10 ms·

I really tried to make Nextcloud work for me but it was too much. I‘ll pay the enshittified Dropbox premium soon. Some bugs I encountered in a few hours of tes

I really tried to make Nextcloud work for me but it was too much. I‘ll pay the enshittified Dropbox premium soon. Some bugs I encountered in a few hours of testing and trying to make it work. The Mac auto-update installs an incompatible version to my OS; the website offers only the new incompatible and an old version that also doesn’t work (OS can not scan the app). The solution is to find a suitable version from a hidden FTP, user-unfriendly. Some files had modification timestamps on 1.1.1970 that causes obscure sync issues on Mac. Either run some arbitrary database scripts to fix this or a simpler solution is to ‘touch’ all affected files. The Windows Client consistently shows random minus bytes, hangs, and freezes. The Windows Client is stuck in a loop of calculations and transmissions. Also a reinstallation is impossible as AppData folder isn’t deleted during uninstallation. A successful complete reinstall downloads all the existing files individually, creating conflicts with identical(!?) local and server files. Why is the file hash not checked before the download? It’s frustrating and seems poorly designed. All bugs have open GitHub issues I didn’t bother to include. Some have open PRs for years. The last bug is open for 5 years now.

eurekin 3y ago
I installed Nextcloud twice and faced early bugs quickly as well. I'm certainly not moving my 15tb of client photos to it anytime soon
- op00to 3y ago
  I always wondered why photographers held on to negatives/raw files for so long. How often does the need to return years later come up, and can that justify the cost of storing all that in a way that’s somewhat reliable? I’m not saying there aren’t valid reasons to do so, and throwing the pictures on a few externals drives isn’t terrible, but to do it “right” seems like it would be super expensive!
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    Because better hardware gets cheaper, and one's technique and software improves over time. I was able to recover a 13 year old photo I took with a D70s which was extremely noisy. By using what I learnt and state of the art software (which is Darktable), I was able to extract a very nice photo out of it. Also, as your style improves and experience piles up, you look to your "bad" photos and say "Aha, there's a nice angle here. Let's process this". You can see some of my "Remastered" photos at [0]. [0]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zerocoder/albums/72157702429561602/with/29340231528 https://www.flickr.com/photos/zerocoder/albums/7215770242956...
    - eurekin 3y ago
      I wonder how would you react to the DeepPRIME* from DxO https://www.dxo.com/fr/technology/deepprime/ https://www.dxo.com/fr/technology/deepprime/ I have a license for some older version, if you want to throw a .nef at me
      - bayindirh 3y ago
        That looks pretty nice. I'll try to find some noisy files to send to you. What's nice about Darktable is it has a feature called "profiled denoise". Contributors send in calibrated RAW files per camera, taken at every ISO setting possible, so Darktable denoises your file according to your camera's profile at particular ISO. The result is pretty impressive. I have uploaded that particular image to [0]. Taken in 2006 and processed in 2020, after 14 years! [0]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zerocoder/53363865806/in/dateposted-public/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/zerocoder/53363865806/in/datep... Edit: EXIF says 2005, but it should be 2006.
  - eurekin 3y ago
    Oh, I'd throw them away in a blink, If I were not lazy: Almost after every shoot, people come back "remember that one photo, where I smiled at sth? I'm very sentimental about that, cause it's [some important thing to them]", which necessitates the need to hold on to every photo taken on the session. So no real deletes here, even if it came out technically wrong (blurry, blown out, etc.). Those requests lessen, but don't die down completely. Especially with cyclic events, organizers have this habit of a asking for things done exactly year ago. Some just say: "hey, I remember you taking a photo of me then and then" for their dancing portfolio in my case. Especially for videos, which can be a constant flow of editing requests, for supercuts and etc. Now, if I were really smart, I'd just have some good way to archive after two years, and delete after - let's say three years. In practice though, there are so many unforseen circumstances that a habit of "never delete anything" forms really easily. It's just a lot easier and cheaper to buy another drive instead of culling 10k of photos every once in a while, especially if external confirmation is involved.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      You could also back up to something like AWS Glacier. The cheapest tier (access less than once a year) is $1/TB/month. Maybe if you kept thumbnails locally, you could push all the data up and only pull it as and when you needed it.
      - nik736 3y ago
        Have fun paying a fortune if you need to get those files again.
        robertlagrant 3y ago
        If you need all of them, and can wait 5-12 hours, that appears to be free to request and transfer? Or am I misreading[0]? [0] https://aws.amazon.com/s3/glacier/pricing/#Retrieval_request_pricing https://aws.amazon.com/s3/glacier/pricing/#Retrieval_request... <- under "Bulk"
        3y ago
- jmnicolas 3y ago
  Have you tried Immich? I don't have much experience with it (installed yesterday evening) but it looks and run great.
  - inox 3y ago
    I second immich - used it for some group sharing (non-registered users) and worked really smooth. had some random upload fails though on the app from iOS.
  - eurekin 3y ago
    I spinned it up once and looked really good. Never got to thorougly testing for that case. Might take another look
- b112 3y ago
