I just uograded the NC docker on my Odroid HC2, which is a 32-bit syetem.
Since nowhere in the announcement was it made clear that 32-bit hardware is unsupported moving forward, I was somewhat outraged to see on the Admin Overview page an error message letting me know, after the whole upgrade procedure. For Christ’s sake, I should assume a lot of people run NC on their NASes, a lot of which are 32-bit, so dropping support should be a very clearly communicated change, not something one discovers after trashing their systems.
That said, it seems to mostly work. The dashboard loads, as well as the admin pages, and the apps list. Well, the Submit button doesn’t get activated once I enter my password when enabling/disabling apps (in “strict” setting Firefox), and I was lucky to find out that hitting Enter works, but anyway.
And then there’s the bigger problem. The Files app just stopped working. In the logs, it says something about returning a float where int was expected.
Does someone else experience the same? Did I miss running some migration script or something like that? I did everything the overview page instructed me to (Except, obviously, upgrading to 64-bit hardware. But then again, how would that cause a float-where-int-is-expected error?)
Some guys are aware of the issue now, including the change in sabre/http and the devs of this module. Let’s see whether this can be fixed/reverted quickly, but likely not during the weekend .
That means from now on I won’t receive any feature updates, and in less than a year I’d have to throw away my perfectly functioning NAS? I’d rather try to fix te issue…
In any case, is the 32-bit user base so insignificant that it’s worth it breaking those systems for good? Are there known statistics about how many people are affected by this?
Likewise, the hardware manufacturers dropped support for these devices. Devices such as the Pi 2 and Odroid HC2 are now discontinued, unsupported and obsolete just as hardkernel describes.
Well, as I wasn’t actively following the discussion on forums, I wasn’t aware that this has been in the works. Anyway.
I’m quite sad as aside from this, my trusty old NAS serves me just as well as needed, so I don’t really want to part with it.
That said, is there an official way to downgrade a docker instance? I do have my files, and I have the pre-upgrade DB dump. But I understand that the docker image copies files to the mounted volume too. Should I simply delete everyting in the www root except data and config, and everything will be copied over from the downgraded docker image? Do I need to change something in the post-upgrade config file? I’m afraid I don’t have a backup of that (yeah, could have been more cautious)…
Wow, not cool, not cool. First, I said I do have DB backup, just not that of the config file. Second, in any case, I was asking for some guide about how to downgrade in general, as I guess it’s not supported in any automated/simple way.
In any case, Nextcloud completely failed to make it obvious in the announcements that 32-bit is dicontinued, which should be written in a large font at the top (having this mentioned somewhere buried in the docs does not make up for this). So I think there’s no need to be passive-agressive towards users who got burned by this.
And I’m still wondering how many people are affected, and what percentage might be completely unaware that the plug is being pulled on them. Just like I was, because why wouldn’t I have been?
I would call that an unfounded assumption, especially regarding the OS architecture. Hardly anything is 32-bit now.
Downgrades are not supported. As mentioned above, you’d have to restore from your last backup.
Well… sorry to say it, but that one is on you. Be responsible for your system, take regular backups and read the release notes before major upgrades. I get that you’re frustrated, but you can’t come over here and chew everyone out because you were negligent and your system broke. All that’s going to do is make people not want to spend their free and unpaid time helping you.
I check my backups AND take a snapshot before every patch. Only once do I recall ever having to roll back which actually ended up being a problem with redis, but I do it every time anyway.
Yeah, not having a totally full backup is arguably “on me” (I actually do, just not from right before the upgrade, and not having physical access to my NAS nor my offline backup for months complicates things, but that’s really my problem).
But I dare you to show me the release notes mentioning the official drop of 32-bit systems even in the fine print. I did do my research beforehand, I didn’t come across any mention; I did specifically search for it in all the announcements and the changelog after burning myself, and found none. So, I still think it wasn’t communicated properly.
Not a single mention.
And yeah, about “unfounded assumption”. I specifically wrote “assume”, so I’m still in the clear. And that’s specifically why I asked about the numbers, if there are any. I would, again, assume that tech geeks vastly underestimate the amout of people that aren’t geeks, who, if they have a perfectly working NAS from 6 years ago, then won’t go and spend money on replacing it with the latest and greatest, just for the hell of it.
All I was asking for is a hard-to-miss warning after such a substantial change; and in lack thereof, some pointers to help myself out of this mess. What I got instead was “you didn’t do your homework, you’re all on your own, kid”. I’m “chewing everyone out” because of this, not because I messed up.
You are free to think that. But that doesn’t change the fact that you personally told me that I should have read the release notes, which (supposedly?) would have prevented me from upgrading to a version which doesn’t support my system. And no, since that official decision a few months before this release wasn’t mentioned even once in any release notes, that didn’t prevent me from doing that, despite I did read the release notes. And when I point this out, you disengage.
A few years ago I transitioned from OwnCloud to Nextcloud specifically because I experienced bad communication, lack of intent to help and arrogance in the community. Not too uplifting to see that happening all over again.
We didnt plan to actively remove 32-bit compatibility but it seems like we did for 25 without knowing as we do not test against 32-bit which is why we removed 32-bit support in the first place.
Yeah, fair enough. Still, if the Overview page (which I check regularly) would have displayed that warning that which it now, having broken support for good, does display, then it would have been obvious for a long time, and people still using these legacy systems would have anticipated an eventual breaking upgrade at any point in time.
But unfortunately, even though I’ve been running it on hardware apparetly unsupported for years, it always displayed a nice green “All checks passed” message (and when it didn’t, I immediately did any fix needed to make it happy), I was unaware.
I guess I’m not the only one. And simply calling me ignorant and turning a back at me sends a concerning message.
