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I've run Nextcloud for almost 3 years now via docker on a vps , it hosts my contacts, calendars and files. There is a apache reverse proxy in front of it, and a

I've run Nextcloud for almost 3 years now via docker on a vps , it hosts my contacts, calendars and files. There is a apache reverse proxy in front of it, and a postgresql-database in the back. Not once had I any serious issues updating when pulling new updated images. Occasionally it whines about missing indices, but that is easily fixed using the occ command line tool. The clients real IP is forwarded by the proxy. What I want to say is just that Nextcloud works fine.

doubled112 2y ago
I have also found that if you stick to the core functionality it works fine. As soon as I started to add apps from the store it starts to be a pain. An upgrade comes out and you’re stuck on that version until they all update, OR you update not realizing and lose the functionality for some time. Since I self-host a bunch of apps, it made more sense to use different apps dedicated to those features, like Miniflux or Navidrome. Not for everybody though.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 2y ago
  You haven't necessarily gained anything by going to managing standalone apps individually, though. You've removed the unifying layer, but you're now having to keep up with the app versions and upgrade them individually by hand instead of letting the unifying layer handle it.
  - BrandoElFollito 2y ago
    If you use docker + watchtower all this is done automatically
    - doubled112 2y ago
      I don’t use Watchtower, but a script that takes a btrfs snapshot before doing a docker compose pull, then docker compose up. Same idea, just safer and fewer surprises.
      - sach1 2y ago
        That's nice and simple, do you have a shareable version of this script or some advice on btrfs pointers/pitfalls?
        doubled112 2y ago
        It's really just those three steps in a loop, nothing fancy SHOT_TIME="$(date +'%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M')" for dir in /docker/* do cd $dir; btrfs subvolume snapshot "${dir}" "/docker/.snapshots/$(basename $dir)-${SHOT_TIME}" docker compose pull --quiet docker compose up -d done I mount a btrfs subvolume at /docker, and create a .snapshots subvolume inside. Each subvolume is an app and its dependencies, you want everything snapshotted as one. This is probably the biggest pitfall, if you don't take that snapshot of all the pieces. /docker |--> .snapshots |--> app_one-2024-08-28_12-34 |--> app_one |--> compose.yaml |--> volumes |--> app_one-config |--> app_one-db |--> app_two |--> compose.yaml |--> volumes |--> app_two-config |--> app_two-db
  - doubled112 2y ago
    I gained working music and RSS that week.
- jerf 2y ago
  I ran NextCloud for some years, just for the file sharing. I was the only user. About every third upgrade cocked up in some critical way that required bespoke DB fixes. Twice I basically blew away all state and recreated my entire file store from scratch from a backup because it was easier than fixing the install. Worked for me but is infeasible for any larger install. I tried using the office functionality for one document and I lost the document entirely on an upgrade because apparently the mirroring as a file is an illusion and the real office data is stored buried in the database in a way I never did manage to recover; I ended up just recreating the document. Thank goodness it was just the one document. It is constantly screaming for upgrades but I don't know what they are doing with those upgrades because it doesn't seem to make the core any more reliable. It's just an opportunity for the upgrade to fail and lose data, which it frequently took advantage of. The key thing that really annoyed me is that I couldn't hardly have used it more lightly than I did, and it took about every other opportunity to fall over and lose data. I can't even imagine the plight of someone trying to run this in an office environment.
BrandoElFollito 2y ago
> Not once had I any serious issues updating when pulling new updated images I've run it for about a year until the upgrade tipped me over. I am sure that correct upgrades (n to n+1) are fine - I tried n to n+2 and instead of explaining to me that this is not possible, Nextcloud explained to me that this is not possible and fucked up big my install. I had to recover from a backup.
- VertanaNinjai 2y ago
  So they told you that’s not supported and don’t do it. You then did it and seem surprised at a bad outcome. And you’re blaming the software and/or vendor?
  - BrandoElFollito 2y ago
    Seriously do you think that for software that manages data the proper way is for someone who starts the upgrade process to say "this is not supported, and now we fucked up your database and you cannot recover from that"? They knew that I was upgrading N+2, this is not a surprise - and I did not realize that upgrading N+2 is not supported. The proper way would be to abort the upgrade upon discovering that I am going for an unsupported way. This is not serious software.
    - stavros 2y ago
      I don't understand how commenters here can seriously argue this. There should be no UX for "oh this is not supported? Eh give it a shot anyway, I don't care about literally all my files". If you don't support upgrading, don't expose that in the UI. There's no excuse for having UI that will let the user do something unsupported and then screw up their data.
      - rustcleaner 2y ago
        Not saying it's the case here, but I wonder how much deniably malicious incompetence out there gets covertly injected into projects by competitors.
aquaticsunset 2y ago
This has been my experience as well. The only major instability was due to the Ubuntu snap based runtime, which I migrated away from a few years ago.
eptcyka 2y ago
What do you do to make performance not suck? Have been using it for years, but it just sucks in terms of showing me my pictures. Also, what do iOS people do to make their auto upload folders upload automatically without having to open the app?
- sveske_juice 2y ago
  After using Nextcloud for a while i stopped, since it was to buggy, and always took an eternity to load simple pages like the dashboard. So i decided to switch to dedicated services, instead of using nextcloud to handle everything. For images i can recommend Immich which is a new open source project specializing in storing your images with local AI support. I can highly recommend it.
  - mistrial9 2y ago
    beware of leaving an open upload on Photoprism for example -- close your uploads to $public on any photo host IMHO
- jospoortvliet 2y ago
  The Memories app is a LOT faster than the built in Photos app. I use it myself and it's quite nice, very doable on my down clocked old Intel CPU.
KronisLV 2y ago
I had version 17 installed, I wanted to upgrade to version 20. I launched the container for the new version, but got an error: "Exception: Updates between multiple major versions and downgrades are unsupported." I then tried launching the container for version 18, which should be supported, which initially seemed to succeed! However, I was greeted by "Internal Server Error" in the web UI, since apparently instead of just quitting, the initial upgrade had ruined the DB schema. After restoring version 17 from backup, migrating to 18 and onwards, then trying to register my local apps with it, I then got CSP errors in the console when signing in. After manually editing the configuration file (which you seemingly can't do through environment variables) that seemed to be resolved. Then, I tried syncing my local files but realized that the size of all of them is suddenly 0 KB. The files would show up in the web UI, but the size would be 0 KB. I had to rename the files a few times, which eventually fixed that, no matter how odd. Finally, I realized that trying to open any of the pages in the web UI would take around 3-10 seconds. It seemed that there was a bug in the Talk application, disabling which then gave me the expected performance, even if it affecting how the Files application works also seems odd. I like the utility Nextcloud provides me, but despise updating it. At this point I just stick to the core apps and wipe the whole thing when I need to update to something newer, manually carrying over the files I want to sync in the new instance. Oh, also, out of the box the DB file locking configuration causes large file uploads (a few GB) to just hang, in a way where I cannot delete them. I had to disable locking altogether. Honestly, it's just weird. If you need 1000 SQL migrations to go from version 1 of your software to version 20, just include all of them and don't mess around with disallowing migrating across multiple major versions. Same for any changes that might impact the persisted files on the FS. Just have updates be one continuous, long stream of patches, applied sequentially. If you do that and have sane defaults, you're good. To not be overly negative: it's good that Nextcloud exists, is free, has a somewhat nice ecosystem around it and both the desktop apps and the phone apps for iOS/Android are okay.
- GTP 2y ago
  I remeber having some issues when I first attemped running a Nextcloud Docker container years ago. I don't know it it was because it was one of my first times with Docker or if it was Nextcloud that was screwing-up, but a native (non Docker) install solved all my problems. Was rock-solid ever since, up when I retired it recently due to unrelated reasons.

