So, I've been continually fudging around with the PDS I launched on a little six dollar server, and it's been pretty smooth? But, there have been some hitches. Some little pebbles in the road that would stop a pallet jack on a dime. Federation seems to be working, I can query other relays from my terminal, and generating invite codes/migrating with a migration tool, works! I even got some 3rd party e-mail setup through SendGrid so that, theoretically, my PDS can send e-mail. The problem is, every account (except for my main account) that I've tested either via manual creation, or migration, is serving up an invalid handle. That's no bueno.
I've tried every which way to diagnose this. And it's really got me thinking that there's some issue with the PDS repo itself. That this must somehow be different than what the official Bluesky devs are using. It's gotta be. I dunno.
I find results through Google searching that say, "Oh, you have to create a manual TXT entry on your DNS for each separate account." And I'm like, no freakin' way?
What happens when someone decides to CHANGE their handle?
What happens if you have thousands of users???
No way.
Uh huh.
But then I find a result that says there's something wrong with Caddy, actually, and it's generating corrupted data for user certificates. Well, guess what! Lo and behold, the json that was supposed to contain this data on my server/PDS, was in fact corrupted.
That's fixed now.
Handles are still invalid, except the one on the account I actually post on.
What the fugg.
So, I went ahead and added TXT records for the accounts on my PDS, and then direct profile linking with the domain, rather than the DID, started working (which wasn't working before? I just didn't notice until I viewed my account in a private, logged out window)! But ... so far, the invalid handle issue still persists on the other two accounts I've made.
Mastodon might be hefty software, but you don't have to do any of this!
Oh my god.
But hey at least I have a landing page at mkultra.social?
I don't think I've done anything incorrectly at this point. I feel my setup is as clean as it can be, even with steps taken that I really feel should not be necessary. At this point I'm thinking that there is for sure an issue with Bluesky's relay, and federation in-general, or just the repo they're pushing for people to use when launching a PDS.
These people trot out their app every month or so and talk a real big game about how it's the decentralized app of the future!
And then you go and install it, set it up, and there's all these issues with DNS and federation, and nowhere that I can find that anybody's even going to fix it?
haha.
That's a bucket of farts if I ever saw one.
Source: https://mkultra.monster/tech/2025/09/23/did-pds-oh-my/
