Just had NextCloud denying my credentials (not for the first time). I know they weren’t wrong because I’m using a password manager. Logs didn’t say much. Was about to reinstall (again, not the first time nextcloud went bonkers on me) before I tried a docker compose down && docker compose up. Lo and behold after a restart the credentials worked again.
This stuff is just way too flaky for something so important.
Is OwnCloud good again? My main usecase is saving photos but I don’t want them locked away in a database so SeaFile is out.
Edit: I’m going to take the time to reply to you all, bit busy with work and family suddenly. But a little update - I’ve quickly setup Immich and fired up the CLI to import my library. AFAIK the files are still stored on disk somewhere but metadata is in a database. I didn’t realize this before, knowing that I think my mind is made up and Immich is the best solution. Thanks everyone!
So, now’s as good a time as any to ask. Why is everyone using Nextcloud? I’ve been quietly using Owncloud for a very long time and never had any issues with it. How is Owncloud bad?
Owncloud is not fully open source. Nextcloud is. They have developed in different directions since then, but that remains the fundamental difference that split them apart in the first place. If that matters to you, Nextcloud is the right choice. If that doesn’t matter to you, then use whichever you prefer and has the features you need.
Thanks!
This is a good summary, but the Tl;DR is that Owncloud has a non-open source Enterprise version with extra features you need to pay for, while Nextcloud is a fully open source fork.
the Tl;DR is that Owncloud has a non-open source Enterprise version with extra features you need to pay for
This isn’t any different than a lot of other softwares, though… Nextcloud has the same Enterprise pricing/features shit, too. https://nextcloud.com/enterprises/
Actually, so does Photoprism. https://www.photoprism.app/features
Most of the items on that list (with the possible exception of the ‘Enterprise Apps’) are items that involve them either hosting an aspect for you (push notifications), training, or utilizing their OAuth credentials with Microsoft. Because they forked OwnCloud they’re actually bound by the AGPL on that original code and legally can’t license features in the main codebase as anything other than AGPL (less sure on those ‘apps’), so they’re limited in what features they can restrict to paying customers.
Wouldn’t OwnCloud also be bound by the same AGPL on their code, then?
No, because these licenses can’t bind the copyright owner themselvess. AGPL is the terms that OwnCloud allows us access to it, but as it’s their code they don’t need a license to do whatever with it.
Let me put it another way - OwnCloud would be the only folks with standing to sue someone for violating the AGPL on their code. That means that the only people who could possibly sue OwnCloud for having a non-AGPL version is… OwnCloud. So even if the AGPL somehow claimed to bind the copyright owner it still wouldn’t work legally as the copyright owner just has to not sue themselves.
I just implemented authentik SSO for Nextcloud and other apps and it’s made my life easier.
Nextcloud is an overkill. Its just too much. I’d say better split down the needed services. Baikal/radicale etc for contacts/calendar. Photoprism/librephotos etc for photos. A webdav server for storage. And so on.
@midas Were you self-hossting or using their hosted service?
Selfhosted
What name do you assign the DB for PostgreSQL in Docker and does it by chance happen to match the name of any other containers, possibly in other docker compose files?
I’m only mentioning it because I experienced weird inconsistent issues with a service I was running where it was sometimes having trouble connecting to its DB companion and I eventually realized that it was sometimes connecting to the other container. I was also finding that turning it off and on again was often ‘fixing’ the issue, at least for a while. Might be worth checking out. I’d also consider viewing the logs for Nextcloud (
docker logs -f) when you’re unable to login and see if there are any errors. Frankly I’ve never had these specific issues with Nextcloud, and given that it’s based on PHP (it only ‘executes’ on an HTTP request), it seems like restarting shouldn’t help unless it’s something else.I run a separate instance of postgres since I also use it for a lot of other stuff.
it seems like restarting shouldn’t help unless it’s something else.
I’m honestly also baffled
And none the container names or link aliases conflict? Like you don’t have multiple
dbcontainers? Perhaps try renaming the Nextcloud db to something likenextcloud_dbif you aren’t already.
Mine has randomly done that for the last few versions now. I also noticed it now maintains several cookies that I have to clear before I can log in successfully again.
I do have Redis configured with it, have never used their AIO image, and previously, the session ID was the only cookie. Haven’t kept quite up to date with NC’s development, but maybe it’s no longer using PHP’s session store in favor of its own mechanism?
