March 2026 Updates

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With February almost done and the “Snowcrete” finally melting away, here are some updates for March that haven’t been shared already.

Sakurajima Social Server Migration​

Sakurajima Social will be moved to the second server we just added to host additional services and future service expansion. This will allow me to clear up space from the failed backups on the VM that hosts Sakurajima Social while moving it to a release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux that will have more long term support compared to Debian.

The downtime should be about 1-2 hours as the database, Sharkey files, redis will be migrated to an already set up server and the IP changed. It will happen on March 7th starting at 10 PM ET.

Mastodon Server Upgrade​

Given the chaos from last year, the software Sakurajima Mastodon is using is a year out of date due to the stress from the chaos at work for obvious reasons. Also, since the quoting feature was officially added, I wanted to wait until a solution is made to Now that calmed down, Now there is a solution from VT Social and Treehouse to give backwards compatibility to render old quotes, it’s time to work on bringing Sakurajima Mastodon up to date.

With that, we are switching away from the Urusai Social fork, and instead basing the Sakura fork from the Treehouse Fork (hopefully) which is on the more stable 4.5 branch rather than the bleeding edge. This will give us more stability and the ability to install fixes and patches on the stable branch as they come. All the features you know and love such as reactions, bubble timeline, polls with media, multiple media uploads beyond 4 media and more will still be there. We anticipate to deploy 4.5 in April-May timeframe after all the testing is done to ensure nothing seriously break.

Also, we will need to upgrade our OS as Debian 11 is basically end of life and won’t be receiving updates. This is another hurdle we need to get done, but it’s possible that I might ditch Debian all together given its shorter support of 5 years compared to a longer support window on RHEL-based distros. I will decide after we upgrade to Debian 13.

Discord Alternatives​

In a few weeks, Zulip will not require an invite, but will only receive regular user privileges (no channel creation) and will require filing a ticket to request rooms to be created. Users who are creators or been on Sakurajima servers for at least three months may request the right to have elevated privileges to create channels without needing to request them.

Spacebar testing is on hold as Fluxer has the ability to self-host and probably better. We are awaiting for the self-hosting instructions so we can bring a server up for testing.

Fundraising​

These are the fundraising goals for Q1 2026

Current Progress (one time donations and Dec-Feb monthly donations): 241.61/381

Patreon $53 out of $70 per month.

If you want to help support the upkeep of our services, you can donate one time or monthly through the following. Note that it’s optional.

Paypal - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=HREN4ATRLZ54S
Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/sakurajimamastodon
Ko-fi - https://ko-fi.com/V7V8GAJR9