doubled112 2y ago

I have also found that if you stick to the core functionality it works fine. As soon as I started to add apps from the store it starts to be a pain. An upgrade comes out and you’re stuck on that version until they all update, OR you update not realizing and lose the functionality for some time. Since I self-host a bunch of apps, it made more sense to use different apps dedicated to those features, like Miniflux or Navidrome. Not for everybody though.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 2y ago
You haven't necessarily gained anything by going to managing standalone apps individually, though. You've removed the unifying layer, but you're now having to keep up with the app versions and upgrade them individually by hand instead of letting the unifying layer handle it.
- BrandoElFollito 2y ago
  If you use docker + watchtower all this is done automatically
  - doubled112 2y ago
    I don’t use Watchtower, but a script that takes a btrfs snapshot before doing a docker compose pull, then docker compose up. Same idea, just safer and fewer surprises.
    - sach1 2y ago
      That's nice and simple, do you have a shareable version of this script or some advice on btrfs pointers/pitfalls?
      - doubled112 2y ago
        It's really just those three steps in a loop, nothing fancy SHOT_TIME="$(date +'%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M')" for dir in /docker/* do cd $dir; btrfs subvolume snapshot "${dir}" "/docker/.snapshots/$(basename $dir)-${SHOT_TIME}" docker compose pull --quiet docker compose up -d done I mount a btrfs subvolume at /docker, and create a .snapshots subvolume inside. Each subvolume is an app and its dependencies, you want everything snapshotted as one. This is probably the biggest pitfall, if you don't take that snapshot of all the pieces. /docker |--> .snapshots |--> app_one-2024-08-28_12-34 |--> app_one |--> compose.yaml |--> volumes |--> app_one-config |--> app_one-db |--> app_two |--> compose.yaml |--> volumes |--> app_two-config |--> app_two-db
- doubled112 2y ago
  I gained working music and RSS that week.
jerf 2y ago
I ran NextCloud for some years, just for the file sharing. I was the only user. About every third upgrade cocked up in some critical way that required bespoke DB fixes. Twice I basically blew away all state and recreated my entire file store from scratch from a backup because it was easier than fixing the install. Worked for me but is infeasible for any larger install. I tried using the office functionality for one document and I lost the document entirely on an upgrade because apparently the mirroring as a file is an illusion and the real office data is stored buried in the database in a way I never did manage to recover; I ended up just recreating the document. Thank goodness it was just the one document. It is constantly screaming for upgrades but I don't know what they are doing with those upgrades because it doesn't seem to make the core any more reliable. It's just an opportunity for the upgrade to fail and lose data, which it frequently took advantage of. The key thing that really annoyed me is that I couldn't hardly have used it more lightly than I did, and it took about every other opportunity to fall over and lose data. I can't even imagine the plight of someone trying to run this in an office environment.

