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Weaver Docs

Servers

Weaver needs at least one active server before it can download anything. The queue shows No servers until one exists. Servers live in Settings → Servers, or are seeded from the environment on first start.

Adding A Server

Section titled “Adding A Server”

Add Server asks for host, port, TLS, username, password, connections, and whether the record is active. TLS defaults on with port 563. Turning it off prompts for confirmation and uses port 119. Test Connection checks the credentials before you save.

On save, Weaver probes the TLS handshake and records the negotiated cipher suite and whether the server honors the client’s cipher order. The card shows the result as weaver picks cipher or server picks cipher. Weaver orders its cipher preference by what your CPU accelerates, so the first case is the faster one.

Set Connections to what your provider allows. Weaver auto-detects pipelining support per server and concentrates connections on the best-ranked job first.

Group And Backfill

Section titled “Group And Backfill”

Group orders servers: lower groups are tried first, and servers in the same group share the load. Backfill marks a server that is only used for articles the main servers could not supply: missing, corrupt, or outside their retention.

A typical layout is one unlimited provider in group 0 and a block account with Backfill on. The block account then spends bytes only on what the primary failed. Two unlimited providers on different backbones can sit in groups 0 and 1 without backfill, so the second is tried in order for every article the first misses.

Retention

Section titled “Retention”

Retention (days) tells Weaver how far back the server’s articles go. Posts older than that skip the server without a request. 0 means unlimited. Set it honestly for block accounts and short-retention providers so Weaver goes straight to the server that has the post.

Limits

Section titled “Limits”

Each server has its own Speed limit in MB/s and an optional Download quota: a hard byte limit per One-time, Daily, Weekly, or Monthly period, reset at a local time of day, on a weekday for weekly quotas, or on a day of the month for monthly ones. A one-time quota never resets on its own.

The card shows used, reserved by active downloads, and remaining bytes, plus the next reset. A server at its quota is skipped. When every eligible server is exhausted the queue shows Server quota and holds position until a reset. Reset usage clears the counter by hand.

Custom CA Certificates

Section titled “Custom CA Certificates”

A provider with a private certificate authority needs its CA certificate path in the server record. It is settable from the environment seed WEAVER_SERVER_<N>_TLS_CA_CERT.

Seeding From The Environment

Section titled “Seeding From The Environment”

Docker and headless installs can create servers before the first start with numbered variables:

environment:
  WEAVER_SERVER_1_HOSTNAME: news.example.com
  WEAVER_SERVER_1_USERNAME: myuser
  WEAVER_SERVER_1_PASSWORD: mypassword
  WEAVER_SERVER_1_CONNECTIONS: "30"
  WEAVER_SERVER_2_HOSTNAME: block.example.net
  WEAVER_SERVER_2_USERNAME: otheruser
  WEAVER_SERVER_2_PASSWORD: otherpassword
  WEAVER_SERVER_2_BACKFILL: "true"

Indexes must be contiguous from 1, a misspelled field name stops startup, and the whole block is skipped once any server exists. Configuration lists every field, including priority, retention, speed, and quota.

Section titled “Related”