Relays not working anymore?

[murgero]

After searching upstream for issues, it seems the way we have Mastodon installed is blocking the final part of the handshake from relays. I am unable to add any relay due to a 401 error during the final approval process from the relay server.

Anyway we can get this resolved?

[girish]

@murgero any logs or more information on what fails and how to reproduce this? I am not an expert on mastodon, what exactly is a relay?

[murgero]

@girish Relays for ActivityPub / Mastodon allow servers that have never seen each other to communicate - https://relay.mastodon.host/ is one relay. Essentially if you have a new server you want to fill up with messages, toots, etc you join a relay.

Also - the logs are barren of any errors beyond "401 - something wrong" errors.

[rmdes]

@murgero dumb question but did you added https://relay.mastodon.host/inbox as the relay URL ?

[murgero]

@rmdes yes, I've used the relay in the past and it works on servers I manually install through a VM.

[girish]

I tried adding a relay and it says 'Waiting for approval' . I guess I have to wait? Is this some manual approval?

[murgero]

@girish said in Relays not working anymore?:

I tried adding a relay and it says 'Waiting for approval' . I guess I have to wait? Is this some manual approval?

The approval is automatic - you will see your instance listed already in the approved section but your instance never actually see's it was approved. Going through logs, you should also see some http 401/40X errors when the relay tries to do a pub/priv handshake.

[girish]

@murgero Right, I see the errors in the logs.

I was browsing through existing registered instances and saw that social.cloudron.io is there! And indeed, our company instance has this approved and working. I wonder what is different.

[girish]

@murgero Found it . https://discourse.joinmastodon.org/t/upgrading-from-3-2-0-to-3-2-1-broke-relays/3014 and https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/pull/14556 . Apparently, the relay software is broken and needs to be updated to be compatible with latest mastodon 3.2.1. It seems a fix was put in recently - https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/relay/-/issues/10 and now mastodon.host needs to update the relay software.

[girish]

@murgero OK, can confirm that if we use mastodon 3.2.0, the relay starts working. Cloudron package version is 1.4.0

[murgero]

@girish this is useful information! thank you - I will hold out for the new relay version.

[murgero]

@girish I noticed you changed the picture - is that due to the relay fixing itself or did you downgrade your mastodon instance?

[girish]

@murgero sorry, which picture?

[murgero]

@girish

That picture used to say "Waiting for approval" didn't it?

[girish]

@murgero ah, the waiting for approval was from my test instance whereas the approved screenshot was from social.cloudron.io . It seems the ui says it's approved if you come from older mastodon (but doesn't work anyway)

[doodlemania2]

@girish This is part of my problem I posted about yesterday (in fact mastodon.host doesn't even work via HTTP anymore), but also, note the Sidkiq errors I mentioned that might be somewhat related to relays in general.