Update fails - maintainance mode

Hallo Daringer,

ich hänge auch im Maintenance Modus. Trotz einmal kurz, einmal lang und kompletten Neustart. (Rücksetzen möchte ich wegen Datenverlustes eher nicht)

wie komme ich denn in das Nextbox Terminal? Keine Ahnung. Gibt es da eine Anleitung auch für Schmalspur-Anwender?

Danke

oro

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Same trouble here. Mail has blocked the update procedure. No SSH available and factory reset is no real option…
Please keep us updated, even with some best estimates.
Thx.

@daringer maybe an extra option in the future, for people not having initiated SSH, could be to prepare a reaction when one plugs a physical keyboard on an USB port, demonstrating one is actually in material contact with the Nextbox.
Then for instance one could type a short password to trigger something, e. g. your one-line action above, or a jump back to a previous saved backup if one exists…

…and in the future : each NextBox supplied with a small Nitrokey (which the user can freely use, spreading the good behavior), and which also contains some signed element that triggers the above in a safer way :wink:

Hello all,
unfortunately my English is not sufficient for a discussion, so I have to access a translation program.

I need some support. For me, the maintenance mode also occurs when I want to update the mail app. My question is how do I log into my nextbox? For me, only the update window appears every time. I am not a programmer and have only rudimentary computer skills, I was glad to know that you can run a low maintenance private cloud as a complete layman. However, it doesn’t seem to be that easy when you fail at such simple things. Still, I hope that with your help I will be able to get on my cloud without resetting the Nextbox to factory settings.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Hey together,

we are very sorry for the inconvenience and are working on a solution, also for non-ssh users.

Please keep in mind that the Mail app itself is something we absolutely cannot control. Honestly, I was also surprised that an error of such a scale can happen. Nevertheless it looks like we have to cope with such a situation and as such it seems like we have to equip you with methods to handle such a case also for the future.

The currently approached solution is that we will provide a “soft reset” functionality available through the button on your NextBox, this soft-reset will (for now) disable all apps, which will allow you to log in into your NextBox again.

The current time frame for this is “the next days”, we’ll try our best to be as fast as possible.

Best

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dear daringer and team,

without lowering my appreciation about the effort and speed you are putting in - facing exact such an issue is exactly the reason i choose your product for - in my eyes, it is the main service you provide with your product - take the responsibility of maintanance including depedency and quality check.

nevertheless, i think this taught all of us a lesson we hopefully all learn without losing data.

btw - i cannot use my admin login for nextbox to login the machine locally, can i?

We do our best, but we are in an “ecosystem” situation here. Nextcloud is the ecosystem and comparing to other ecosystems - you would likely not make Microsoft responsible (or the laptop manufacturer) if you download malicious applications onto your computer, right? Anyways, think this is also not the point here, what I can say for sure is: There is no chance we can check every Nextcloud App, every release and adapt in real-time or as you imply: upfront.

I am sorry, if this is the impression we left, but this is neither commercially nor technically possible without far more control of your device. This is still your device and we have no intentions to control your device at a level that you do imply.

But as you can see, we still feel responsible, we try to find solutions and we push as hard as possible, still there will be these moments…

Please make sure that you have backups, for any device, independent if it is branded Nitrokey, Google or Samsung, there might be far more trivial things that can render your device unusable and/or destroy your data.

this is intended, please see the documentation: Software FAQ - Nitrokey Documentation , you can configure your ssh-key within “System Settings”.

best

Hallo zusammen,

ich bin sehr froh, dass ich nicht nur in Englisch schreiben muss. Puhh! Danke!

Ich beziehe Mal den “… nicht-ssh-benutzer.” auf mich, obwohl ich ehrlich gesagt das Kürzel nicht wirklich verstehe. Egal!

Ich möchte mich nur nochmals auf diesem Wege für die schnelle Reaktion bedanken! Für mich heißt es also jetzt einfach warten und meine Nextbox im Wartungsmodus oder im Aktualisierungsfenster verharren zu lassen, richtig?

Das Warten ist für mich kein Problem, da ich alle wichtigen Daten auf meinem Rechner lokal verfügbar habe. Ich bin zwar erst seit kurzer Zeit ein Nextbox-Besitzer und ja, das Problem ist ärgerlich, aber ich finde es super, dass ihr nicht nur die Hardware vertreibt, sondern im Prinzip eine Komplettlösung anbietet. Danke!

Viele Grüße aus der Pfalz!

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Hey all, short update:

The Nextcloud guys also declared this as a bug, there it’s even defined as a bug in Nextcloud itself: https://github.com/nextcloud/mail/issues/5761

The solution with users without ssh will be that the button-press to exit Maintenance mode will additionally disable the “Mail” app, and only the Mail app. This is the minimal invasive solution, to make the NextBox work again for those who are affected by this bug.

