Nextcloud progress

Support
1

I have Freedombox installed on a full PC on my home lan. (Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm) and FreedomBox version 24.14.)

I see that Nextcloud is now an app that can be installed (though still “experimental”) and I am having a look at it. I haven’t seen much discussion of it here and I am wondering whether it is seeing use, how well it is working, how hard it is to set it up and what functional advantages it offers that aren’t otherwise already available in Freedombox.

Feedback?

Cheers!

1 Like
2

Hi @KenW

I installed and used it for a brief period after which I stopped using.
Here are a couple of bullets that come to mind.

It’s very straight-forward, just as easy as installing any FBX app. After installation, loggining in with nextcloud-admin account will provide you with a admin rights to manage and run your instance.

The pros I found using NC were:

  • It has a mail/calendar/contacts suite you can easily access from the web
  • It’s calendar server can manage meetings and invitations (something radicale lacks)
  • It has several plugins that can help you expand it’s use (i.e. photo album)
  • File sharing is relatively easy

The cons were as below

  • It runs in a container and all the data is stored within that container. The backup tools that come with FBX do not work for NC so you have to manually be able to backup.
  • It doesnt have access to outside of the container so, any external drive you connect will have to be manually adjusted (there is an open issue here).
  • NC does not integrate with an external cardav/caldav server (i.e. radicale)

For me, until the first two cons are mitigated, it’s isn’t worth using it other than for expermental purposes. After trying for a couple of hours, I reverted to a snapshot.

2 Likes
3

Are you sure about this?
I can see that /var/lib/nextcloud/ and /var/lib/plinth/backups-data/nextcloud-database.sql are included in the backup, and /var/lib/nextcloud/ is used as a volume for the container.

2 Likes
4

On initial version where NC was introduced, I don’t remember seeing it’s name in the System>Backups checklist.

I tried reproducing, but couldn’t install due to below error

Error running action: nextcloud..setup(): CalledProcessError(125, ["podman", "exec", "--user", "www-data", "nextcloud-freedombox", "php", "-r", "if (file_exists(\"/var/www/html/config/config.php\")) {include_once(\"/var/www/html/config/config.php\");print($CONFIG[\"dbpassword\"] ?? \"\"); }"])
Stdout:
│ nextcloud-freedombox
│ a770767e49352fc69968221495b43f4937ddc84582f2952dc0b508ffb478fd70
│ 
Stderr:
║ Failed to stop nextcloud-freedombox-volume.service: Unit nextcloud-freedombox-volume.service not loaded.
║ Trying to pull docker.io/library/nextcloud:stable-fpm...
║ Getting image source signatures
║ Copying blob sha256:3619747c71c50c8038f0b2bab9e82ac9be840071910de2122961846de0af967d
║ Copying blob sha256:c1d168c82669385a88cb2d49927f5d97a9fd361459c5ba221ade1b4833b14530
║ Copying blob sha256:702846940aedcd56970bc052b4e64fa8ff21b12b0a6ba8ca8273f4e256aaedc2
║ Copying blob sha256:ed567bb62aa573b1d60ec105d0afa6db70df91cfcc92ef65be8c8d9f952550d3
║ Copying blob sha256:be59d5943ae49be3e4ff309c07ef79eacf2bf161b53590db30e1227422f98601
║ Copying blob sha256:ea235d1ccf77ca07a545b448996766dc3eca4b971b04ba39d50af69660b25751
║ Copying blob sha256:98ccf0de77890c4fed3597986b752c07bea07a56ea3ba683bcdfc66ff9c1ea2d
║ Copying blob sha256:6b5c0a10931318e55f8c3cb635396e7a6ea735ebc512de3b7b4f682d4e7c4c71
║ Copying blob sha256:43175063b2e67dabbb31e59a744885b2406ccec6e2b721ff470ce36ddb75dacf
║ Copying blob sha256:70d9ed2eea71987e2b18a7de31d672e3f60d3b965e2998f6d53be089bc30287d
║ Copying blob sha256:37b2050fab79d2b6a62668fb3c7cf105579eb9748dccc47a51d8fd6442c633b9
║ Copying blob sha256:cc82dabe8fa0bb8c260907749c495ee1193b5e8ad8fbdf5301c0ecae5a7e609e
║ Copying blob sha256:82dc6e352d858a54f97a75449011bc48143b6127a6a6056c03722201dc7f53eb
║ Copying blob sha256:0caf27f9b2c1e90aad0de5daf3f31e3cb650fce69a6ac093e888069f1c94ff7b
║ Copying blob sha256:39d69b68f5c9fe0baf677d57222beaaf01839035ae180fdee50978dfef6da548
║ Copying blob sha256:e8bbad04439fb59491412c0aa7099d97f101f3d0ff2a69c964c93ba8a0b46642
║ Copying config sha256:a770767e49352fc69968221495b43f4937ddc84582f2952dc0b508ffb478fd70
║ Writing manifest to image destination
║ Storing signatures
║ Job for nextcloud-freedombox.service failed because the control process exited with error code.
║ See "systemctl status nextcloud-freedombox.service" and "journalctl -xeu nextcloud-freedombox.service" for details.
Action traceback:
╞   File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/plinth/actions.py", line 331, in _privileged_call
╞     return_values = func(*arguments['args'], **arguments['kwargs'])
╞                     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
╞   File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/plinth/modules/nextcloud/privileged.py", line 59, in setup
╞     database_password = _get_database_password()
╞                         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
╞   File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/plinth/modules/nextcloud/privileged.py", line 385, in _get_database_password
╞     return _run_in_container('php', '-r', code,
╞            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
╞   File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/plinth/modules/nextcloud/privileged.py", line 81, in _run_in_container
╞     return subprocess.run(command, capture_output=capture_output, check=check)
╞            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
╞   File "/usr/lib/python3.11/subprocess.py", line 571, in run
╞     raise CalledProcessError(retcode, process.args,

I believe this is related to Nextcloud - "not found" after update - #2 by jvalleroy

If my mistake, apologies for any confusion. Will re-check this after issue is resloved.

Thank you.

1 Like