@alan Pretty cool. Any plans to push this upstream?

@incentive Thanks for the comment! I’ve previously submitted a PR to the original at yukimochi/Activity-Relay. Since then my version has diverged quite a bit – I’ve added Friendica support – which was missing in the original, open publisher/Wordpress Activity Pub handling, and a built in public facing website. I’ve also updated the docker file and added Debian packages. It’s been almost a year since the last activity in the original repo. I plan to continue to maintain this fork. All of the changes I’ve made are public, and the original maintainer or others are welcome to incorporate them if they wish.

@alan I'll take a look at your fork later, because I've always wanted Friendica support for my relay even though I'm not a user. I'm assuming it's easy to remove the frontend page you added?

@alan Yes, instructions are provided in the README(s) on how you can adjust the front end. There is no integrated web server, but instructions for nginx and apache are provided.

Once testing is complete, I expect to push rc5 to final tomorrow.

@alan@www.wolfandraven.blog hmm, NodeBB can't seem to subscribe to your relay, though I can't tell whether it's due to your end or mine

Regressions do occur so most likely it's on my end.

Julian,

Thanks for the message! I’m looking into the issue now. Could you share which URL you attempted to connect with? I see traffic from your domain to wolfandraven.blog, but not to relay.argentwolf.org.

If you could try again and let me know the below info, it would be helpful:

URL: https://relay.argentwolf.org/actor
NodeBB domain and version
Any error you get from the federation page
Whether the relay entry fails immediately or remains pending

Thank you!

I’ve updated the relay to rc6-2, which may have resolved the issue. Once you try again, please let me know!

@alan@www.wolfandraven.blog yeah, I'm attempting subscription from activitypub.space, it looks like the follow is sent through but the Accept fails signature verification... maybe.

Last attempt was 23:06 EDT or so

Just from another server (bb.devnull.land) :

2026-07-28T03:17:41.391Z [4567/175118] - verbose: [activitypub/send] Successfully sent Follow to https://relay.argentwolf.org/inbox
2026-07-28T03:17:41.412Z [4567/175118] - verbose: [activitypub/verify] Starting signature verification...
2026-07-28T03:17:41.413Z [4567/175118] - verbose: [activitypub/verify] Signature verification failed.
2026-07-28T03:17:41.414Z [4567/175118] - verbose: [middleware/activitypub] HTTP signature verification failed.
2026-07-28T03:17:42.942Z [4567/175118] - verbose: [activitypub/verify] Starting signature verification...
2026-07-28T03:17:42.944Z [4567/175118] - verbose: [activitypub/verify] Signature verification failed.
2026-07-28T03:17:42.945Z [4567/175118] - verbose: [middleware/activitypub] HTTP signature verification failed.
2026-07-28T03:17:45.462Z [4567/175118] - verbose: [activitypub/verify] Starting signature verification...
2026-07-28T03:17:45.464Z [4567/175118] - verbose: [activitypub/verify] Signature verification failed.
2026-07-28T03:17:45.465Z [4567/175118] - verbose: [middleware/activitypub] HTTP signature verification failed.

Log's pretty vague, but maybe that helps. I'll try to find another relay running ActivityRelay to test. Might be an incompatibility with that style entirely, who knows.

@alan Thanks for the extra info! Looking into it now!

@julian Thanks for the logs. I found two issues with the relay, working on fixing them! Once I get rc6-3 up and live, I'll be looking for another follow attempt!

Sadly no dice, but I will try again with some better logging in the morning. I'm curious to see what your Accept looks like <img class="not-responsive emoji" src="https://activitypub.space/assets/plugins/nodebb-plugin-emoji/emoji/android/1f937.png?v=c7cc56fe415" title="" /> but I guess if it's failing signature validation then it's not even getting to that part.

@julian It looks like it worked to me.
bb.devnull.land shows as subscribed to the relay on relay.argentwolf.org.

But I see it's gone now.

The relay now accepts the NodeBB server actor, but both its outbound Accept and reciprocal Follow received HTTP 400, after which NodeBB sent Undo(Follow). Could you send the verbose bb.devnull.land logs from 2026-07-28 03:57:37 through 03:58:25 UTC, especially any activitypub/verify, middleware/activitypub, dispatcher, schema-validation, or inbox error lines? Also please include the exact NodeBB version.

I did, yes. I think the Follow is sent and now correctly processed by your relay, but the Accept that it sends back is not signed correctly. I will attempt to debug.

@julian I've identified that it's (currently) a key format issue. Nodebb wants the x509, not the legacy PKCS key format. Working on fixing that now.

@julian It's working from my test nodebb instance. Try to reconnect please and see if it's successful.

@alan@friendica.argentwolf.org well, good news, I'm now a follower... but bad news, that's not right behaviour on my end, so that's firmly on me <img class="not-responsive emoji" src="https://activitypub.space/assets/plugins/nodebb-plugin-emoji/emoji/android/1f613.png?v=c7cc56fe415" title="" />

But at least it sounds like I'm able to receive your activities now!