  Just use apace2, its davfs implementation, and davfs clients. Linux has davfs2, android has foldersync. Apache2 is super streamlined for this, and has done dav stuff for at least 16 years.
  - eurekin 3y ago
    I was thinking of trying out using something low level... Maybe that? Does it support lazy selective syncing? Updating only ranges of files? Does it handle broken connections gracefully and recovers without data loss?
    - b112 3y ago
      davfs is a protcol, a standard. Read that standard uf you wonder, but many things used dav behind the scenes. And apache2 is a very well established implementation of it. Clients handle partial snags. I wouldn't rely upon anything that syncs like this, without backups. Any protocol at all. Of course, the same may be said for anything at all. Backups are king.
      - hammyhavoc 3y ago
        What are you using for backup?
jmnicolas 3y ago
If Dropbox is all you need you might be satisfied with Syncthing. I have used it for a week now, it works well and I have the warm fuzzy feeling that nobody is using my data to make a few bucks (I'm self hosting it on a home server).
- jchw 3y ago
  Not only that, you don't even need to "host" Syncthing. Being P2P in nature, it can just run on whatever computers you want to sync to, directly. That's pretty cool. The only thing I'd really want for Syncthing is some kind of simple interface for my desktops (all running SwayWM.) There's a GTK app that I use on my Pinephone, but it's a little janky. I mainly just want to be able to know that I'll get notifications when there's a conflict or error. (Dropbox style file emblems in file explorers, showing the state, would be nice, too...)
  - brnt 3y ago
    I use an old phone (with Resilio) as such an always-on node.
  - microtonal 3y ago
    You still need a node somewhere that is always available, otherwise your device cannot sync when your other devices are offline. My wife and I had such a setup for years with Resilio Sync. But life is busy enough to maintain yet another thing, so we are happy to fork over the monthly fee for Dropbox Family. Ideally I'd switch over to some other sync solution, because Dropbox is somewhat overpriced. But we've had bad experiences with Google Drive and OneDrive for local sync in the past.
    - jchw 3y ago
      Well, you need an always-online node only if you actually need it to be syncing all of the time. Not everyone needs this; often times it's enough to just sync opportunistically. This is mainly necessary for things that are mutable and active; for me, I store my Keepass XC on a Syncthing shared folder, so this is relevant to me. And for that, I use my NAS, although obviously, not everyone has a NAS. But that's the thing. Especially notable compared to NextCloud, Syncthing is not like most "self-hosted" software. Because a node is a node is a node, and because it's relatively lightweight, it literally doesn't matter what you use. You can use a Raspberry Pi, an old phone or laptop, anything you can connect sufficient disk and a network to can be a Syncthing node. And if it catches on fire, it doesn't really matter since every node is equal. You can just add another node at any time. So a lot of people think Syncthing is another thing you'll have to worry about and maintain, but it's not. It's one of the few pieces of software that I expected to have to deal with a lot of extra work to use, but then it wound up being dramatically easier and more flexible than I expected. I worry about robustness when it comes to something as complex as cross filesystem syncing, but Syncthing has never lost my data. I have backups turned on on most nodes for the important folders, but I've never consulted them before, because I've never needed to. Surely it is possible to lose data with Syncthing, or otherwise create a headache. However, from my point of view, it certainly seems to be among the most reliable and lowest effort ways to sync stuff across devices. I haven't had to spend almost any time maintaining Syncthing, and I don't have to worry about limits. I just need one device with a big enough disk, then I can create however many shared folders are needed to get the granularity I want. Syncthing also has a pretty cool encryption feature. It is considered "beta" still, so I only use it in "trusted" scenarios, but it works great. When I started using Syncthing, I only intended to share some document files between my desktop and my laptop. Now I use it to sync my Keepass database, files between some servers (think seedbox etc.,) multiple different documents folders including some for collaborative projects, and even a couple of other things. So it really wound up over-delivering for me. I'd strongly recommend people, even people who already feel like Resilio Sync wasn't a good fit, to just try to set up Syncthing before resigning to Dropbox. Comparatively, I think Syncthing is simpler to use and more robust than basically any other solution that isn't Dropbox.
willis936 3y ago
I run it on TrueNAS Scale. Yes it is all quite fragile, but I managed to get it in a state where it works if I don't touch it. It's all backed on a ZFS volume. Barring significant hardware failures I will be able to access my data locally. I use Storj for mirror remote. Rebuilding would be a bit of a pain, but I have reached the E2EE personal cloud ideal. If [better than storj] cloud storage services offered BYOPK E2EE then I wouldn't need to jump through such hurdles.
microtonal 3y ago
I‘ll pay the enshittified Dropbox premium soon. I have been using Maestral for Dropbox sync on Mac for years now and it works great. The primary downside is that it doesn't have block-level sync because it's not supported by the API. The flip side is that you don't get the memory-hungry Dropbox app that embeds a web engine for some unfathomable reason. I wish that Dropbox would bring back their old client that just did sync and not all the crap that I don't need.
gnramires 3y ago
There are services that host those for you, as an alternative to self hosting. I've been using hosted Seafile for a while and very happy with it.