BrandoElFollito 2y ago

> Not once had I any serious issues updating when pulling new updated images I've run it for about a year until the upgrade tipped me over. I am sure that correct upgrades (n to n+1) are fine - I tried n to n+2 and instead of explaining to me that this is not possible, Nextcloud explained to me that this is not possible and fucked up big my install. I had to recover from a backup.

VertanaNinjai 2y ago
So they told you that’s not supported and don’t do it. You then did it and seem surprised at a bad outcome. And you’re blaming the software and/or vendor?
- BrandoElFollito 2y ago
  Seriously do you think that for software that manages data the proper way is for someone who starts the upgrade process to say "this is not supported, and now we fucked up your database and you cannot recover from that"? They knew that I was upgrading N+2, this is not a surprise - and I did not realize that upgrading N+2 is not supported. The proper way would be to abort the upgrade upon discovering that I am going for an unsupported way. This is not serious software.
  - stavros 2y ago
    I don't understand how commenters here can seriously argue this. There should be no UX for "oh this is not supported? Eh give it a shot anyway, I don't care about literally all my files". If you don't support upgrading, don't expose that in the UI. There's no excuse for having UI that will let the user do something unsupported and then screw up their data.
    - rustcleaner 2y ago
      Not saying it's the case here, but I wonder how much deniably malicious incompetence out there gets covertly injected into projects by competitors.

aquaticsunset 2y ago

This has been my experience as well. The only major instability was due to the Ubuntu snap based runtime, which I migrated away from a few years ago.

eptcyka 2y ago

What do you do to make performance not suck? Have been using it for years, but it just sucks in terms of showing me my pictures. Also, what do iOS people do to make their auto upload folders upload automatically without having to open the app?

sveske_juice 2y ago
After using Nextcloud for a while i stopped, since it was to buggy, and always took an eternity to load simple pages like the dashboard. So i decided to switch to dedicated services, instead of using nextcloud to handle everything. For images i can recommend Immich which is a new open source project specializing in storing your images with local AI support. I can highly recommend it.
- mistrial9 2y ago
  beware of leaving an open upload on Photoprism for example -- close your uploads to $public on any photo host IMHO
jospoortvliet 2y ago
The Memories app is a LOT faster than the built in Photos app. I use it myself and it's quite nice, very doable on my down clocked old Intel CPU.

KronisLV 2y ago

I had version 17 installed, I wanted to upgrade to version 20. I launched the container for the new version, but got an error: "Exception: Updates between multiple major versions and downgrades are unsupported." I then tried launching the container for version 18, which should be supported, which initially seemed to succeed! However, I was greeted by "Internal Server Error" in the web UI, since apparently instead of just quitting, the initial upgrade had ruined the DB schema. After restoring version 17 from backup, migrating to 18 and onwards, then trying to register my local apps with it, I then got CSP errors in the console when signing in. After manually editing the configuration file (which you seemingly can't do through environment variables) that seemed to be resolved. Then, I tried syncing my local files but realized that the size of all of them is suddenly 0 KB. The files would show up in the web UI, but the size would be 0 KB. I had to rename the files a few times, which eventually fixed that, no matter how odd. Finally, I realized that trying to open any of the pages in the web UI would take around 3-10 seconds. It seemed that there was a bug in the Talk application, disabling which then gave me the expected performance, even if it affecting how the Files application works also seems odd. I like the utility Nextcloud provides me, but despise updating it. At this point I just stick to the core apps and wipe the whole thing when I need to update to something newer, manually carrying over the files I want to sync in the new instance. Oh, also, out of the box the DB file locking configuration causes large file uploads (a few GB) to just hang, in a way where I cannot delete them. I had to disable locking altogether. Honestly, it's just weird. If you need 1000 SQL migrations to go from version 1 of your software to version 20, just include all of them and don't mess around with disallowing migrating across multiple major versions. Same for any changes that might impact the persisted files on the FS. Just have updates be one continuous, long stream of patches, applied sequentially. If you do that and have sane defaults, you're good. To not be overly negative: it's good that Nextcloud exists, is free, has a somewhat nice ecosystem around it and both the desktop apps and the phone apps for iOS/Android are okay.

GTP 2y ago
I remeber having some issues when I first attemped running a Nextcloud Docker container years ago. I don't know it it was because it was one of my first times with Docker or if it was Nextcloud that was screwing-up, but a native (non Docker) install solved all my problems. Was rock-solid ever since, up when I retired it recently due to unrelated reasons.