I’m looking for something to replace cloud storage for myself and family. I’ve tried to use/like NextCloud but honestly I despise it. The UI/UX really bothers me, and administering it is a pain. It also just does way more that I want or need.
What I’m looking for:
- Supports a virtual/sync folder on Mac. Like iCloud does, it needs to create a local folder on a Mac. I personally just use SMB, but for family members that’s not as easy (see next point).
- Accessible from the internet. I don’t want to put my family members on the VPN, but I do have a central OAuth for other stuff so I want it to be secured with behind that.
- Doesn’t need to have a web interface or phone app. If it integrates into the computer, it doesn’t really need this. I can just use (FileBrowser)[https://filebrowser.org/]. It’s mostly used for documents and the like, so desktop/laptop use is the most important.
Anyone use anything that fits this? Or anyone in general dislike NextCloud and use something else?
Edit: Maybe I can just setup webdav and use something like https://mountainduck.io/? Would be better to find something FOSS though, if possible.
Seafile?
+1 For Seafile. They put out a docker image that works well. It hasthe fastest sync I’ve ever seen and it has good clients.
Does Seafile store data in a flat file, or as files/folder hierarchy on disk?
Okay I’m trying out seafile and it seems awesome, so maybe that will be the way to go.
It stores them in a custom format in blocks, which is the only real downside because that means it can’t interop with things like FTP or SMB
I haven’t tried it but it can theoretically support webdav. You can also mount it read only via fuse with a bit of effort.
Those are both on my list of things to experiment with. I love the speed but I miss the real files of NextCloud.
It does allow you to found the files, just not via smb or ftp. It requires it’s own filesystem but works very well.
https://manual.seafile.com/extension/fuse/
I’ve tested this on my backups for which I use borg backup.
First I mount a remote borg repository using one command. Then mount the seafile repository via the fuse command above.
Note that the sea drive client app does the same thing as above but in the gui and mounts the library as a virtual hard drive.
https://help.seafile.com/drive_client/drive_client_for_win10/
This is different than the actual seafile client app which is the standard folder sync / Dropbox like behavior that most users will only ever use. All the other things I mentioned above are for advanced use cases only and not normally needed but very nice to have.
BTW authentik for Single sign on works super well
Oh this is huge. Just tested that out and it’s very cool. I need to figure out how to host it properly behind my reverse proxy though. Seems like it has nginx build in but that’s conflicting I think with my traefik that I put everything behind…
Om using it with traefik and don’t havr anything special other than my standard traefik labels that i put on all docker containers.
Make sure you have added this to the config: https://forum.seafile.com/t/csrf-verification-failed-error-after-upgrading-from-ce-9-0-10-top-11-0-4/19257
Also on first boot you might still have to login with the IP address and set the URL in the settings
Afyer that it all worked well with traefik and authentik
Still having trouble, but it might be because the service itself is unhealthy because I cant connect even directly with the ip. Something I’ve learned already about Seafile that I don’t love: debugging it is a massive pain. Why TF are the config files spread out across like 15 different python files lol. Seems like a crazy setup to me.
Is this a fresh install? Why is there any debugging? To just connect with an ip requires no config files at all.
I only changed 1 config file add the crfs URL and also added some lines for oAuth. No config file changes are needed by default. It’s all docker compose
It stores it however you want it stored, bby ;)
After being really desapointed by NC, I feel owncloud is much superior. No joke.
Like others already mentioned, seafile is a solid option too.
OwnCloud has been acquired by KiteWorks a few months ago. Doesn’t have to mean anything, but makes me feel cautious about it’s future.
Interesting! What’s better about owncloud?
No bloat, super fast, just works out of the box.
Ocis was even faster.
I support an engineering org server, they access their files via nextcloud with a mariadb server and redis, plus some caching stuff for php-fpm, and an nginx front-end.
No complaints, checks (from what I see) all your boxes and has been very dependable going on 6 yrs now for all their simulation data both large and small off a little 1gbps dell r710.
Don’t install a lot of plugins. The setup documentation seems to be just right, getting you to the ideal destination of reliable and fast. Do take the option to run tasks in crontab, instead of internally.
How about nextcloud with only the bare minimum amount of plugins? Filles alone is pretty snappy.
Yeah I don’t see the issue here. Don’t install a bunch of random plugins, set it up as recommended, and Nextcloud is just fine and has a nice mobile app and functions.
ITT: where the hell is Owncloud coming from? It’s barely maintained, its now owned by some shitbirds, and it’s like a poor version of Nextcloud.
I haven’t heard anyone talk of Owncloud in years, it’s like the OpenOffice of sync suites.
I was thinking that too! I’ve basically never heard of anyone using it, but everyone here prompted me to check it out. Turns out they have a new version that’s a re-write in go which is neat. Just tried it out and… It’s not exactly good. UI at least is pretty broken haha
I use NC (and am happy with it) but I get the „too complicated“ and „too many features“ argument. Imo its only for people who really want to degoogle or get away from iCloud completely as it has so many features and plugins that you could run a company with it. Its absolutely overkill for just syncing photos.
Edit: What I will say though is that I had a similar problem with a mod suite for a minecraft server which was wayyy too much for what I needed - at first. So I ended up with a basic solution, later splicing on feature after feature until I ended up with the same setup, just more complicated and buggier. Maybe what I‘m trying to say „NC maybe just isnt for you, yet.“
My gripe with NC has always been that keeping it up to date is a pain, I love the actual functionality. I’m in the process of migrating my install from a normal install in a TrueNAS Core jail to the containerized version in the Linux version of TrueNAS and that too is a struggle. I’m hoping that the containerized version will be easier to keep up to date, as that seemed to go wrong constantly.