eurekin 3y ago

I installed Nextcloud twice and faced early bugs quickly as well. I'm certainly not moving my 15tb of client photos to it anytime soon

op00to 3y ago
I always wondered why photographers held on to negatives/raw files for so long. How often does the need to return years later come up, and can that justify the cost of storing all that in a way that’s somewhat reliable? I’m not saying there aren’t valid reasons to do so, and throwing the pictures on a few externals drives isn’t terrible, but to do it “right” seems like it would be super expensive!
- bayindirh 3y ago
  Because better hardware gets cheaper, and one's technique and software improves over time. I was able to recover a 13 year old photo I took with a D70s which was extremely noisy. By using what I learnt and state of the art software (which is Darktable), I was able to extract a very nice photo out of it. Also, as your style improves and experience piles up, you look to your "bad" photos and say "Aha, there's a nice angle here. Let's process this". You can see some of my "Remastered" photos at [0]. [0]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zerocoder/albums/72157702429561602/with/29340231528 https://www.flickr.com/photos/zerocoder/albums/7215770242956...
  - eurekin 3y ago
    I wonder how would you react to the DeepPRIME* from DxO https://www.dxo.com/fr/technology/deepprime/ https://www.dxo.com/fr/technology/deepprime/ I have a license for some older version, if you want to throw a .nef at me
    - bayindirh 3y ago
      That looks pretty nice. I'll try to find some noisy files to send to you. What's nice about Darktable is it has a feature called "profiled denoise". Contributors send in calibrated RAW files per camera, taken at every ISO setting possible, so Darktable denoises your file according to your camera's profile at particular ISO. The result is pretty impressive. I have uploaded that particular image to [0]. Taken in 2006 and processed in 2020, after 14 years! [0]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zerocoder/53363865806/in/dateposted-public/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/zerocoder/53363865806/in/datep... Edit: EXIF says 2005, but it should be 2006.
- eurekin 3y ago
  Oh, I'd throw them away in a blink, If I were not lazy: Almost after every shoot, people come back "remember that one photo, where I smiled at sth? I'm very sentimental about that, cause it's [some important thing to them]", which necessitates the need to hold on to every photo taken on the session. So no real deletes here, even if it came out technically wrong (blurry, blown out, etc.). Those requests lessen, but don't die down completely. Especially with cyclic events, organizers have this habit of a asking for things done exactly year ago. Some just say: "hey, I remember you taking a photo of me then and then" for their dancing portfolio in my case. Especially for videos, which can be a constant flow of editing requests, for supercuts and etc. Now, if I were really smart, I'd just have some good way to archive after two years, and delete after - let's say three years. In practice though, there are so many unforseen circumstances that a habit of "never delete anything" forms really easily. It's just a lot easier and cheaper to buy another drive instead of culling 10k of photos every once in a while, especially if external confirmation is involved.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    You could also back up to something like AWS Glacier. The cheapest tier (access less than once a year) is $1/TB/month. Maybe if you kept thumbnails locally, you could push all the data up and only pull it as and when you needed it.
    - nik736 3y ago
      Have fun paying a fortune if you need to get those files again.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        If you need all of them, and can wait 5-12 hours, that appears to be free to request and transfer? Or am I misreading[0]? [0] https://aws.amazon.com/s3/glacier/pricing/#Retrieval_request_pricing https://aws.amazon.com/s3/glacier/pricing/#Retrieval_request... <- under "Bulk"
        3y ago
jmnicolas 3y ago
Have you tried Immich? I don't have much experience with it (installed yesterday evening) but it looks and run great.
- inox 3y ago
  I second immich - used it for some group sharing (non-registered users) and worked really smooth. had some random upload fails though on the app from iOS.
- eurekin 3y ago
  I spinned it up once and looked really good. Never got to thorougly testing for that case. Might take another look
b112 3y ago
Just use apace2, its davfs implementation, and davfs clients. Linux has davfs2, android has foldersync. Apache2 is super streamlined for this, and has done dav stuff for at least 16 years.
- eurekin 3y ago
  I was thinking of trying out using something low level... Maybe that? Does it support lazy selective syncing? Updating only ranges of files? Does it handle broken connections gracefully and recovers without data loss?
  - b112 3y ago
    davfs is a protcol, a standard. Read that standard uf you wonder, but many things used dav behind the scenes. And apache2 is a very well established implementation of it. Clients handle partial snags. I wouldn't rely upon anything that syncs like this, without backups. Any protocol at all. Of course, the same may be said for anything at all. Backups are king.
    - hammyhavoc 3y ago
      What are you using for backup?

