Red Fox Social

:blobfoxhappy: Federation Issue Resolved :blobfoxhappy:

According to our logs, other instances may have encountered connectivity issues inbound to Fox.yt for both Mastodon and Matrix since 22 February 2025.

This issue was brought to our attention by the Birdbutt.com Admin team and we investigated and found that the root Fox.yt server was offline (and therefore unable to process webfinger requests).

This server has been brought back online today so inbound requests to @fox.yt should work as expected now.

Apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused. We may look into setting up monitoring alerts once we've moved premises this weekend.

Mastodon v4.5.5 is now running on Fox.yt! :blobfoxaww:

:blobfoxthinkanime: What does that mean? (TL;DR) :blobfoxthinkanime:
- Security patches
- Various bug fixes

Full details:
- https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.5.2
- https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.5.3
- https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.5.4
- https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.5.5

When are we getting this?
It's been deployed. The 2500 count and 8 poll options have been patched. User feeds rebuilt as usual.

Mastodon v4.4.5 is now running on Fox.yt! :blobfoxaww:

:blobfoxthinkanime: What does that mean? (TL;DR) :blobfoxthinkanime:
- Add support for has:quote in search
- Change quoted posts from silenced accounts to use a click-through rather than being hidden
- Dependencies updated
- Various bug fixes

Full details:
- https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.4.5

When are we getting this?
It's been deployed. The 2500 count and 8 poll options have been patched. User feeds rebuilt as usual.

Mastodon v4.4.3 is now running on Fox.yt! :blobfoxaww:

:blobfoxthinkanime: What does that mean? (TL;DR) :blobfoxthinkanime:
- Followers you know card
- Featured tab in profiles
- Alt-text reminder
- Post language detection
- Quoted posts implementation
- Twemoji 15.1.0 added to emoji picker
- Remove followers option
- Middle-click to open posts in a new tab support added
- Referrer data in links now possible
- Terms of Service added with notifications
- Age Verification on Signup
- FASP support
- Admins can now send critical announcement emails to users
- Various other additions
- Several design and function changes
- Several bug fixes

Full details:
- https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.4.0
- https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.4.3

When are we getting this?
It's been deployed. The 2500 count and 8 poll options have been patched. User feeds rebuilt as usual.

Mastodon v4.2.12 is now running on Fox.yt! :blobfoxaww:

:blobfoxthinkanime: What does that mean? (TL;DR) :blobfoxthinkanime:
- Add support for incoming tag
- Change logic of block/mute bypass for mentions from moderators to only apply to visible roles with moderation powers
- Various fixes

Full details:
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.2.12

When are we getting this?
It's already been deployed. The 2500 character count and user feeds have been fixed as usual.

Mastodon v4.3.1 is now running on Fox.yt! :blobfoxaww:

:blobfoxthinkanime: What does that mean? (TL;DR) :blobfoxthinkanime:
- Added leaving screen when clicking off-site links
- Added server-side notification grouping
- Added notification policies
- Added hover cards in Web UI
- Added light/dark system theme
- Added app notifications for moderation actions
- Added ability to re-order media before posting
- Added ability to view alt text by clicking ALT
- Added ability for admins to change the logo
- Added / keyboard shortcut to search
- Changed Web UI design
- Changed follow recommendations algorithm
- Changed how Content Warnings are displayed in Web
- Removed ability to precompile assets in the web Docker container
- Many, many other things... Go read the links below if you're interested.

Full details:
1. https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.3.0
2. https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.3.1

When are we getting this?
It's been deployed. A fix for the 2500 character count has been re-engineered by @coltofox@red.fox.yt to work with Mastodon v4.3 and is deployed. Also increased poll options from 4 to 8. User feeds have been fixed as usual.

Mastodon v4.5.1 is now running on Fox.yt! :blobfoxaww:

:blobfoxthinkanime: What does that mean? (TL;DR) :blobfoxthinkanime:
- Quote posts now available
- Refresh replies in Web UI
- Now possible to block words in usernames
- Visualizer option for audio without art
- Various things moved around
- Various bug fixes

Full details:
- https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.5.0
- https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.5.1

When are we getting this?
It's been deployed. The 2500 count and 8 poll options have been patched. User feeds rebuilt as usual.

