Guess until I can figure out why I can't federate from my own server to Octodon (etc, etc), I'll just stick around here.
@captainspam @celesteh has also been working on that. You two might want to share tips.
@Canageek @captainspam
Hi, my problem was related to my use of Let's Encrypt.
There's something in SSL certificates called a PEM. Let's Encrypt is verified as a signer by an upstream signer. So the PEM needs to reflect that. Some of the let's encrypt scripts only give you part of the PEM you need.
How I solved this was to use a different script, designed specifically for my own webhosting company.
How to tell if this is your problem:
Try using curl to get some url from your site. If you get SSL errors, that's a big clue.
Or, check the server logs. If you see NOTHING from any mastodon instance, then you know it's not even able to make a connection.
I'm sorry I can't be more specific than this, as this is my first and only experience with SSL. However, try searching the issues in the github repo for Mastodon as there are a lot of questions and answers posted there about federation.
Well, sure enough, I'm using Let's Encrypt certs, curl reports errors when contacting the server, and I know from checking the logs before that Apache was making no mark in them from Mastodon instances (which first led me to believe they weren't even trying). Huh.
So I guess I'll need to look into getting better PEMs for my various LE certs. I sort of hope this won't get too out of hand...
Anyway, thanks for the advice!
@captainspam @Canageek There's some way to concatenate them, which I didn't discover, but is apparently not overly complicated and might be one of the questions in the github issues. Good luck.