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Nextcloud Hub 21

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Re: Nextcloud Hub 21

#21

Post by prophesi »

znpy wrote: post #16
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…

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

Those aren't mutually exclusive. Sure, better dev ops would make major upgrades safer and easier. But for a hobbyist self-hosting their own instance, a LTS release would be a godsend to save them hours of unpaid work.

Re: Nextcloud Hub 21

#22

Post by e-Minguez »

I'm a little bit worried with the shift from a 'cloud' storage solution to a groupware software... I only need the storage bits but it seems they are focusing on the groupware thing lately...

Re: Nextcloud Hub 21

#23

Post by hexanal »

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.

To echo what the other replies are saying: mine has been running on a DigitalOcean droplet since early 2019 and I only had to reboot it once.

It syncs everything, the iOS app and web dashboard are adequate. I would recommend it (but I haven't tried anything else, other than Google Drive or Dropbox, of course)

Re: Nextcloud Hub 21

#24

Post by m463 »

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 agree - I wish it was more stable and a little less promiscuous. Having your instance have to access the cloud for apps and updates is sort of counter to the "control your own server" sort of mentality.

Sort of like docker - do you have to go through their root namespace for everything?

Re: Nextcloud Hub 21

#25

Post by kop316 »

FredFS456 wrote: post #20
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.

That's been my experience as well. I have run Owncloud -> Nextcloud (when it was first released) since at least mid-2015, and I am on the same instance I first built.

I stay on the stable channel, and I get a notification if an app or nextcloud itself has an upgrade. The biggest issue is that the "Security & setup warnings" sometimes tells me I need to upgrade my database (and gives me the exact commands to do it) after an upgrade.

I will note that the upgrade has taken longer over the years (it used to take 5 minutes, now it can take over 30 minutes), and I think there is an issue with the backing up stage.

Re: Nextcloud Hub 21

#26

Post by contravariant »

znpy wrote: post #16
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…

I don't disagree but as a hobbyist I don't really want system administration problems. Well and I was mostly interested in Nextcloud as a possible alternative to Dropbox/Google drive with versioning and, I hoped, backups.

However the only proper backup solution that I could confidently state would allow me to recover should disaster strike was the one you just explained e.g. putting everything in docker and snapshotting the entire filesystem. At which point I'm basically running 3 virtual file systems on top of each other just to have a better UI, which seemed a bit silly.

Re: Nextcloud Hub 21

#27

Post by goalieca »

I’m in awe of something like Debian where entire mirrors have been served on ancient computers with reasonable performance. Perhaps there is a configuration issue, but at my work it is one of the slowest services aside from jira. I actually try to avoid opening jira and next cloud because it’s frustratingly slow to browse.

Edit: I was eager to see the link with the 10x performance number. I do hope it improves because we are in need of a service like that.

Re: Nextcloud Hub 21

#28

Post by laurent123456 »

e-Minguez wrote: post #22

I'm a little bit worried with the shift from a 'cloud' storage solution to a groupware software... I only need the storage bits but it seems they are focusing on the groupware thing lately...

They are focusing on entreprise features, because that's where money is.

I also wish they had a separate "light" offer with just the storage and a few basic apps. As it is, I think they are stretching their resources and some part of their offering is going to suffer as a result (we already saw quite a few severe bugs in the past year and some basic functionalities, like file locking or caching, is still not right). Personally I'm only staying with Nextcloud because there's unfortunately no good alternative for now.

Re: Nextcloud Hub 21

#29

Post by regularfry »

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…

The answer to that ought to be `apt-get install nextcloud-server` and let the distro maintainers step in, really. Unfortunately because you can't skip versions on upgrade, it's not clear how to cleanly do that.

Re: Nextcloud Hub 21

#30

Post by znpy »

contravariant wrote: post #26
znpy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I don't disagree but as a hobbyist I don't really want system administration problems. Well and I was mostly interested in Nextcloud as a possible alternative to Dropbox/Google drive with versioning and, I hoped, backups. However the only proper backup solution that I could confidently state would allow me to recover should disaster strike was the one you just explained e.g. putting everything in docker and snapshott…

First things first: don't get me wrong, I do understand your point.

The thing is: you have a system administration problem, whether you want or not (that is a big part of what you're actually paying for when you buy Dropbox or when you let Google feed on your data).

Now, as an hobbyist, when you start depending on services you set up and manage yourself, it would be a good idea to take some time to learn additional tools to enjoy your hobbies more.

Think about this as in "leveling up" your hobby.

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Now on a lighter tone, there are simpler ways to have a backup strategy, as long as you are okay with lower guarantees.

You might not use zfs, and use simple LVM snapshots. You might want to use no snapshotting at all and just do a nightly backup via a cronjob: at 3AM you just switch everything down (docker-compose down if you're using it), do a rsync to another host, start it back up. It's way simpler but you'd only get a yesterday's copy in case of problem.

But then again, that would safeguard you when doing upgrades: disable backup, perform upgrade, test everything, re-enable backup, resume operations. Worst case scenario you rsync back the yesterday's data and you resume normal operation.

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