Colto Cloud (and Fox.yt, Instafops.net, FloofTube.net) is back online!

Experienced some storage and compute node issues after the power outage but those are now resolved.

Mastodon v4.3.8 is now running on Fox.yt! :blobfoxaww:

:blobfoxthinkanime: What does that mean? (TL;DR) :blobfoxthinkanime:
- Change HTML sanitization to remove unusable and unused embed tag
- Fix rate-limit on sign-up email verification
- Fix improper disclosure of domain blocks to unverified users
- Change preview cards to be shown when Content Warnings are expanded
- Change warnings against changing encryption secrets to be even more noticeable
- Change notifications from moderators to not be filtered
- Change hashtag suggestion to prefer personal history capitalization
- Fix processing errors for some HEIF images from iOS 18
- Update dependencies
- Add delay to profile updates to debounce them
- Change account suspensions to be federated to recently-followed accounts as well
- Change AccountReachFinder to consider statuses based on suspension date
- Change user archive signed URL TTL from 10 seconds to 1 hour
- Check scheme on account, profile, and media URLs
- Add built-in context for interaction policies
- Change activity distribution error handling to skip retrying for deleted accounts
- Fix sign-up e-mail confirmation page reloading on error or redirect

Full details:
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.3.8

When are we getting this?
It's been deployed. The 2500 count and 8 poll options have been patched. User feeds rebuilt as usual.

The red.fox.yt service experienced a public outage between 2025-04-26 04:03am and 2025-04-27 01:40pm.

The public-facing load balancer crashed unexpectedly. The root cause of the crash is unknown.

We apologise for the inconvenience this may have caused. Site access and federation has been restored.

Fox.yt experienced a brief network outage over the past half hour.

The cloud firewall was being upgraded but it decided to brick instead... (bootloader spontaneously combusted)

The pre-upgrade config backup was successfully restored and we're up and running again now on a freshly re-installed firewall OS.

Apologies for the short blip in network connectivity. :blobfoxlaughsweat:

:blobfoxdisputed: PLANNED OUTAGE :blobfoxdisputed:
Colto Cloud (including Fox.yt, Instafops.net, and FloofTube.net) will be undergoing the yearly physical relocation this Friday at 5pm (AEDT / UTC+11).

The move is expected to take the whole weekend so the outage may likely run until 5pm on Monday, but hopefully back sooner since it affects a lot more critical services than the ones listed.

Outage start:
2025-03-14T17:00:00+11:00
Outage end:
2025-03-17T17:00:00+11:00

You're welcome to backup any data in the meantime but keep in mind that the service will be back up after the weekend.

*** OUTAGE NOTIFICATION ***
Colto Cloud (and Fox.yt, Instafops.net, FloofTube.net) will be experiencing a power outage between 06:30 and 14:00 on 8 January 2025 (AEDT).

This is now underway, systems will be shutting down.

Mastodon v4.3.3 is now running on Fox.yt! :blobfoxaww:

:blobfoxthinkanime: What does that mean? (TL;DR) :blobfoxthinkanime:
== 4.3.2 ==
- Add tootctl feeds vacuum
- Add error message when user tries to follow their own account
- Add client_secret_expires_at to OAuth Applications
- Change design of Content Warnings and filters
- Many fixes, check the full notes below.
== 4.3.3 ==
- Fix incorrect notification settings migration for non-followers
- Fix last paginated notification group only including data on a single notification
- Fix processing of mentions for post edits with an existing corresponding silent mention
- Fix deletion of unconfirmed users with Webauthn set
- Fix empty authors preview card serialization
- Other stuff, check the full notes below.

Full details:
1. https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.3.2
2. https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.3.3

When are we getting this?
It's been deployed. The 2500 count and 8 poll options have been patched. User feeds rebuilt as usual.

An internal fibre run is being done to replace the 1Gbps SMF link with a 10Gbps MMF link. A brief outage may occur when this is underway to swap the connections over once it's patched in. This upgrade will not improve the Internet link bandwidth, but it will improve the resiliency during power outages.

If you're seeing this message and it's currently down for more than 10 minutes, there were likely switching issues with the new upstream Mikrotik switch. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

-- https://uptime.fox.yt/status/coltocloud