jmnicolas 3y ago

If Dropbox is all you need you might be satisfied with Syncthing. I have used it for a week now, it works well and I have the warm fuzzy feeling that nobody is using my data to make a few bucks (I'm self hosting it on a home server).

jchw 3y ago
Not only that, you don't even need to "host" Syncthing. Being P2P in nature, it can just run on whatever computers you want to sync to, directly. That's pretty cool. The only thing I'd really want for Syncthing is some kind of simple interface for my desktops (all running SwayWM.) There's a GTK app that I use on my Pinephone, but it's a little janky. I mainly just want to be able to know that I'll get notifications when there's a conflict or error. (Dropbox style file emblems in file explorers, showing the state, would be nice, too...)
- brnt 3y ago
  I use an old phone (with Resilio) as such an always-on node.
- microtonal 3y ago
  You still need a node somewhere that is always available, otherwise your device cannot sync when your other devices are offline. My wife and I had such a setup for years with Resilio Sync. But life is busy enough to maintain yet another thing, so we are happy to fork over the monthly fee for Dropbox Family. Ideally I'd switch over to some other sync solution, because Dropbox is somewhat overpriced. But we've had bad experiences with Google Drive and OneDrive for local sync in the past.
  - jchw 3y ago
    Well, you need an always-online node only if you actually need it to be syncing all of the time. Not everyone needs this; often times it's enough to just sync opportunistically. This is mainly necessary for things that are mutable and active; for me, I store my Keepass XC on a Syncthing shared folder, so this is relevant to me. And for that, I use my NAS, although obviously, not everyone has a NAS. But that's the thing. Especially notable compared to NextCloud, Syncthing is not like most "self-hosted" software. Because a node is a node is a node, and because it's relatively lightweight, it literally doesn't matter what you use. You can use a Raspberry Pi, an old phone or laptop, anything you can connect sufficient disk and a network to can be a Syncthing node. And if it catches on fire, it doesn't really matter since every node is equal. You can just add another node at any time. So a lot of people think Syncthing is another thing you'll have to worry about and maintain, but it's not. It's one of the few pieces of software that I expected to have to deal with a lot of extra work to use, but then it wound up being dramatically easier and more flexible than I expected. I worry about robustness when it comes to something as complex as cross filesystem syncing, but Syncthing has never lost my data. I have backups turned on on most nodes for the important folders, but I've never consulted them before, because I've never needed to. Surely it is possible to lose data with Syncthing, or otherwise create a headache. However, from my point of view, it certainly seems to be among the most reliable and lowest effort ways to sync stuff across devices. I haven't had to spend almost any time maintaining Syncthing, and I don't have to worry about limits. I just need one device with a big enough disk, then I can create however many shared folders are needed to get the granularity I want. Syncthing also has a pretty cool encryption feature. It is considered "beta" still, so I only use it in "trusted" scenarios, but it works great. When I started using Syncthing, I only intended to share some document files between my desktop and my laptop. Now I use it to sync my Keepass database, files between some servers (think seedbox etc.,) multiple different documents folders including some for collaborative projects, and even a couple of other things. So it really wound up over-delivering for me. I'd strongly recommend people, even people who already feel like Resilio Sync wasn't a good fit, to just try to set up Syncthing before resigning to Dropbox. Comparatively, I think Syncthing is simpler to use and more robust than basically any other solution that isn't Dropbox.

willis936 3y ago

I run it on TrueNAS Scale. Yes it is all quite fragile, but I managed to get it in a state where it works if I don't touch it. It's all backed on a ZFS volume. Barring significant hardware failures I will be able to access my data locally. I use Storj for mirror remote. Rebuilding would be a bit of a pain, but I have reached the E2EE personal cloud ideal. If [better than storj] cloud storage services offered BYOPK E2EE then I wouldn't need to jump through such hurdles.

microtonal 3y ago

I‘ll pay the enshittified Dropbox premium soon. I have been using Maestral for Dropbox sync on Mac for years now and it works great. The primary downside is that it doesn't have block-level sync because it's not supported by the API. The flip side is that you don't get the memory-hungry Dropbox app that embeds a web engine for some unfathomable reason. I wish that Dropbox would bring back their old client that just did sync and not all the crap that I don't need.

gnramires 3y ago

There are services that host those for you, as an alternative to self hosting. I've been using hosted Seafile for a while and very happy with it.