Unfortunately, I’m too invested in NC to start switching everything to discrete apps, so I guess I just have to put up with it. :shrug:
Most likely you got blocked for some time by the brute force prevention. Have a look at your logfiles.
^this. You probably had a Nextcloud client somewhere with wrong credentials that was trying to reconnect repeatedly which locked you out. It happened once to me.
I am using nextcloud for years now with postgres, redis and configured PHP setttings, but I installed it on the host. Never had any problems, Performance is awesome… Almost everytime I read about problems is with the docker images. The new AIO image shall be bad too, but I can not say anything to this, since I don’t use it.
I really like docker, but sometimes it is better to install on the host directly or use an LXC if you need isolation. MinIO is the same… Would not want it in a Container
Maybe seafile could be an option for you 🤔
I just don’t see how docker can fuck something like this up honestly, the only thing that can be screwy is permissions when dealing with filesystem mounts - but once you’ve got that working it should be pretty static.
Maybe it is permissions or the image won’t start correctly. Maybe it tries to read from the database which is jot up at the moment or something similar 🤔
Just wanted to +1 your comment. Installing on bare metal host is higher risk, but higher reward as well in terms of stability and performance. In my case I’m using mariaDB, redis, php, and apache and it’s been solid for years now.
I used it with mariadb before, converting to postgres gave a performanceboost. Don’t ask me why but it ran faster
If you are intrested, than here is a guide 😊
I’m interested, it’s on the list but pretty far down. pgsql is better hands down imho but I followed nextcloud recommendations at the time I set things up and just never switched. Thanks for the guide!!
Bare metal as well, also no issues for years. But I also hate docker ;)
Docker has it usecases but I don’t need everything in there. Like I said MinIO for example is just a short oneliner to start.
The most important thing is backup ☺️
That’s how I ran my nextcloud for about a decade and never had problems. On my new server I’m running it in docker and so far it seems to work ok.
Good to hear that it is running ☺️
Did you follow a specific guide or did you migrate yourself? Which image are you using? Maybe this could help others
TBH I’m migrating manually by synching files. Still wonder if it’s worth the hassle to somehow export/import contacts & calendar instead of reproducing them by hand. I thought about feeding the mariadb the psql dump I used to create for backups but that’s probably more work than doing things by hand.
One reason for me to try docker is “easier” backup. I just throw the whole data-directory of the db container into restic. Restoring the backup would just be starting a container with that saved directory. I hope that way I don’t have to argue with the database about reading a huge sql dump.
Unfortunately the documentation is a bit weird, I think. There’s the official all-in-one container that starts a container that starts more containers but that was a bit too much “magic” for my taste. I used the images and documentation maintained by the community here and ended up with this compose file I can manage in portainer. Runs nextcloud (with apache), mariadb and redis. Also had to add that final bit for the cron job. This way I can point my reverse proxy at the local ip of the nextcloud_apache container and be done with it.
Thanks for the input. Copy over files is the “clean” way, without struggle, yes. For backups I use rclone and copy the userdata folder encrypted to external storage. Works fine for me. Maybe your dokcer files will help others, thanks for sharing :)
Been running multiple Nextcloud instances for years on bog standard debian + apache + php-fpm install, as documented in the official docs which do not even mention docker. Upgrades were never a problem. Some apps may suffer some bugs from time to time, but Nextcloud itself works flawlessly. Wrote an ansible role to install, manage and update it. The only thing that deviates from the “recommended” setup is Postgres instead of MariaDB. People need to start following the actual documented/well-supported installation options and stop trying to stick containers everywhere…
The docs are very good and you have a lot of tutorials for nextcloud, bit mostly they scratch only on the surface. They show you how to install and if you are lucky you see how to setup HTTPS…
But then? Start nextcloud and go to system overview and everything is red and you get warnings about region, php opcache… 😁 Most tutorials end there. It is a pity
I use Seafile… can give a partial recommendation
I tried to run it on Debian and on each update it was always complaining the php version too old. Maybe on a distro that doesn’t come with ancient packages can be ok…
I guess this is only a problem on an older debian server. Then you could use the PHP PPA. Some people still run PHP 7.4 or even 5.6, but they are end of life 😳
Bare metal club! :D
My problem with nextcloud is more the performance of the web interface rather than it’s reliability (and that’s even with
mariadb+redissetup and a decently fast minipc). It’s fine if you avoid the web interface, but that’s part of the draw of the thing.MariaDB runs like hot garbage with Nextcloud imo. I’ve gotten to the point where I use legit MySQL or PostgreSQL and performance is night and day. I have no idea why Maria acts out with Nextcloud for me, but I’ve gotten tired of troubleshooting it.
