I tried Nextcloud a while back and was not impressed - I had issues withe the speed of the Windows sync that were determined to be “normal” with no roadmap to getting fixed. I’m now planning to move off Windows desktop so that won’t be an issue - so I thought I’d try again.
I went to nextcloud.com, clicked on Download-> Nextcloud server -> All-in-one -> Docker image - Setup AIO. This took me to the github README at Docker section. I’m already running docker for other things so I read the instructions, setup a new filesystem for my data directory and ran the suggested docker command with an appropriate “–env NEXTCLOUD_DATADIR=”. I’m then left with a terminal running docker in the foreground - not a great way to run a background server but ok, I’ve been around for a while and can figure out how to make it autostart in the background ongoing. So I move on to the next step - open my browser at the appropriate URL and I’m presented with a simple page asking me to “Log in using your Nextcloud AIO passphrase:”. I don’t have a Nextcloud AIO passphrase and nothing I’ve read so far has mentioned it. When I search for it I get some results on how to reset it, but not much help. I could probably figure that out too, but after reading some more I found that Nextcloud requires a public hostname and can’t work with a local name or IP address. I’m already running my home LAN with OpenVPN and access it from anywhere as “local” - I don’t really want to create a new path into my home network just for Nextcloud.
I’m sorry - I know this sounds like a disgruntled rant and I guess it is. I just want to check that I’m not missing obvious things before I give up again. All I want is a simple file sync setup like onedrive but without the microsoft.
And here I am having used it for a decade and perfectly happy. I try other ones like Owncloud every once in a while and find them lacking. It was slow once upon a time but if you changed to postgres and used redis, it improved immensely. Today it’s quite fast and the sync has been working great for a long time.
Use docker-compose with the AIO and it’ll be a lot easier to manage. There’s example compose files in the github repo.
I’m in the process of (very slowly) migrating my household from Windows to Linux and am currently testing Nextcloud as a replacement for OneDrive. In my case, I set it up using pikapods.com because I want offsite storage. The server part of the setup was incredibly easy because the host did all the work.
Getting my Linux client setup was kind of a pain (especially compared to the Android and Windows clients), but everything seems to work ok so far. Of course, I’m only backing up a small amount of data so far, so I can’t comment on the efficiency or speed for a major backup.
Alternatives? https://filebrowser.org/
i am hoping for opencloud / ocis, a go rewrite of owncloud
Agreed, nextcloud is a beast with lots of whistles, if you don’t need them you can have simpler solutions
This my approach here https://wiki.gardiol.org/doku.php?id=selfhost%3Afileserver
And I stated using AList which is a funny piece of software that has great potential. See here https://wiki.gardiol.org/doku.php?id=services%3Aalist
by now i use nextcloud for everything except files. i do use it a lot for e.g. contacts, calendar, etc.
sshfs is simply a godsend for true instant easy multidevice file access
Here I am just glad I’m not the only one. lol.
If you want to self host your contacts and calendars and have multiple users, I still don’t think there is anything better. I hope Open Cloud gets there eventually, but right now its only the beginning.
Honestly I hate all these file sharing self hosting things. Looking at you nextcloud owncloud syncthing seafile etc. They all suck. All I want is NFS support in android, that’s my only pain point accessing my files from anywhere from my home network. I can already VPN/wireguard into my network from anywhere, but I can’t grab an ebook or mp3s off my NFS server from my phone or tablet, I have to have some other dumb infrastructure for it. Just (#@$^* put NFS in android already!!!
/endrant
Yes! There used to be a little utility that could map a SMB share in Android, but that got killed years ago.
I could never figure out NFS … ( it only works with unix usernames??) But since I have smb servers I can use that with Android
Agreed, Nextcloud has gone from a lean little personal cloud to a hulking enterprise hub.
If you’re after something that’ll just sync your files between devices, try Syncthing. If you need files available online, maybe something like filestash or, like somebody else suggested, SFTPgo.
