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Nextcloud Hub 21

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Re: Nextcloud Hub 21

#11

Post by francis-io »

I trialed setting up my own nextcloud instance a while back. It's still very complex to get working in docker. From memory, the card/caldav traefik rewrites are still not working. SSL was complex to setup with Collabora, and still required manual GUI steps to link into Nextcloud (my biggest pet peeve). I also remember getting the initial setup wrong a few times in the initial setup wizard, which required me to delete my whole local config.

Performance was a little slow, but that could be down to my own hardware. It was just consumer grade i5 cpu and a basic SSD, in docker.

The examples they provide are good, but you cant really provide for every different config. I wanted to use traefik, so I brought the complexity on my self.

Heres where I got too, eventually stopping my trial of Nextcloud. https://gist.github.com/francis-io/935be5679b3308f5fbc3fe1bb...

My wishlist for future effort by the devs would be:

- Fully configured via env vars (and in Collabora too). - I would rather any config or state be kept in the db. It makes backup and restore easier. Env vars could be set in the db, and any restart, has the set env vars overwrite anything in the db. I want to have confidence that I can restore a db + files and have a working service come back up. At the moment, I don't trust Nextcloud to always come back up. - Keep config separate from user files. - Focus on improving speed (which it looks like they are adressing with this post). - Focus on more app usability. I remember in portrait it being hard to use.

Overall, the software is great and I'm looking forward to the future, but to store my personal data I will need to have a little more confidence.

(I can't seem to make a bullet point list on HN)

Re: Nextcloud Hub 21

#12

Post by belval »

40four wrote: post #3

I started running a self hosted Nextcloud instance last year, and I couldn’t be happier with it! This release sounds exciting, guess it’s time to go upgrade :) For those looking to ‘de-Google’ their lives, and control their own data Nextcloud is one of the best options out there.

I think my instance is 3-4 years old at this point and I am impressed by how little work I had to put into it over the years. I set it up using Snap and it auto updates so the whole process is quite carefree.

Re: Nextcloud Hub 21

#14

Post by l72 »

I really wish there was an LTS release that was supported for at least 2 years (just bugfixes, no new features). I self host my own instance, and I really just want to set it and forget it.

I don't mind doing low risk patches every few months or weeks, but I don't want to do a major version upgrade every 4-6 months.

I did my last major version upgrade only 15 months ago, and I am now 4 major versions behind, which means:

1) I upgrade from 17->18->19->20->21 and hope nothing breaks!

2) I either start over with the latest version

I like that open source moves fast, but at some point, I just want to stop fiddling with it and let it run with minimal maintenance.

Re: Nextcloud Hub 21

#15

Post by 3np »

francis-io wrote: post #11

I trialed setting up my own nextcloud instance a while back. It's still very complex to get working in docker. From memory, the card/caldav traefik rewrites are still not working. SSL was complex to setup with Collabora, and still required manual GUI steps to link into Nextcloud (my biggest pet peeve). I also remember getting the initial setup wrong a few times in the initial setup wizard, which required me to delete…

Thanks for sharing your experience, given how I treat software it sounds like I would extremely frustrated with some things that "the average user" doesn't mind at all. Sounds like I should give it another year or two before considering Nextcloud (because her, I assume they're working on it!)

> (I can't seem to make a bullet point list on HN)

For short points: indent with two spaces (longer become horrible on mobile). Or just do double newlines between the points like a normal person (;))

Re: Nextcloud Hub 21

#16

Post by znpy »

l72 wrote: post #14

I really wish there was an LTS release that was supported for at least 2 years (just bugfixes, no new features). I self host my own instance, and I really just want to set it and forget it. I don't mind doing low risk patches every few months or weeks, but I don't want to do a major version upgrade every 4-6 months. I did my last major version upgrade only 15 months ago, and I am now 4 major versions behind, which me…

> 1) I upgrade from 17->18->19->20->21 and hope nothing breaks!

I did a similar path (started from 18 iirc) and nothing broke.

