32-bit Support is no longer available from Nextcloud. What are the Takeaways?

Nextcloud has deprecated 32-bit support as of July.

Stay cool. Of course you can still install Nextcloud 24 on your old device, but…
understand that development will focus on 64bit architecture specifically.

  • Older devices have a number of limitations since they were designed before today’s common technologies, such as gigabit lan or USB 3.0. More info at Why is my Pi 3, and older, so slow?

This is not a surprising event. We’ve been discussing it since 2020 when Nextcloud 20 was released and no longer supported 32-bit architecture for the Matterbridge Talk app, the News app, and more. It has proven inevitable and we continue to ride it out for as long as we can, but make the hardware upgrade if you’ve been using this project for 6 years. Read on for more info and much love to you! :heart:

Purchasing new hardware?

Help us put together a list of modern hardware that you recommend to others.

Will NextcloudPi continue to provide pre-build images for 32-bit devices, such as the Pi 2?

The developer is still on a 32-bit device, so there is that. :laughing:
You can use the standard curl installation script on your 32-bit device to setup NextcloudPi up through Nextcloud 24.

If you are unsure of whether your device supports arm64 you can

If your device architecture supports arm64, but you installed 32-bit arm, you can follow this guide to migrate

Moving from armhf (32bit) to arm64 (Pi 4)

This is not a shocking or surprising development. Take a breath and read on.

Remember that none of your 32-bit devices will stop working overnight.
As time goes one it simply means we will continue to encounter more and more unresolved issues and incompatibilities.
Nextcloud has always been a complex project, so let’s be thankful to the team, Nacho and now Tobias for giving all of their support over the years. :heart:

If you are worried, consider upgrading your device. Even the Pi 4 is four years old as of 2022. :smile:

Got time for a quick poll?

  • 64-bit all the way.
  • I’m using a 32-bit installation, but my device supports 64-bit.
  • I’m currently stuck on a 32-bit device.

0 voters

8 Likes

100% 64bit only

but a big minus -100% for the announcement made to anyone upgrading! using the built in “self check update” thing…
…suggested all ok and proceed… & then 24.x fell over & was dead.

for me i, restored a backup image & been testing for a couple of days & now transitioned my old NC 24 baremetal to 25 in docker… so far so good! x64 yes !

not being warned during the built in upgrader though?.. users should be warned before anything that important is changed, the install/upgrade should stop?!

1 Like

Of course. The issue is we are volunteers and none of us have any special insight into this until it happened.

In terms of NextcloudPi, we are working on it as we have time. If you want it done more quickly start coding a pull request to assist or please start helping us test new releases in the future if you have time. We are aware this needs to be dealt with, but have no control over changes in Nextcloud until they happen + we have to make the time to provide a solution / response.

sorry! not meaning to sound bad there! I appreciate every single bit of work in nextcloud…
for me was a simple SSD to re-image to get back to pre-update so not a major problem, but i can imagine some admins wouldn’t of imaged or backed up and NC said “all safe!”
(i had been wary of that particular pi still running x86 raspian anway)

well in a way im happy, I wasn’t happy when the upgrade failed… but now ive migrated instances into docker-land! and v25 im happy! nice upgrrade!

You mean home users. No offense, but you never should do any major changes on a production system without having a backup. Something can always go wrong, admins know that. :wink:

2 Likes

I think Nextcloud is a bit of a victim of its own philosophy here: “We want to give everyone the ability to run Nextcloud on any device, from a toaster, to unsuitable web hosting platforms to high-availability clusters”. :wink:

I realize that this breakage was not intentional and and no one had the chance to test it on 32bit. But maybe the Nextcloud devs should just admit that Nextcloud Hub is now too big and too complex to run it on every low end device, shared web hosting platforms etc and increase the official requirements and communicate clearly that you are on your own, if you don’t meet those requirements. Or in one simple statement:

“If you can’t test something, you can’t support it, and if you can’t support it, you have to clearly communicate that you’re not supporting it.”

Also, a little more restrective and clearly stated requirements would simplify the life of everyone involved, including the affected users in the long term. Better a one-time backlash from a few users, who afterwards have clear guidelines on how to use Nextcloud, than tons of support threads and GitHub issues, after every small change, of which a large part is due to people using Nextcloud on unsuitable hardware or run into other limitations, of which not even the developers themself are always aware…

2 Likes

I agree with you I just want to add the thought and impression that nextcloud has a user base which reaches back some time. Most of the issues I see are machines which are running for a few years and where probably a good choice back then.
Sometimes I’m shocked how long the systems haven’t been updated and I’m not sure if Nextcloud would be able to reach people like that because they won’t look in the docs…
On the other hand devices will crash which were running well for years…

Well, this can probably never be completely avoided. I mean, after all, you cannot force people to read the documentation or update their instances. :wink: But these people are then clearly to blame themselves if something goes wrong, especially if there are clear requirements and recommendations listed in the documentation.

Just because some of the requirements are defined more clearly and perhaps a bit more restrictively, no instance that is running fine today, suddenly crashes tomorrow. But the requirements would reflect more precisely on which platforms Nextcloud can be used in a reasonable way, and most importantly, on which platforms it has been tested. If then someone decides to ignore these requirements and and push the limits of what is technically possible, they could still do so, but it would then be more clear that they cannot expect support from the Nextcloud devs or the Nextcloud Community.

2 Likes