I have a Nextcloud running in docker for years, the update has always been just docker pull. After years of suffering with the native installation, and upgrade processes that never worked, I migrated to docker and it couldn’t be simpler.
This is one of the reasons every time someone says “you don’t need docker to run your server” I’m like “yes, but that’s like saying you don’t need a vehicle to travel 100km”.
The issue for me is that the docker update alone doesnt do it. I have no idea why and at this point I‘m to tired to care.
If the docker update doesn’t update things you might not be using docker at all. Docker is like having a VM that you destroy after every run, so it’s not that it updates the version, it is as if you were spinning up a new machine with the new version, a machine running the new version can’t be running the old version by definition, unless you did something like telling that machine to overwrite the installation folder with a local one, e.g. by having something like
- /var/www/nextcloud:/var/www/nextcloud(or whatever the path is where you have next cloud installed locally) in your volumes for the docker, which would be akin to buying a new PC because your GPU is old, immediately swapping out the new GPU for the old one, and wondering why the new GPU is so slow.Thanks for explaining. I know how docker works but I have the suspicion that l I might in fact have one persistent volume too many. I‘ll check that again if I have time. Thanks again.
Yeah, if you have a volume mounted on the folder where next cloud is installed it would be the same as what I mentioned. Look for anything mounting on
/appthat should be used from the image.That being said be careful, if you haven’t upgraded in a long time it’s possible the automatic upgrade won’t work or might break stuff.
I am updating regularly. Its just not automatic, which kinda sucks. Thanks for explaining. I’ll check it out.
I wrote a custom script to update it so I can very much understand that sentiment. I‘m also not the largest fan of the service just randomly breaking every couple of weeks and then having to run my update script. I‘m running the linuxserver docker compose version iirc.
I’ve moved from Synology and have started using Owncloud. So far it has been mostly fine. I had a wierd issue upgrading from 10.13 to 10.14 but was able to simply redo my setup and it’s now fine. However, I’m also checking out Seafile. So far it seems very quick and works well but I haven’t gotten to really put it through the paces. It’s main downside is the data not being stored in standard files/folders. My 2 cents…
Pydio Cells, just to give another option.
Pydio used to be called ajaxplorer and was a pretty solid and lightweight (although featureful) solution, but then they rewrote the UI with lots of misguided choices (touch controls and android inspired interactions on desktop devices) and it became so horrendous, heavy and clunky that I almost forgot about it. I wonder if they reversed the trend (but from the screenshots it doesn’t look so).
Here to say Seafile. I also don’t like nextcloud. I used pydio cells for a while but the windows sync client absolutely never worked for me. Seafile has been flawless for 2 months for me.
I’m using https://sftpgo.com/, which uses WebDAV. It’s as basic as can be but I like it because it’s so basic. I can mount drives in windows and Linux and it has a basic webui for file management. The only problem for me is mobile apps. I’m trying out OwlFiles on Android and iOS; the free version includes WebDAV support, which works well.
At this point why not just run… no software? A plain Linux VPS server. And plain files.
You can do two-way sync with Syncthing or Unison. One way sync with rsync. Can mount external or network drives for almost unlimited storage expansions. Easy access from mobile devices via SFTP. Everything with single (passwordless) login for every member. And above all run any arbitrary command.
This sort of thing works fine for me, but falls apart a bit with non-technical users (aka my family). Even syncthing is actually pretty difficult to use IMO (compared to google drive or the like). I’d have to manually setup and maintain this on all their devices basically
I just finished building a cloud solution leveraging an AWS EFS (elastic file system), a secure ZeroTier mesh, and a simple EC2 instance (vm) running Samba (or just sshfs/scp/sftp if multi-user file locking isn’t needed). EFS does have some pretty big limitations like the fact users can’t be in more than 16 groups (because it behaves like an NFS mount), and it lacks xattr and ACL support. Still, if you can work around these shortcomings you can build a very secure, surprisingly speedy cloud filesystem. Largest expense is the EFS, but after 30 days infrequently accessed files automatically move to slower storage, which is way cheaper. ZeroTier is an important piece of the puzzle, making your security and encryption a breeze. This allows you to run SMB over the internet without actually exposing any services. Connections are only made through your ZT mesh, which is highly secure.
I run Tailscale which is basically the same a ZeroTier, so I theoretically could do this, but I’m not super enthused about having to put family members onto my VPN. I’d have to do some complicated networking stuff to keep things secure (aka make sure “normal” users don’t have access to machines and systems they shouldn’t). That said, I should look into it because if there is an easy way to do that, then this could be the simplest way
Yeah, they provide a “Flow” section where you can setup firewall-like rules to control your flow of traffic. You can configure rules that say, allow ssh to a specific server, but only from a specified devices, while allowing ssh, https and smb to another server from any device, blocking all other TCP traffic. UDP is a little weirder to control, but there’s a decent tutorial with example configs.
I hear about TailScale a lot, and I know its super popular in the self-hosting & linux communities. I haven’t used it myself though, so can’t offer a comparison vs ZeroTier. I found ZeroTier refreshjngly easy to use and install on client devices, so haven’t had reason to look elsewhere yet.
Anyway, have fun with your endeavor!
I wouldn’t make any storage accessible to the internet without VPN.
Might not be technically what you are asking for, but you really can’t go wrong with Synology for this stuff.
https://www.spacedrive.com/ will be later connectable with different Protocolls.
That looks really interesting! I will have to add it to my list to check out
