Can't follow blog/blog not federated

[oldyogre]

I have read three threads on being unable to follow blogs on write.as:

Unable to follow blog [SOLVED]

Any other issues you’ve run into? i can’t follow my blog. followers are locked. [Screenshot-2019-4-15%20Scholar%20Social] i’m not sure if this is a new feature since 0.9 or something broke on my blog. also it seems tags are not federating anymore. i can’t find my blogs posts with #bookReview tag. the last post that shows up when i search #bookReview is from March 19th. NOTE: I wish we could import our posts into a new blog. then i would probably just reinstall my blog and import posts…

Federation Troubleshooting

Here is a Federation issue from @gendor regarding turning off Federation on Write.as: I tried to disable federation on my blog while I was busy importing a bunch of posts and didn’t want to spam everybody’s timeline. I unchecked "Federation @gendor@gerritniezen.com" and clicked “Save changes”, but it kept on federating, and when I refreshed the customize page the checkbox was checked again.

Federation: can't follow from mastodon with authorized fetch enabled

I don’t know enough to help, but I can’t follow my own blog on @writing.exchange. I try to follow @OldYogre@write.as, and when I go to the blog’s mastodon profile it shows “cancel follow request” and says it is awaiting approval. If there’s anything I can do to help, I’m willing. I’m just not knowledgeable.

I haven’t figured out a solution to my problem. Here is what I have tried:

I selected Federation in my blog options. The name listed is @oldyogre@write.as

I tried following @oldyogre@write.as. It became a follow request expecting approval. I cancelled the follow request.

I tried following https://write.as/oldyogre. Following worked, seemingly, but I noticed no toots were showing under the blog federation account for old blog posts.

I created a new, test blog post. Nothing showed up in my feed. I searched and viewed the blog federation account and no toots appeared.

I tried to follow another write.as blog with its @xxxxx@write.as, and that seemed to work. I could find old posts from that blog, although they didn’t automatically show up in my feed (I know only new posts show up in the feed).

I’m thinking something is wrong with my federation. I can’t find it now, but I’m remembering something about needing a particular preferred URL for federation to work? I think I changed the URL to oldyogre.writeas.com early on, read that it needed to be /write.as/oldyogre/ for federation, and switched it back. Could that be the issue? I’m at a loss how to proceed.

[cjeller1592]

Hey @oldyogre, the federation is an an issue on our end that we have to address. It’s not an issue with your configuration or anything you’ve done. Here’s a post to add more context:

Federation: can't follow from mastodon with authorized fetch enabled

Thanks, that helps narrow it down! Based on the 401 statuses and AUTHORIZED_FETCH documentation, I’m assuming WriteFreely is missing some important actor data on that initial fetch (such as public keys), causing later calls to fail. This is on my list to personally investigate more, but we could use help from anyone in the community interested in solving this (especially if you run a WriteFreely instance)! I think as a next step, it’s worth opening a bug report about this.

Many thanks for outlining your troubleshooting process though! Sorry for the trouble. We’ll definitely keep everyone updated with progress on this issue and would love for people like you to help us test our fixes.