Interesting. MariaDB was the path of least resistance for me but I normally prefer PostgreSQL. I’ll put it on the list.
The performance is indeed pretty terrible. Most stuff runs fine on my NUCs except nextcloud. Maybe throwing more hardware at it solves it though.
Nope lol I have a pretty godly server and nextcloud is slow as a mf
As someone with a beef server: Nope, performance stays unsatisfactory. Redis helps a lot but only if the page is cached which tbh just makes the experience worse if the page isn’t cached
Edit: I’m using the AIO installer though, as discussed elsewhere in this post that might be the root cause of the poor performance, will check on the weekend by installing nextcloud manually in a fresh vm
There are more twerks to it than "just’ using mariadb and redis. Maybe look into Apache/nginx cacheing,tune your mariadb settings and stuff like that. Had performance-problems with my owncloud-instance, now it runs like a champ
Honestly the official docker images are hot garbage. I used them when I first tried NextCloud and they load incredibly slow. Shelved it for a while, realized there was a bunch of shit they already have that I was looking for, and gave it a go with my own Dockerfile starting from the PHP alpine image. That one runs waaaayyy better.
I have no experience with the docker container, but optimization for the database and nginx/apache cacheing must be made individually depending on number of cpu cores, ram-size, etc etc etc. When overtuning for example your database it can happen that you run out of RAM, which means your system will crash or freeze. Happened to me. I run it “Baremetal” and configured it “the classic way”. Tbh, after those optimizations it runs really, really fast and response times are really quick.
I second that. I can’t say mine runs fast because my hardware is very modest, but it runs very decently considering it’s sharing resources with many other services.
In general, it wouldn’t come to my mind to expect good performance by default out of anything pulled from docker. As soon as one starts hosting multiple services and apps simultaneously, containers get in the way or even make impossible proper resource allocation and tuning.
Fair, although I feel like performance should be better OOTB, particularly when I’m just using it as a single user. It is an old and complex application that does a lot, so it is understandable.
I’ve never really needed the web interface once everything was setup. Mobile app syncs my images and then I browse files through synced desktop clients. Never had any issues this way. I guess I’m not using the extra features some may be after in the webui.
The poor performance carries over to the sync clients too because they’re just using webdav http requests. Nextcloud will take like 10+ hours to sync my folders, vs about 10 minutes with Syncthing or something else.
And the clients are actually really great, competitive with the features of the best cloud storage clients.
My main usecase is saving photos but I don’t want them locked away in a database so SeaFile is out.
Shit. Missed that, sorry.
No problem! It’s good software but I’ve honestly been burned by applications that only keep this kinda stuff in databases. If you do daily backups/exports it’s probably OK but I don’t trust myself not to fuck it up.
This is my least favorite part of Seafile. If there were a competitive alternative that used a flat file storage backend then I’d switch to that in a heartbeat. But alas, I still have not found one, so I will continue into my 6th year of using Seafile…
Worth noting in 6 years I haven’t had any actual trouble with Seafile’s storage, and the few times I’ve needed to I’ve been able to export data to a normal file system using seaf-fsck even if Seafile isn’t running. I’m just not 100% comfortable with it anyway so I understand the apprehension. I’d rather use a standard filesystem and be able to use standard tooling on it.
Honestly this is why I’ve resisted going to seafile. I’ve been using owncloud for a while and it’s been solid, but it’s not my favourite thing in the world.
Maybe try https://github.com/kd2org/karadav if you want to continue using the NC apps for photo backups.
That’s really cool. I’m giving Immich a try now but I saved your comment.
Is it measurably better? From a quick look, it’s PHP again (and if your NC runs slow, there’s a fair chance it’s not properly set-up/tuned), and SQLite (so, rather small scale).
I would like to recommend Seafile if immich doesn’t work out. I’ve used it for a long time and it’s always been the best self hosted cloud imo. it’s not as shiny or pretty looking as some but it’s been reliable
If your main use case is photos
In my experience, Immich is way better for Photos.
Giving this a shot, importing everything through the CLI now
I love Immich. Such an amazing system it still shocks me that it’s foss
For this exact reason I’m using NextCloud as a service. You can even install plugins.
It’s a trade-off ofc but it works rocks solid so far.
I’m not affiliated with that particular provider though.
