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FAQ

Is go-ssb production ready?

No, not yet. It is still in the alpha stages and backwards incompatible changes will be made.

Is go-ssb compatible with other data stores (ssb-db, ssb-db2)?

No, you can't use go-ssb API bindings to read / write other ssb client data stores as of October 2022. You can however use sbotcli to query muxrpc endpoints with clients like Patchwork.

See #80 for more.

Can go-ssb replicate with Manyverse?

Not reliably, as EBT replication still has some issues (see below). What you can do though is replicate with other Patchwork users. And Patchwork can replicate with Manyverse. So you just need one Patchwork user in your network and gossip should work.

What platforms does go-ssb support?

WARNING: we've seen reports of data loss issues on 32 bit architectures, e.g. some of the Orange Pi Zero earlier series and older Raspberry Pis. This is being investigated on go-ssb/#183. We would recommend avoiding 32 bit architecture systems until this issue has been wrapped up.

We've seen reports of butts running go-ssb successfully on:

  • GNU/Linux
  • Mac OS X
  • Raspberry Pi 3/4 (amd64/arm64)
  • Orange Pi Zero (amd64/arm64)
  • iOS

Go supports several other OS/arch possibilities.

Please let us know if you manage to run go-ssb on a new platform that is not listed above.

Does EBT (-enable-ebt) replication work?

We've seen several reports (e.g. %lmBRs0eSQP9JLTuVgVEipf4a9Ke5uSHZq0xt8UIzQSs=.sha256) that it does not work reliably in the current state (November 2022). There are a number of EBT related fixes living on the Planetary fork which might help. Those patches were / are being run by Planetary and others have tested them, YMMV!

What is the relationship between go-ssb & scuttlego?

It's still a bit fuzzy but pulling some notes from the previous discussions: scuttlego is a new effort to build "an embeddable sdk for building lots of ssb apps, not just for planetary" which is being developed by Go hackers @ Planetary. It is still in the early stages of development. For more background information, see %AfPRFA+lc8bu95GQ04q43prH65jDukkSn8cBIg6Lbyc=.sha256 and github.com/planetary-social/scuttlego.

What are legacy messages?

See ssbc/go-ssb#87 for more.

What is legacy replication?

This means the way clients send / request messages from other peers. The SSB software ecosystem is moving and work is being done to make exchanging messages more performant.

The new approach is called "EBT replication" and you can learn more about that on this repository.

go-ssb supports both legacy replication (pre-EBT replication) and EBT replication (although it is slightly buggy as of November 2022, see above for more).

go-ssb is not initiating outgoing connections?

The implementation currently does not include an outgoing connection scheduler. This means that go-ssb will only replicate when it gets connected to or you initiate a conneciton via sbotcli.

You can work around this by setting up a script like the one below. The multiserver addresses included for documentation purposes, please replace them with your own.

cat > /tmp/connect.hosts << EOF
net:cryptbox.mindeco.de:8008~shs:xxZeuBUKIXYZZ7y+CIHUuy0NOFXz2MhUBkHemr86S3M=
net:cryptoscope.co:8008~shs:G20wv2IZkB7BA/LKe7WMuByop3++J0u9+Y32OoEVOj8=
net:one.butt.nz:8008~shs:VJM7w1W19ZsKmG2KnfaoKIM66BRoreEkzaVm/J//wl8=
net:pub.t4l3.net:8008~shs:WndnBREUvtFVF14XYEq01icpt91753bA+nVycEJIAX4=
EOF

cat /tmp/connect.hosts | while read maddr
do
  sbotcli connect $maddr
  sleep 600
done

See ssbc/go-ssb#66 for more.

Can I use sbotc to query go-ssb?

Some commands are supported but not all. The safest bet is to use sbotcli packaged in this repository also. Client compatibility is desired but we may not have the capacity to handle all cases. Please raise an issue if you see a missing MUXRPC endpoint.

Please see ssbc/go-ssb/#62 for more.

Forked version of x/crypto

We currently depend on this patch on x/crypto to support the key-material conversion between ed25519 and curve25519. See #44 for all the details.

package golang.org/x/crypto/ed25519/edwards25519: cannot find package "golang.org/x/crypto/ed25519/edwards25519" in any of:
	/home/cryptix/go.root/src/golang.org/x/crypto/ed25519/edwards25519 (from $GOROOT)
	/home/cryptix/go-fooooo/src/golang.org/x/crypto/ed25519/edwards25519 (from $GOPATH)

If you see the above error, make sure your project has the following replace directive in place:

replace golang.org/x/crypto => github.com/cryptix/golang_x_crypto v0.0.0-20200303113948-2939d6771b24

Startup error / illegal JSON value

We currently use a very rough state file to keep track of which messages are indexed already (multilogs and contact graph). When the server crashes while it is being rewritten, this file can get corrupted. We have a fsck-like tool in mind to rebuild the indicies from the static log but it's not done yet.

time=2019-01-09T21:19:08.73736113Z caller=new.go:47 module=sbot event="component terminated" component=userFeeds error="error querying rootLog for mlog: error decoding value: json: cannot unmarshal number 272954244983260621261341 into Go value of type margaret.Seq"

Our current workaround is to do a full resync from the network:

kill $(pgrep go-sbot)
rm -rf $HOME/.ssb-go/{log,sublogs,indicies}
go-sbot &
sbotcli connect "net:some.ho.st:8008~shs:SomeActuallyValidPubKey="

go-ssb is too memory hungry?

Try building with the -tags lite build tag:

go build -tags lite ./cmd/go-sbot

It uses a lightweight BadgerDB configuration that Planetary have been running.

Try also experimenting with -numPeer / -numRepl if you're using legacy gossip replication. This will limit the amount of replication that can happen concurrently. See #124 for more details.