Nextcloud take 2

mgian — Sun, 10 Apr 2022 23:26:51 GMT

After some months (and tanks to some random people on Internet), I decided to give Nextcloud another chance... Well, not really.

Back in February, I got sick of the problems I had upgrading Nextcloud which nearly destroyed my server. A server that as also some public sites I am running.

After dropping Nextcloud, I still had the problem of synchronize the files on 3 PC (2 Linux and 1 windows) and a phone, so I tried out Syncthing. It was a good enough solution but I found it miss something, expecially in the configuration aspect. Maybe I set up it wrong, but I had to duplicate a bunch of locations to make it work.

Anyway, talking to someone, I got the suggestion to use Nextcloud in a Docker container that should make it easy to integrate in a system with other complex software. Fine, let's try it.

Good point: the installation were smooth enough. Even with the basic image and commands, Nextcloud was up and running in no time.
Bad point: the default image is bugged. It work well with a browser, but if you want a desktop client, it does not work.

The error The error you get, aside a warning in the web browser, while trying to login with a Desktop client (or mobile app) is:

The polling URL does not start with HTTPS despite the login URL started with HTTPS. Login will not be possible because this might be a security issue. Please contact your administrator.

which is what ?

After some digging, I found out that the cause is a missing option in the config.php file, more precisely (at lease in my case)

'overwriteprotocol' => 'https',

Ok, simple enough to fix... or that is what I was thinking... I was wrong by a long shot.

The problem Simple, my Nextcloud was running inside a docker container and I am no expert in Docker. So, while I know it is possible, I have no idea how to change the docker-compose rules to either

allow to extract a file to the host machine
include the option in the build process

The solution After some failed attempts, I solved this in the least optimal solution but hey, it worked.

This is the set of commands I used. With

docker ps -a

I got the id of the container, then with

docker exec 9cf084d19db4 sh -c "head -46 config/config.php > config/test.php"
docker exec 9cf084d19db4 sh -c "echo \'overwriteprotocol\' =\> \'https\', >> config/test.php"
docker exec bb241e2e020b sh -c "echo \)\; >> config/test.php"
docker exec bb241e2e020b sh -c "cat config/test.php"
docker exec bb241e2e020b sh -c "cp config/config.php config/config.php.orig"
docker exec bb241e2e020b sh -c "cp config/test.php config/config.php "

I added the line to the a copy of the file and finally

docker-compose stop && docker-compose up -d

to restart the container without building it.

In the end it worked and I am now able to login with the desktop clients and mobile app.

Leaving Nextcloud

mgian — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 20:34:00 GMT

After many years of use, I finally say the last goodbye to Nextcloud, the self hosted solution I used to sync my calendar, files and little more.

I was using Nextcloud from before the fork from Owncloud, so I can say it was a long ride, but in the end the conclusion arrived.

Why to change ? Well, basically because I am sick and tired to fight with its update process. At the beginning I was using a custom installation and the update was a pain. Then I switched to use the package provided by Archlinux but the problems were not solved.

The biggest one is that PHP 8.x was non supported for a couple of major release (21 and 22 IIRC) and since the server also hosted some public sites, it became increasly harder to keep update the system and Nextcloud. In the end I was locked to an old 21.x release.
But as the new release come out, I realise it will became harder the more I wait to upgrade. So I removed the lock on the Nextcloud package in the pacman.conf file and run an update, after all what can go wrong ? Well, everything.

Not only you cannot upgrade from more than 1 major release back (for example, 21.x->22.x and not 21.x->23.x), which I can somewhat understand, but even the upgrade process is broken, so after upgrading from 21.x to 22.x and from 22.x to 23.x, I ended up in and endless loop of "this app need to be upgraded"/launch the upgrade process/success/redirect back to step 1.
Not what a user (even an advanced one) want.

After a lot of work and attempts, which nearly cost me all the Wordpress installations, I finally give up and decided get it out of the way.
BTW, I don't really understand how every Open Source project tends to became a nightmare to use if not on the developer's machine (yes, akonady, I am also looking at you) once it became a little more complex. Or better, I get that it is a lot more fun to add new features, but come on, a software should be usable even from the average user, especially in a default configuration.

Anyway, with Nextcloud out the game I still need to have a way to sync my calendars and the files, but what to use ?
My requirements are failry simple: sync the files from the phone and a couple of PC, one of which is dualboot Linux/Win and just keep track of my calendars.

Sooo, enter Radicale and Synchthing

Radicale is a CalDav/CardDav server to allow to sync calendars and contacts.

Synchthing is a file synchronization server/client that allow you to keep one or more directories on different systems synched. It has also and Android app.

Both of them are pretty simple to set up and pretty fast, the only downside is that there is not a "real" web interface to access the data (but there is one to configure them), which can be a problem with the calendar if you need to add something without using your phone (well, it can be an idea for a little desktop app) or some other already configured software.

Just for Fun (Posts about Nextcloud)

Nextcloud take 2

Leaving Nextcloud