So far my experience with Nextcloud has been that it is a pain in the arse to install, and once it’s installed is slow as anything. Literally couldn’t run it on my pi 3b, now got it up and running pretty nicely on a NUC but it’s still not great. Have caching set up.

I have the notes app installed on my android phone and I can never used rich text editing because it gives timeout error.

This shouldn’t be this complicated. All I want is to de-Google my documents and notes, and self-host my kanban. I don’t really need the rest though it’s nice to have the options.

Do people use alternatives? Am I doing something completely wrong? I set it up using nginx which I know is not supported, but the alternative using Docker AIO didn’t allow me to use custom port easily.

  • Giddy@aussie.zone
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    1 year ago

    I seriously suggest you give Nextcloud another go, this time under Docker. Very simple to do.

    Save the following in a new folder as docker-compose.yml

    version: '3'
    
    volumes:
      db:
    
    services:
    
      nextcloud-app:
        image: nextcloud
        container_name: nextcloud-app
        restart: always
        volumes:
          - ./data:/var/www/html
        environment:
          - MYSQL_PASSWORD=changeme
          - MYSQL_DATABASE=nextcloud
          - MYSQL_USER=nextcloud
          - MYSQL_HOST=nextcloud-db
        ports:
          - "80:80"
        links:
          - nextcloud-db
    
      nextcloud-db:
        image: mariadb
        container_name: nextcloud-db
        restart: always
        command: --transaction-isolation=READ-COMMITTED --binlog-format=ROW
        volumes:
          - db:/var/lib/mysql
        environment:
          - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=changeme
          - MYSQL_PASSWORD=changeme
          - MYSQL_DATABASE=nextcloud
          - MYSQL_USER=nextcloud
    

    run this command in the folder -

    docker-compose up -d

    open http://localhost

    • iHUNTcriminals@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Is the mariadb a default part of nextcloud? I’ve seen posts saying to use a separate db so things can be backed up easier, so I was wondering if that’s how you have it set up above.

      • scorpionix@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        In this setup the DB is not part of Nextcloud. Both are running in separate services aka containers, which can be administrated independently from each other.

  • scrapeus@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    I suspect nextcloud having performance issues with slow Disk IO. With rootless containers I had a much worse performance than rootfull. Also using MySQL Backend instead of SQLite did speedup the performance.

    Nevertheless I have the same problems with nextcloud as you stated. Pretty much not as usable as I thought.

    • christophski@feddit.ukOP
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      1 year ago

      It’s on a SATA drive, albeit hard drive not ssd and I’m using mariadb. Everybody seems to suggest I need a beefier server but as a developer myself, the functionality of the software doesn’t seem to warrant anything more powerful.

      • TechAdmin@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Software config optimizations help a little bit but my biggest improvement was moving the DB to SSD. Spinning disks are great for capacity but not for DB performance. Random I/O is a big factor for them and those drives drop in performance so fast for that type of I/O due to physically spinning media.

        I started out using Owncloud and later switched to Nextcloud once that fork was stable. For all my uses it has always needed beefy hardware to run well but I definitely have way more junk files in synced folders than I should & rarely clean things up.

      • atzanteol
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        1 year ago

        How much memory? I think nextcloud wants around 8gb to run happily (ymmv). I’ve tried it with smaller sizes and ran into issues.

        • christophski@feddit.ukOP
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          1 year ago

          Yes I have 8gb of ram, but it seems insane that it needs that much considering what it is doing.

          • atzanteol
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            1 year ago

            I have had it run with less, but it does a lot of image processing when you upload photos that I think needs more or something. I’ve never really taken the time to dig into what it’s doing. Could be some aggressive caching as well.

        • MonkderZweite@feddit.ch
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          1 year ago

          I think nextcloud wants around 8gb to run happily (ymmv).

          As a developer myself, where did it go wrong?

          • atzanteol
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            1 year ago

            I’m not sure it’s going “wrong”. It depends on the scenarios it’s designed for. If they intend it to be run on servers (there is no class of raspberry pi that is a server) then you design it to take advantage of those resources.

              • atzanteol
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                1 year ago

                I didn’t mean to imply it needed server hardware. You can absolutely self-host Nextcloud. But RPIs are the absolutely lowest-end of hardware for serving duties. They’re great little systems but they’re designed to be cheap, not performant.