A lot of us aren’t system admins with rock sound operational practices, just guys having a NAS. We try our best, but some things get overlooked, backups missed sometimes, systems broken. If the community’s reaction is that in case I didn’t do everything with the utmost professionalism then I’m on my own, that’s sad in my opinion.
To give details, what happens here on a technical side is that a value which is supposed to be an integer, gets stored in a float on 32bits systemso boecause it’s too big to fit in an integer on those systems.
float is usually for floating points numbers, but is used on 32bits as a fallback for big integers.
Because a function wants an int and get a float, php fails with a type error.
So this was not an intended change, it was an overlooked behavior because Nextcloud is not actively tested on 32bits.
It also seems no 32bits user is testing the betas because the bug was not discovered until final I think.
Also the problem does not come from Nextcloud code but a dependency from my understanding.
I talked about guys, like me, having a NAS for their personal stuff not always doing things in the most professional manner.
My current understanding is that NC explicitely encourages organisations of all kinds to take their data into their own hands, and install their physically owned Nextcloud service.
That will include things like schools, nonprofits and similar groups. Those, unlike corporations that have entire DevOps divisions, usually do these kinds of things by hiring a guy who overlooks their services. And that guy won’t be as sound and professional as the DevOps divisions.
Encouraging these organisations to install Nextcloud, and then when they inevitably screw up eventually, turning a back at them will be a much bigger problem than guys with a home NAS finding themselves in hot water.
But maybe I’m seeing this from an entirely wrong PoV.
No but they almost certainly using x64 hardware and they most likely also have some kind of backup strategy. AMD and Intel 64-bit CPUs are a thing for nearly two decades now. And for roughly 10 to 15 years every standard Laptop, PC or server, apart from entry level devices, such as netbooks, consumer NASs etc, was delivered with a 64-bit CPU. And today even most of the low-end devices are equipped with 64-bit CPUs. Matter of fact it’s almost impossible to find any new devices that are still using a 32-bit CPU, even if you wanted to…
Also Schools and NGOs , at least in Europe, do usually have some amount of budget to buy reasonable hardware and at least some level of consulting and support. Of course, this is not comparable to large companies or enterprises with highly available data centers and their own dev/ops team. But it’s also far away from home users who are using Nextcloud on an old Raspberry Pi or a consumer NAS. Or at least it should be…
So no this isn’t an issue that schools and NGOs are likely to have.
If you think about it, the lack of 32-bit support is just the trigger that surfaced the issue of community attitude once again.
I thought this forum was called Nextcloud Help, and it served as a platform for people to seek help when they have some issue with Nextcloud, and yes, maybe after making some mistake.
If people would never make any mistake, this forum had absolutely no reason to exist.
According to this assumption, I came here to post that I have some trouble with Nextcloud, and I pointed out that the main reason for it is that NC nowhere made it obvious that my system is actually unsupported.
From what I’ve learned, this shift has been in the works for a few years. And I’m sure it was no news to someone who closely followed the github or development communication channels - but not to those ordinary users. Fair enough, it wasn’t official until this summer, when apparently an official decision was made to formally drop support. Even in the admin manual the only mention was that a 64-bit system is needed for it to “work well” - that is, not strictly required.
And it did apparently indeed work on legacy hardware until this latest upgrade. It didn’t warn users at installation time, and the Overview page was all green.
OK, the official decision was made. I don’t remember any announcement about this. When companies pull the plug on something, even far less substantial things than a whole hardware platform, they usually make several announcements, go out of ther way to make sure users know about it, and let several months or even years to get prepared. None of this happened, and not even the 24.x.x updates released after that official decision started showing warnings on the Overview page, or anywhere.
And then comes a major upgrade, with huge fanfare and 2 hour long presentation and announcement, but I am still to find a single mention of the final official drop of 32-bit support in all this.
Does someone call this proper and careful informing of users?
And I’m sorry, but for a system that is explicitely aimed to be run on (among a lot of other things) on consumer NASes, I reject the argument that the affected user base is non-existent or unimportant. And let me reiterate for the third time that no facts were persented in this discussion proving that 32-bit embedded user base is totally insignificant.
So, all in all, I think it can be argued that communication regarding this (in my opinion) quite important issue was subpar at best, and dangerous at worst.
Now. I still think that my surprise after an upgrade breaking my system was justified. And came here to seek help, in the spirit of the forum’s name. And basically all the reactions were: stupid, go back to the old version, and shut up until next summer when support of it ends. Oh, you don’t have a backup of the config file, and only have the upgraded version? (Which, by the way, happened because despite my system is officially unsupported now, the upgrade went ahead without even a warning, and overwrote that config file, resulting in an upgraded, and broken system.) You’re on your own, no help here.
And despite the fact that I did say that I do have a backup of the DB, and - while I didn’t mention it - I do have a backup of the config too, just unfortunately a bit old, and difficult to access, because it’s offline, and I don’t have physical access to it for months now. I did even outline a possible strategy for downgrading my config file, and all I seeked was confirmation that my strategy is good, and advice what else to look out for.
And I got sent away, and even scolded saying that I’m only looking for someone to blame.
That is the problem my friends. This attitude has nothing to do with specific hardware support or anything. This has to do with that if I’m not completely aware of unannounced things, and maybe even make some mistake, the Nextcloud Help forum refuses help, and even roasts me.
Hi @mortee ,
I’m closing your topic because it’s getting too heated. I do agree with your point that we could have done more official communication so I have sent a mail to the director of marketing to see what we can do.
Please be mindful of how volunteers and one of my colleagues are helping you in their weekends, so it would be much better if we keep this a place where we leave out the heat. Therefore I would like to ask you to please mind your tone in your future posts. Thank you :).
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