I am optimistic that this evening this will be released!
The fix is released! Please wait ~4hours (5pm UTC), then run through this procedure:

The way to fix this will then be:

  • press upgrade in your Nextcloud frontend
  • you see the Maintenance mode being active
  • press the button on the NextBox once - the Mail App will be disabled and Maintenance Mode will be deactivated
  • you should be able to reach your Nextcloud again. (DO NOT ACTIVATE “Mail” again, or you’ll have to redo this :wink: )

best

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Hello daringer,

great! Thank you very much!

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thanks for this quick and seamless solution, great work!

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I am in the final stages of data recovery after the hardware reset, should be finished in a couple of hours…

Guess I should have waited for this fix :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

@daringer Thanks a lot for quick responses and professional support!!! Great forum!

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Hi daringer,

Perfect. Thank you very much. You did a real great job.

2 Likes

Thx! Nextbox makes more and more fun. It already is fully integrated in my life. Read news, upload mobile phone pictures, access travel documents as a backup, share files. Great job!

Hi,
(see below in english)

Auch ich konnte nun den Maintenance-Modus überwinden. Habe mich eingeloggt und bei der Aufforderung, das Update zu beenden, die Apps ( … , und mail) abgewählt.

Jetzt sind alle meine Daten, Ordner, Gruppen etc. weg, Urzustand. Ziemlich frustrierend, acuh wegen des investierten Arbeitsaufwands.

Ich will niemand die Schuld zuweisen, nur sensibilisieren, das System lieber so einfach wie möglich zu halten, als solche Bugs zu provozieren. Hatte eigentlich vor, die nextbox als Anschauungsmaterial für „Es geht auch ohne Cloud und Microsoft 365 etc.“ und auch für Halb-Laien zu verwenden. Das ist jetzt leider erstmal gestorben.

Problematisch war schon, dass man keine externe Festplatte als echten Speicher einbinden kann.

Ich hoffe, ich kann meine Daten über Backups wieder herstellen.

Schöne Grüße
_
I too have now been able to get past maintenance mode. I logged in and deselected the apps ( … , and mail) when prompted to finish the update.

Now all my data, folders, groups etc are gone, primal state.Pretty frustrating, also because of the amount of work invested.

I don’t want to blame anyone, just sensitize to keep the system as simple as possible rather than provoke such bugs. Had actually intended to use the nextbox as a demonstration material for “It also works without cloud and Microsoft 365 etc.” and also for semi-laity. Unfortunately, this is dead for now.

Problematic was already that you can not integrate an external hard drive as real storage.

I hope I can restore my data via backups.

Greetings

@raro , this is really a bug from NextCloud, not from the guys at Nitrokey…
I have a couple of separate NextCloud accounts hosted on cooperative servers; I can tell you I’m not close to update there :wink:
If you want to test that way, you also have the people at /e/OS (the only android OS that does not phone home) : they complement their offer with an optional cloud (to which an /e/OS phone can sync) and that /e/ cloud, based on a severely controlled NextCloud, can be used separately too.
But by ‘severely controlled’ I mean you have much less capacity than on the NextBox : you cannot add any app yourself, an /e/ admin can access your data, etc.
As we have /e/OS Fairphones here, we created /e/ accounts too, and I just checked : everything works fine there, email and contacts as well. One can imagine they did no-o-ot update the Mail app :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
But again, you have to trust /e/ (which I definitely do) and you don’t own their nextcloud server, nor can you add apps etc.
If you go the ‘pure Nextcloud on a hosted server’ way, consider the Mail bug is active, and don’t update the Mail app there!

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Hi @raro, is it possible that you pushed the hardware button on your nextbox for longer than just a second so that you accidentally factory reseted your nextbox?

My understanding of the provided fix was that you will just NOT lose your data if you follow daringers instructions. I could be wrong though as I did not use the fix but intentionally hardware resetted my nextbox.

Yes, I´m afraid, I pressed the button too long. I urgently needed my data before we had the instructions. Since I had problems with the hard drive(s) connected before, I did not thought of a failure with the nextcloud update.
Now I have the problem again that the nextbox is not accessible with the hard disk connected.
So I can’t check if the backup is on it…

this reminds me that I should not only add my public key when needed (and remove it again afterwards), but add it permanently, for emergency cases as this one!

maybe nitrokey could define some basic set of apps they try the updates with, before they deploy updates to all of us? I’m fairly new to nextcloud, dont know if this is realistic? but…the mail app looks like one of the basic ones (though I would never want to run my own mailserver, not even on a nextbox - but thats another thing,-)…

in general, reaction times and support makes me think buying a nextbox was a very good decision! big thank you @daringer and team!

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