                I self-host currently on a VM running on a 12 year old x86 system with 8GB RAM and with the Nextcloud file storage going over a 1Gbps NFS mount. Not exactly a high-end setup. And it performs just fine. I was previously running on a AWS EC2 instance where I noticed occasional issues running on a T4g.SMALL. (only 2GB RAM). I had to bump up to a MEDIUM at some point though.

                It worked with less RAM pretty fine for a long time. But as I increased usage it would have issues occasionally. I think with all the images I have it was doing lots of processing for thumbnails and the like. I never really dove into it to see what exactly was going on though…

                But still - a moderately old desktop system with 4-8G of RAM is just fine for “self-hosting”.

                EDIT: I should add - I’m also hosting MariaDB on the same server - also with its data stored on an NFS share.

  • sdw@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Just want to say that I’ve been there. There was a time my Nextcloud install was incredibly slow. Fortunately (or unfortunately?), it is featureful enough and widely supported that once you figure this issue out, it is a nice service to keep running.

    For me, adding Redis was essential. It doesn’t really make sense to me why (nothing I do on Nextcloud is intensive or data heavy) but it has greatly improved the performance of my app.

    My entire setup is a containerized Nextcloud, Nextcloud Cron, MariaDB (if I knew Postgres was an option, I would’ve chosen that), and Redis:

    version: '2'
    services:
      nextcloud:
        container_name: nextcloud
        image: nextcloud:27-apache
        restart: unless-stopped
        environment:
          - MYSQL_PASSWORD=nextcloud
          - MYSQL_HOST=db
          - MYSQL_DATABASE=nextcloud
          - MYSQL_USER=nextcloud
        labels:
          - 'public-service=true'
          - 'traefik.enable=true'
          - 'traefik.http.routers.cloud.rule=Host(`nextcloud.some.domain`)'
          - 'traefik.http.routers.cloud.tls=true'
          - 'traefik.http.services.cloud.loadbalancer.server.port=80'
        volumes:
          - /some/data/dir/nextcloud/data:/var/www/html
          - /some/external/dir:/wew:ro
    
      nextcloud-cron:
        image: nextcloud:27-apache
        restart: unless-stopped
        command: [/cron.sh]
        environment:
          - MYSQL_HOST=db
          - MYSQL_DATABASE=nextcloud
          - MYSQL_USER=nextcloud
          - MYSQL_PASSWORD=nextcloud
        volumes:
          - /some/data/dir/nextcloud/data:/var/www/html
          - /some/external/dir/:/wew:ro
    
      db:
        image: mariadb:10.4
        restart: unless-stopped
        environment:
          MYSQL_DATABASE: nextcloud
          MYSQL_USER: nextcloud
          MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: nextcloud
        volumes:
          - /some/data/dir/nextcloud/db:/var/lib/mysql
    
      mysqldump:
        image: mariadb:10.4
        depends_on: [db]
        # restart: never # cronjob
        labels:
          - 'cron.schedule=0 0 8 * * ?'
        entrypoint: [mysqldump, -h, db, -u, nextcloud, -pnextcloud, --all-databases, -r, /out/nextcloud.sql]
        user: root
        volumes:
          - /some/data/dir/nextcloud/db-dump:/out
    
      redis:
        image: redis
        restart: unless-stopped
    
      • sdw@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        I’ll try this next time I need to restore the DB from backup, cheers!

    • Lem453@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Yes, redis should be part of the standard install. Not doing it is just setting yourself up for disappointment.

      Also I believe postgress has better performance than mariadb so no reason not to use that if you are setting it up from scratch.

      • icedterminal@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Pg has significantly better performance in a smaller self hosted environment. Notably because you’re doing a balance of reading and writing, or mostly writing since data changes regularly. For large scale operations where reading data is the primary use, MariaDB/MySQL is faster.

    • Giddy@aussie.zone
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      1 year ago

      Can I ask why the separate NC container for cron? Also, I presume the mysqldump container is for easy db backups?

      • sdw@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        The separate cron container made the most sense to me. Other variants “work” but imo are mostly workarounds to avoid setting up a real cronjob. Beyond this I have no real reason, nor can I vouch that is is more or less performant than others.

