@neil For the usecase it seems totally valid, even though I run Nextcloud I still use syncthing for a lot of sync since its much more reliable.
Nextcloud still has some big wins in my group server. I think my friend group's biggest use is Cospend for group holiday expense tracking and Group Folders for both photo sharing and collab docs for planning stuff.
If it was just file sync I get why you'd move away.
Although admin burden is much lower on Nextcloud since I moved to NixOS from docker.
@neil care to share your samba config? my Mac dies when I try to disconnect from my samba shares so maybe its my config…
I've never been thrilled with nextcloud, but for what we use it for (primarily document storage/sharing) it has worked well enough.
After 7 years of hosting our own we made the decision last year to move to a managed offering (after working through a few potential options)
Nextcloud maintenance burden is high and after doing the math it was an easy choice to approve the managed cost .
@neil best of luck with this, I currently use nextcloud, and like the idea of nextcloud, but like you I prefer discrete solutions so I'm interested to see how you get on.
I used radicale for a while, and had all sorts of niggling issues with it until I gave up. I expect you're doing this anyway, but definitely keep your old solution available for a while to see how you get on IMHO.
@SonOfSunTzu I think that I've been using Syncthing for about a month now, and radicale for slightly less. The Nextcloud server is still there, but I am also fortunate that Nextcloud is pretty simple to set up anyway, if I end up needing to have one again once I've shut it down.
@neil I had a very similar experience with Nextcloud.
Have you looked at Seafile as a replacement though? I switched to it from Nextcloud some time ago and I've been very happy with it.
@NasaGuy Since Syncthing is working, I'm probably not going to look at other options at the moment, but I have heard good things about Seafile.
@neil Of course, I'm glad it's working for you! I've heard good things about Syncthing as well, Seafile just has some additional features that are quite useful for me.
@neil You’re not alone. Had the exact same issues, and Immich solved a lot of syncing issues quite nicely.
@neil And I always thought, the increasing synching errors of Nextcloud are my fault. So it helps to know, the problem is more widespread.
I gave Syncthing a chance, but for me it's not reliable enough. Especially when you have to sync more than one smartphone with more than one computer.
So still looking for a reliable solution ...
@neil interesting!
@phlash and I have ended up with a similar set of services (radicale, syncthing, samba/nfs, courier-imap, exim). We just added OpenLDAP and I added Keycloak for user credential management and SSO on jellyfin and immich. Works nicely, and gets us almost to parity with big G for non technical family users.
The fun parts are redundancy design between our two sites. So far either git pull or syncthing get it done!
(blog posts are incoming 😊)
Have not explored Nextcloud tbh...
Keycloak, or perhaps Authelia, is on my list!
@phlash @Slash909uk Thank you! I will read that with interest.
@neil How are you doing multi-user syncthing?
I am using a client/server model.
Some directories on the server are Sandra's, and some are mine.
There is no access control or sense of users, beyond directories having unique ids.
Sandra and I do not share directories, although if we did, we would use a common directory id, and it would sync.
@neil Yeah, done it basically that way in the past. Trying to figure out how to have some access control as I've got kids that'll need something soon and would like to head off some of the "what does this button do" breakage.
@AMS I have that pretty much under control, in the sense that Sandra does not have access to the server control panel, so she cannot add or remove directories, nor add herself as a sync client to my directories.
@neil I really want syncthing to have a central web UI....
Depends on use case. In my company, we have:
1. File sharing internally, within teams
2. File sharing to external people, mainly customers
3. Collaborative document editing
4. Kanban deck
#Nextcloud by @nextcloud does that, in a slightly complex and clumsy way. But I'm not aware of good alternatives and so far, it works pretty fine for my employer.
@neil
Yeah, nextcloud is overkill for my needs. I mostly want a non-google place for photo sync. I played a bit with syncthing, buy never really decided if it was working 100%
I have been using NC calendar for a while with eta, but if I could just run my own server, even better. Will investigate your recommendations.
@xinit Immich, for photo sync, is pleasing me.
@neil Nice blog post. Even though I also experienced similar issues with radicale, I am quite happy with it since 8-9 years. I like the possibility to add a hook and push everything to a git repo on a change. For "shared" calendars between my wife and me (e.g. birthday calendar), I have setup one calendar and put a symbolic link in the other users folder. Hacky but works well.
@erik Yes, I've symlinked for sharing, but the lack of invitations is a shame.
@neil typo: "actually next"
Good post! Maybe I should install immich and just see how it goes. I've been too scared to try, so far 😅 but I'm also in the situation of nextcloud android sync works really badly (foldersync catches up every night to make up for it), so I might need to take action.
@neil I love posts like this because they retrospectively validate the fact that I meant to try NextCloud and never got round to it.
Much love for SyncThing though. I've been using that for a long time, ever since BtSync went evil.
@bencurthoys I suspect that I am in the minority, and that it works really well for most people. Definitely worth a try, even though I've moved elsewhere!
@neil @bencurthoys I set it up a couple of months ago. I'm using a totally different set of features than you - mostly Collectives (collaborative wiki), some shared files, and trying out the collaborative docs a la M365. It's working well so far. Syncthing wouldn't work because I have nontechnical and nonfamily collaborators.
@neil Syncthing is amazing!
<🧌 >
And don't you think systemd should be blamed for the same reasons ?
</🧌>
Fair point. Yes, probably.
I certainly prefer plaintext logs over journalctl.
But since Debian has systemd, I use systemd, and I don't really mind it.