But there's a catch, because I have some safeguards in place:

1. Nextcloud has its own dataset in a ZFS zpool. I take snapshots hourly, and I took a snapshot just before upgrading

2. I run nextcloud and its own postgreql via docker-compose. the docker-compose file along with the configuration and data are stored in nextcloud's own dataset. This means that os-level dependencies are not a problem for me. this also mean that reverting the whole thing to before-upgrade is very easy: just rollback to the before-update snapshot.

3. (unrelated) snapshot are replicated to another location, which means that I might perform the upgrade on that other site and switch the dns when it's done and if i'm satisfied. I don't do that, for my personal use 1-2 hours downtime it's okay.

4. I'll let nextcloud perform its auto-upgrade procedures, take a snapshot after every upgrade, and at the end I'll perform the tasks suggested in the self-assesment page (adding indexes, changing columns types etc).

You don't have a nextcloud problem, you have a system administration problem.

Re: Nextcloud Hub 21

#17

Post by basilgohar »

l72 wrote: post #14

I really wish there was an LTS release that was supported for at least 2 years (just bugfixes, no new features). I self host my own instance, and I really just want to set it and forget it. I don't mind doing low risk patches every few months or weeks, but I don't want to do a major version upgrade every 4-6 months. I did my last major version upgrade only 15 months ago, and I am now 4 major versions behind, which me…

As someone who hosted his own as well, I agree with your sentiment exactly. I've taken down the server that I had hosting my own instance before this, and I am delaying setting up a new one simply because of what you've said here.

I imagine that those of us that want that kind of stability are encouraged to go with their hosted offering, but hopefully they'll see the value in having a slower and/or more stable release process.

For what it's worth, the upgrade process for the last few major versions went mostly without a hitch for me. I do have to give them credit for that. The only thing I continue to struggle with is the encryption design. I always end-up with some odd state for some files I cannot recover from.

Re: Nextcloud Hub 21

#18

Post by znpy »

basilgohar wrote: post #17
l72 wrote: post #14

I really wish there was an LTS release that was supported for at least 2 years (just bugfixes, no new features). I self host my own instance, and I really just want to set it and forget it. I don't mind doing low risk patches every few months or weeks, but I don't want to do a major version upgrade every 4-6 months. I did my last major version upgrade only 15 months ago, and I am now 4 major versions behind, which me…

As someone who hosted his own as well, I agree with your sentiment exactly. I've taken down the server that I had hosting my own instance before this, and I am delaying setting up a new one simply because of what you've said here. I imagine that those of us that want that kind of stability are encouraged to go with their hosted offering, but hopefully they'll see the value in having a slower and/or more stable releas…

see my sibling comment for an idea on how to set nextcloud up for easy maintenance.

disclaimer: i have updated several version, but haven't upgraded to version 21 yet (it just got released)

Re: Nextcloud Hub 21

#19

Post by nmg »

l72 wrote: post #14

I really wish there was an LTS release that was supported for at least 2 years (just bugfixes, no new features). I self host my own instance, and I really just want to set it and forget it. I don't mind doing low risk patches every few months or weeks, but I don't want to do a major version upgrade every 4-6 months. I did my last major version upgrade only 15 months ago, and I am now 4 major versions behind, which me…

I am a huge fan of Nextcloud and I couldn't agree more. My upgrade path is to just start a new instance with a fresh sync, because I was traumatized by a turbulent and uncertain upgrade on all of my instances once about two years ago. This is a product I love and choose to rely upon for my data, every day. I'm interested in the bells and whistles and I want the platform to succeed - my preference would be an LTS for my critical data, and the option to spin up newer features separately to test before adoption.

Re: Nextcloud Hub 21

#20

Post by FredFS456 »

l72 wrote: post #14

I really wish there was an LTS release that was supported for at least 2 years (just bugfixes, no new features). I self host my own instance, and I really just want to set it and forget it. I don't mind doing low risk patches every few months or weeks, but I don't want to do a major version upgrade every 4-6 months. I did my last major version upgrade only 15 months ago, and I am now 4 major versions behind, which me…

In my experience of running my own Nextcloud instance for over 4 years, I've never had an upgrade break my instance. Caveat: I'm on the stable channel and I only update when the client prompts me to update, which is a few point releases into a new release.
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