        Yes, the mysqldump container is for easier restores. It’s much easier to restore from a .sql file than a raw data dir that was copied while the DB was running ;) (speaking from experience…)

  • Voroxpete
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    1 year ago

    For speed Seafile absolutely smokes Nextcloud.

    If you create an account they’ll give a pro license (limited to 3 users) for free. Or you can stick with the always free community edition which works great too.

    • christophski@feddit.ukOP
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      1 year ago

      I use Syncthing for my files, I don’t need a Web ui so it’s great and handles huge directories easily.

    • bfly75@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      Normally I also recommend Seafile, since I am also using the free pro license for 3 users. Not at the moment though, since I am just in the process of debugging why my libraries on remote storage (S3 / Swift) don’t work anymore, with 3 different providers (Scaleway, OVH, AWS)! Frustrating issue to debug…

  • Dave@lemmy.nz
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    1 year ago

    I have nextcloud running on docker on a Raspberry Pi 4 and I’d say the performance is comparable to Onedrive web interface. If you’re getting timeouts then something must be wrong with the setup, not the machine it’s running on. Using Postgres instead of MySQL or using an SSD instead of HDD is not going to help your issue.

  • redcalcium@lemmy.institute
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    1 year ago

    I’m my experience, nextcloud is quite I/O bound. The performance of your storage device will greatly affect nextcloud performance. But if you’re already using SSD and the performance still bad, maybe there are other issues with your setup.

    • AggressivelyPassive@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      For me, speed isn’t the only issue. Everything about nc seems to be cobbled together in the most inconvenient way possible. Updates have always been hit or miss for me - and if you choose to use dockerized versions, you might as well shoot yourself, everything is very slow, even as the only use having it running on a quite capable machine it feels sluggish (not slow, but uncomfortably delayed).

      It’s a glorified Dropbox clone, why do I need anything more than a rpi1 for that?

      • redcalcium@lemmy.institute
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        1 year ago

        It’s a PHP app inherited from owncloud so at some point you’ll just have to accept it won’t be as performant as apps written in compiled languages (and it also inherit owncloud’s quirks and other annoyance related to its php-based deployment). But this weakness is actually a strength too, being a php app makes extending its functionality very easy, resulting in a lot of community-developed plugins. Basically a trade-off between performance and features + community plugins availability. If you value performance more and don’t need anything beyond file sharing feature, there are plenty of other options right now.

        • AggressivelyPassive@feddit.de
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          I understand the history, and that may have been an excuse 6 months after the fork, but think about how long nc exists now. And how many features (like migrations) are apparently simply not worked on.

          NC is a great example of the current trend of “fuck good design, just throw more silicon at the problem”.

        • thisisawayoflife@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I was thinking about this a couple of weeks ago. I’m running nextcloud in a VM - php recompiler, redis, mariadb, plenty of RAM (4GB). I’m spreading about 80GB of data across a few users, but it’s dog slow on mass upload. If I wanted to upload 1000 images from my phone, it would hours. I moved those photos to my laptop, which was fast, then tried uploading them to nextcloud via the Ubuntu desktop sync app, and it still took almost 2 hours. Nextcloud is backed by RAID6 storage and benchmarks suggest it’s over 300MB/sec write.

          I think it has something to do with file transfer overhead (start stop) similar to FTP impacting WebDAV, but that’s pure speculation on my part.

          I was wondering what it would take to rewrite Nextcloud core functionality in Java and use some kind of different interface than WebDAV, but I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire at the moment.

            • thisisawayoflife@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              LAN is gigabit, and I can sustain Gb speeds in regular file transfers via mounted nfs shares. There isn’t much difference over Wi-Fi (ubiquiti APs). Also running the latest Nc, 27.0.2.1 or whatever it is.

  • voidboi@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I have had issues with nextcloud breaking randomly every time ive tried it. The thing I wanted the most was the caldav/webdav to integrate with Gnome and Davx5 (and finally kill google calender), and to get that I tried Owncloud instead. The UI leaves a lot to be desired but if you only use the *dav functionality it works like a charm. It also has a mobile app for syncing and several extensions but I havent delved into them.

