb 15 06:39:50 sv systemd[1]: nodebb.service: Can't open PID file /home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/pidfile (yet?) after start: Operation not permitted
Feb 15 06:39:50 sv systemd[1]: Started NodeBB.

In trying to fix things I have made changes to nginx reverse proxy configuration, but I seem to have made things even worse, which is not a bad thing, because in that may lie the solution.
I'll be happy to provide log and config files by a secure channel of your choosing.

[jakub-urbanowicz@community.nodebb.org]

@julian
Here you are some AP errors from a few days ago, before I made any changes.

2025-02-13T06:25:09.462Z [4567/24115] - error: [activitypub/api] Error
Error: [[error:activitypub.invalid-id]]
    at /home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/src/api/activitypub.js:42:9
    at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:95:5)
    at async Object.follow (/home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/src/api/activitypub.js:30:5)
    at async Categories.follow (/home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/src/controllers/write/categories.js:117:2)
    at async /home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/src/routes/helpers.js:80:5
2025-02-13T06:28:56.552Z [4567/24115] - error: [activitypub/api] Error
Error: [[error:activitypub.invalid-id]]
    at /home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/src/api/activitypub.js:42:9
    at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:95:5)
    at async Object.follow (/home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/src/api/activitypub.js:30:5)
    at async Categories.follow (/home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/src/controllers/write/categories.js:117:2)
    at async /home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/src/routes/helpers.js:80:5
2025-02-13T06:33:19.290Z [4567/24115] - error: [activitypub/api] Error
TypeError: Invalid URL
    at new URL (node:internal/url:804:36)
    at /home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/src/activitypub/index.js:100:25
    at Array.filter ()
    at ActivityPub.resolveInboxes (/home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/src/activitypub/index.js:99:13)
    at ActivityPub.send (/home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/src/activitypub/index.js:373:36)
    at /home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/src/api/activitypub.js:51:21
    at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:95:5)
    at async Object.follow (/home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/src/api/activitypub.js:30:5)
    at async Categories.follow (/home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/src/controllers/write/categories.js:117:2)
    at async /home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/src/routes/helpers.js:80:5
2025-02-13T06:37:05.361Z [4567/24115] - error: [activitypub/api] Error
Error: [[error:activitypub.invalid-id]]
    at /home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/src/api/activitypub.js:42:9
    at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:95:5)
    at async Object.follow (/home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/src/api/activitypub.js:30:5)
    at async Categories.follow (/home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/src/controllers/write/categories.js:117:2)
    at async /home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/src/routes/helpers.js:80:5
2025-02-13T06:37:20.692Z [4567/24115] - error: [activitypub/api] Error
Error: [[error:activitypub.invalid-id]]
    at /home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/src/api/activitypub.js:42:9
    at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:95:5)
    at async Object.follow (/home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/src/api/activitypub.js:30:5)
    at async Categories.follow (/home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/src/controllers/write/categories.js:117:2)
    at async /home/xxxxxxxx/nodebb/src/routes/helpers.js:80:5
[cluster] Restarting...