My self hosted instance works in every way for federation, the test curl commands return JSON, I can comment and invite on another federation, and I can retrieve comments and posts by search.
My current problem is my instance does not appear to get updates from other servers when new comments are made. Is there any other troubleshooting or recommended configuration changes I should do?
For context, I am hosting my instance through kurbenetes using nginx-ingress.
Yes, it does matter. Unfortunately you will have to try canceling (just tap or click the pending button) and subbing several times until you get lucky and it finally works.
This is sort of a catch 22, because the issue is caused by the server being under load (and some bad code or database queries likely needing to be fixed / optimized / refactored), and clicking the buttons is adding to that load, contributing to the problem.
TL;DR pending subscriptions are not subbed, so do not federate.
On my personal instance, this hasn’t been the case. I’m fully federated with communities that show “subscription pending”. I get comment updates with sub-minute delays. I think this is sometimes just a cosmetic issue.