    • dubba@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      If you only need cardav/caldav functionality, Radicale provides just that. Can be deployed as a container and works flawlessly with DAVx5.

  • cichy1173@szmer.info
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    1 year ago

    Nextcloud is hard to install in manual way (even sometimes with Docker). As far I know, both Snap and Yunohost versions of Nextcloud are solid. I used Snap version on the cheapest Linode VPS, and it worked fine, especially when I doubled the SWAP to 1 GB. Now I use Yunohost version and I have only good time with it. It is super stable, fast and reliable. I used Nextcloud_ynh on HP 800 Mini G3 with i5-6500t and now on Asrock Mini PC with Ryzen 7 5700g. It is working just great.

    If you don’t want to use Nextcloud, you ca install Vikunja for kanban and tasks. For notes Hedgedoc can be great.

    • electric_nan@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      +1 for Yunohost. I’ve never yet been able to figure out docker. Yunohost has kept me happy for years.

  • Matt The Horwood@lemmy.horwood.cloud
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    1 year ago

    I run Nextcloud, its responsive and has all my stuff in it. Notes, Calendar, Contacts, Kanboard, Photos, RSS reader, others. You do need look at the setup, how many PHP processes are you running, how much memory does MySQL use.

    My current setup is a a PHP vm, 6 cores and 8GB of memory and a MySQL vm that is 2 cores and 8GB memory. But I work for a SaaS provider and thats now we carve up our systems, a vm/instance for 1 job.

      • Matt The Horwood@lemmy.horwood.cloud
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        1 year ago

        The way I sorted it was to run nextcloud for a week, then run ps aux on the host and see what the memory use of a php process is. The 5th column is the memory use of a process, divide the number into the amount of memory you want PHP to use. The number from ps is bytes, so you will need to use some maths to make it all fit

        in Debian running PHP-FPM in /etc/php/{{ php_version }}/fpm/pool.d/www.conf edit or add the below lines with the settings you need

        pm = dynamic
        pm.max_children = 8
        pm.start_servers = 2
        pm.min_spare_servers = 2
        pm.max_spare_servers = 3
        

        Also MySQL has some options you can change to use more or less memory, this handy tool MySQLTuner is your best way to get the options

  • moist_towelettes@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Pydio and Seafile are alternatives I’ve tried. Pydio was pretty fast too. I agree with you on Nextcloud, I want to like it but I inevitably start having issues and it’s slow even after tuning. It just tries to do too much and shouldn’t be that complex to spin up a file server.

    • christophski@feddit.ukOP
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      1 year ago

      To be honest I’m not interested in the file sharing side of nextcloud as I use Syncthing, I’m more interested in the utilities (eg notes, kanban) and the office capabilities. I want to replace gsuite

  • Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyzB
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    1 year ago

    Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

    Fewer Letters More Letters
    AP WiFi Access Point
    HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web
    NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers
    RPi Raspberry Pi brand of SBC
    SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage
    SBC Single-Board Computer
    SSD Solid State Drive mass storage
    VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)
    nginx Popular HTTP server

    7 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 6 acronyms.

    [Thread #125 for this sub, first seen 10th Sep 2023, 09:45] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

  • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I guess you are doing something very wrong if you have such performance trouble all the time.

    The Pi (up to 4) is known for bad disk I/O. Look into this area first.

    I am running my nc on a weak old low power deskop CPU (and with real SATA harddisks) and only when I ask for long running jobs (like, create the previews and icons for 200 new photos) I can watch any slow responses at all.

    • christophski@feddit.ukOP
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      1 year ago

      I’m not using a Pi, I’m using a j4125 based mini computer, which has made a big difference but the performance just still is not good enough.

  • Father_Redbeard@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I’ve also had nothing but troubles with NC. I tried the AIO option and while it was easier to setup, it was still slow on both a VPS and my local unRAID server. I find that if you’re simply using it as a sync point for apps instead of regularly using the web portal, it’s ok. Seafile is insanely fast. But it stores the data in chunks on the server which some do not like as it can complicate backups. I work around that by just backing up from one of my always on clients since the seadrive client mounts the chunks into usable format. That works great.

    Then again, NC is way more app than I need.