Minor detail on latest Nextcloud update

i’m not sure of what I say, but this morning the Nextcloud daemon on my Linux machines was hanging when trying to connect the Nextbox here.
I then opened the web interface, and there was just a message telling the Nextcloud installation was about to auto-update and I should wait
(IIRC the only action I could take was to launch the update, which was a bit striking as the dialog demanded that I had saved a backup before)
So, I went on, launched the update, and now all is OK. But the fact everything stops suddenly in Nextcloud, including remote sync etc. is a bit annoying…-again, if there was no mistake on my side, that is :slightly_smiling_face:

had the same thing yesterday…this is probably how it is supposed to work? alternative would be to email all admins on the nextbox, that they should login and update. not bad as an alternative, to the default mode, this could be.

Yes, this is a challenging issue for us how to do this “right” …

The way it is right now, is kind of the “default” Nextcloud approach, it forces the user to click “upgrade” once and therefore is not really fully “administration-free”, further as a user you cannot do anything else than clicking “upgrade”, which is also kind of bad …

Another approach would be to run this “upgrade” internally, the user would then not see anything about the upgrade at all (despite the Nextcloud instance might not be available for some minutes)…

Now the problem, which is not easy (for me) to answer: If something is wrong with the upgrade, the Nextcloud instance could be left in a “bad state” …

  • Option 1: If I, as a user, have started this by hand (clicking on “upgrade”), at least I know that the upgrade somehow broke something
  • Option 2: If this is done in an automated way, I will just see at some point that my Nextcloud is down and don’t have anymore information, why this happend

Currently I favor the 2nd option, because this matches more the admin-free approach, even though this might lead to problems… what do you think ?

I would prefer to have a choice, via the Nextbox App in nextcloud.

  1. Fully automated - corresponds to what marketing says of nextbox. Maybe make it possible to run this only in a certain timeframe, for example 4-6 am (configurable via nextbox app), as I dont want it to start upgrading in the middle of a big file transfer, client download, backup, whatever.
  2. Upgrade or dont have a working nextbox (as it is now) is not really what I prefer, because the box could stop working at any moment.
  3. Email admins when an upgrade is available, so the upgrade could be started via nextbox app. Is this even possible?

Would be cool to have the choice between 1 and 3. If not, a “configurable” 1 would be nice.

Two quick remarks:

  • the automatic behavior as well as the current one would greatly benefit from an automated self backup triggered just before upgrading, whether or not there is an external disk for this: so that if things go wrong and the Nextcloud instance is left dangling in a bad state, the box could simply reactivate the backup and find itself in the previous, active state*

  • I’m not sure each user will have set an admin email (at least, I remenber having used hosted nNextcloud instances without this), so if true these ‘less competent users’ may not receive any warning anyway

(*) this also would eliminate this funny feeling you have when reading “MAKE SURE YOU HAVE PERFORMED A BACKUP BEFORE CLICKING HERE” wile at the same time the only accessible action is, forget this and just do it! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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A post was split to a new topic: Update fails - maintainance mode

automated self backup sounds good, but could take hours, and users pulling power during backup because the box doesnt move…not sure ,-) maybe just a “upgrade” / “backup first” choice would be nice - or is this just not possible, because the upgrade ist “nextbox domain”? doing a backup also needs at least one external storage available, doesn’t it?

“email admins for upgrades” would be a choice only available if one has already entered (and confirmed) an email address for at least one admin.

is it possible to initiate a backup via occ command or something, using ssh?

…all these details :wink:

For backups there might be some serious changes in the near future, the backup app from nextcloud: Backup - Apps - App Store - Nextcloud might be a valid option as a successor for the current backup approach.

We are looking into it currently, feel free to play around with it and send us some feedback (although currently it won’t be too easy to use, as “storage management” does not map into the Nextcloud docker as of now)…