1y ago

Introducing lestat.org - Lemmy instance status monitor for all popular instances

cross-posted from: https://lemdit.com/post/408034

I like keeping across what is happening with other Lemmy instances so lestat.org was born out of this curiosity.

URL: https://lestat.org

It's similar to lemmy-status.org but with a few notable differences:

Lestat is running Uptime Kuma
Lestat monitors all instances listed on join-lemmy.org
Lestat has a public Discord server where it automatically feeds notifications: https://discord.gg/R8zY7fM5Z8

Criteria for adding instances to Lestat

I will add any instance to Lestat based on these prerequisites:

The instance is listed on join-lemmy.org
The instance doesn't host anything illegal in New Zealand

Free services for admins

If you are an instance admin, I can set you up with the following:

Automatic e-mail notifications when the status of your instance changes (e.g. it goes up or down).
An uptime badge for your instance in this style:

Send me a message if you'd like any of the above.

I hope you find Lestat useful!

Edit: Added clickable URL and expanded on free admin services to include badges.

46 comments

That icon goes way too hard for an uptime tracker.
- #iconic

Needs search by instance name, filter by status

Hey, what’s the url?
- https://lestat.org
- https://lestat.org/ the url was in the title btw
  
  The title's not clickable

Just curious, but why did you call it Lestat?
- It's just a play on words: Le(mmy) + Stat(us) or Le Stat(us)
  I think it's short and easy to remember, the fact that it's also the name of a famous vampire is just a bonus.
  
  I think it’s a great name and domain
  
  Here is another one for you - Luptime!
  Yeah it's bad, I know. :)
  
  That's ingenious and I'm slow for not catching on that, haha.

Holy shit the name is perfect.
Can I beg to become a Lem-pire once I use the site? Instructions not clear.
- It really is perfect, and how on earth was that domain not taken?

It's very nice, and thanks for including all instances. We are supposed to be a network of Lemmy instances working together. This site highlights that idea so thank you.
If I could offer an improvement idea, it would be to first show instances that are down in it's own group, and then every other instance exactly as it's done now, in alphabetical order.
- Thanks for your feedback. I like your idea, I'll have a look into what I can do to make it happen.

Clickable link nowhere to be found in the post body...
- I've updated the post to include clickable URLs. Lesson learnt that I shouldn't rely on clients to treat domain names as links.
  
  Excellent!

I do love Uptime Kuma - using it for my own instance services at status.leminal.space
Are you checking with a simple ping, https request?
- Https HEAD requests - I find it yields accurate results for Lemmy and it's extremely light on bandwidth.

I pronounce it in a French way, like Le`stat.

No lemmy.ml ?
- Of all the ones to miss!
  Thanks for pointing it out, I've added it now.
- ~~how tf is it missing the #2 lemmy instance but somehow has every other one? also, so search, so sort…~~
  not to mention, there’s no link to the site here
  edit: these are fixed!
  good start!
  
  Hey thanks for your feedback. I've made them all URLs now.
  Search and sort are tricky as it's not something Uptime Kuma status pages can do, I'll look into what can be done there.
- It's there. It's just buried in the middle of the page since instances are sorted alphabetically

Cool service! Is the code open source?
- Absolutely!
  Uptime Kuma Github: https://github.com/louislam/uptime-kuma
  Note that I am not the creator of Uptime Kuma, https://github.com/louislam gets all the credit there.
- Yes, the software it uses is mentioned in the post.

Thank you for this!

Awesome logo. It reminds me of Vinnie, biker mice from mars.

Huh, this just made me realize that my instance isn't listed on join-lemmy anymore, that's odd (not popular enough I suppose). I guess that explains why I haven't had any registration requests in a while...
- I think you're one "active user" short of being back on there:
  
  I believe you need 5 to be listed.
  
  Ah, I see - do you know if that was changed at some point? I know when I originally setup my instance it was listed there, and it was just me on it. Everyone else came from join-lemmy as far as I know...
  Well, regardless I've been meaning to try to get some personal friends aboard anyways 😅

🧛🐭📈🪨🔛

Cloudflared services like ani.social are getting a “100%” available stat. That site may be up but it’s unavailable (denying availability) to something like ~1-3% of the population 100% of the time. So in principle it should never be able to achieve the 100% availability stat.
I understand it would be quite difficult to calculate an availability figure that accounts for access restrictions to marginalized groups, because apart from Cloudflare you would not have a practical way of knowing how firewalls are configured. But one thing you could (and should) do is mark the known walled gardens in some way. E.g. put a “🌩” next to Cloudflare sites and warn people that they are not open access sites.
The lestat.org availability listing is like a competition that actually gives a perception advantage to services that exclude people, thus rewarding them for compromising availability. I would also subtract off ~2% for all CF sites as a general rule simply because you know it’s not 100% available to everyone. They do not deserve that 100% trophy, nor is it accurate.
- Hey, thanks for your feedback. I like your idea of labeling Cloudflared services, reporting is indeed a bit tricky for those especially if they use "Always online" to serve cached copies while the instance is down. I have some ideas on how to combat that, but labeling them also makes sense.
  I can add tags against services - I have done this for ani.social as a proof of concept, I think it works but I welcome feedback. Sorting through the entire list is a bit daunting and will take me a while, but I'll get there.
  Manually adjusting availability is a can of worms that I don't want to open, I'd rather we try to find other ways to level the playing field.
  
  I think this project has some tools that might automate that:
  https://0xacab.org/dCF/deCloudflare
  They ID and track every website that joins #Cloudflare. It’s a huge effort but those guys are on top of it. A script could check the list of domains against their list. There is also this service (from the same devs) which does some checks:
  https://karma.crimeflare.eu.org:1984/api/is/cloudflare/html/
  but caveat: if a non-CF domain (e.g. example.tld) has a CF host (e.g. somehost.example.tld), that tool will return YES for the whole domain.
  Manually adjusting availability is a can of worms that I don’t want to open
  I would suggest not bothering with any complex math, and simply do the calculation as you normally do but then if a site is Cloudflare cap whatever the calculated figure is to 98%. Probably most (if not all) CF sites would be 100% anyway, so they would just be reduced by 2%. Though it would need to be explained somewhere -- the beauty of which would be to help inform people that the CF walled garden is excluding people. Cloudflare’s harm perpetuates to a large extent because people are unaware that it’s an exclusive walled garden that marginalizes people.

46 comments