There are also tiny, lean calendar and contact server apps out there if you decide you need those. After self hosting NC for years I’m really happy spreading out the tasks over dedicated services rather than having all my eggs in one basket.
I replaced Nextcloud with syncthing (files) & radicale (calendar, contacts & todos)
No-one used the calendar on NC, they just used their phones, Outlook, etc
No-one used the photo gallery on NC - that’s now Immich … again, with syncthing.
During the early days, just doing an update would break things.
For a small home setup, NC is too big, too clunky and just not the right tool.
I love syncthing!! I have one VM with only debian an syncthing and that machine is backed-up frequently. All others PC’s and vm’s syncthing to that one machine.
All of them sync ~/downloads
All machines I use for coding also sync ~/code
My desktop machines sync ~/documents.
And so on. Works great (for me)
the base install is still pretty lean, its only hulking if you enable all their new junk, but if you don’t enable all that, the default, at least when installed it was quite lean.
Yeah setting it up the way you want is a pain, but I like it mainly for backing up photos from my phone automatically, as well as, syncing podcasts and music between devices since I moved away from Spotify and start using things like AntennaPod and Gramophone
I got 20TB in my server, might as well use it.
Oh wait, were you looking for alternatives? I guess this also works: https://filebrowser.org/
Its just web veiw to file server instead of only using things like smb or nfs
Seafile. It’s super fast and lightweight. There are some caveats though:
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Data is stored in git-like chunks on the server side. There is Seafuse and Sea drive functions that you can leverage to “assemble” the data on server side for backups. I personally use rclone mount, then backup.
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Paywall hiding some features. The community edition is free but is missing some features that pro has. Pro edition is free for 3 or less users.
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Documentation isn’t great. The forum is active so that’s helpful, but some of the docs take some time to understand
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Chinese owned. As far as I can tell, there is no call home for a self hosted server, so I don’t think it’s a worry in that case.
All that said, I like it much better than Syncthing for it’s selective sync. All files on each client are synced to the server. But unlike Syncthing, it doesn’t sync all data with each client. This is vital for me with some devices with small storage drives, so I would t want all files to sync. Yet I can still reach to the server from any client and pull data from any other client. Syncthing has an ignore flag, but that seemed way more trouble to setup than just sticking with Seafile.
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I would suggest looking at Syncthing. It’s not perfect by any stretch, but it works peer to peer, without any kind of central host, ip or domain name requirements. You simply install it on the client machines, and they work out how to talk to each other over any available networks.
Beware changing the casing on your files or directories though, Syncthing was made entirely case sensitive, which does not play nice with Windows.
One very nice feature is that it does have an android client (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.catfriend1.syncthingandroid/), and it supports full background syncing to your local storage on the phone. Great for syncing your photos, but also music. You add some mp3’s on your desktop computer, and by the time you’ve put on your jacket they’re on your phone ready to listen to without any ‘service’ getting in your way.
A more advanced tip; Get a VPS somewhere in the cloud with cheap storage, and have Syncthing on it listening on port 443. That will allow syncing in more restrictive corporate settings, which often don’t allow connections to port 22000. And it gives you a ‘cloud backup’ of your important files in one go.
For just files I’d use Syncthing or Resilio (I keep hundreds of gigs synced with ST). Resilio has a feature that’s very useful - Selective Sync. This allows you to setup a sync job that syncs the index of files, but doesn’t sync the actual files until you select a file(s) to sync on the remote device. I use this to access my media files from anywhere (3TB) which I obviously don’t want to try to sync the entire folder to my phone, etc.
But since you effectively are on the same LAN, you can use any file copy tool the respective OS’s support.
Though for WAN connections, I prefer tools with some redundancy/resilience, since those connections can be slow or experience drops, and regular copy tools aren’t designed to contend with that (in Windows the only tool I can think of off hand is Robocopy, but I think Teracopy will at least show you if a file copy fails).
It really depends on your use-case, what you’re trying to solve for.
I just use SMB shares on my NAS. Why over think it?
