All Group folders files gone after upgrade

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The Basics

  • Nextcloud Server version (e.g., 29.x.x):
    • 32
  • Operating system and version (e.g., Ubuntu 24.04):
    • Ubuntu 24.04
  • Web server and version (e.g, Apache 2.4.25):
    • Apache
  • Reverse proxy and version _(e.g. nginx 1.27.2)
    • replace me
  • PHP version (e.g, 8.3):
    • Latest Stable
  • Is this the first time you’ve seen this error? (Yes / No):
    • Yes
  • When did this problem seem to first start?
    • April 2025 after an upgrade
  • Installation method (e.g. AlO, NCP, Bare Metal/Archive, etc.)
    • replace me
  • Are you using CloudfIare, mod_security, or similar? (Yes / No)
    • No

Summary of the issue you are facing:

After updating from 30 to 31 all files under groupfolders for all my customers and users where gone.

All files under this folders where gone after the update.
/var/www/html/nextcloud/data/__groupfolders/

But all users folders and files
/var/www/html/nextcloud/data/user1
/var/www/html/nextcloud/data/user2
/var/www/html/nextcloud/data/user3
where still there.

Since I couldnt see any files unders /var/www/html/nextcloud/data/__groupfolders/ I shut the server down less then 2 hours after the upgrade was done and tried to recover the “deleted” files with R-Studio on an external machine..

This resulted in 0 (zero) files from that folder and its subfolder.

I sent the disk to a professional disk recovery service early May and have waited for them to fix this. After a month and a lot of money they found 0 (zero) files too.

I have searched for files I know was there as I had some computers offline with some file
synced, but they are not in other folders.

So I am throwing out a Hail Mary to see if anyone know what has happened to these files.

Ideas that have been thrown at me are.

1: When upgrading from Group folder to Team all files have been put in the deleted files folder.

I hired an external concultant upgrading my server from Ubuntu 22 to Ubuntu 24.04 and installing Nextcloud 31 from version 30

This is what the concultant wrote
The first update had to be done manually.
Have done it by command line and had to move the data dir (which is inside the NC web directory). After that, I started a file scan over all files/users. There was only a problem with the „last“ account „**“. There is no local dir representing the user’s files. Cannot guess if this is a real problem, because Ygit never logged in to NC, so she hasn’t any personal files.]

Steps to replicate it (hint: details matter!):

Log entries

Nextcloud

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PASTE HERE

Web Browser

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Web server / Reverse Proxy

The output of your Apache/nginx/system log in /var/log/____:

PASTE HERE

Configuration

Nextcloud

The output of occ config:list system or similar is best, but, if not possible, the contents of your config.php file from /path/to/nextcloud is fine (make sure to remove any identifiable information!):

PASTE HERE

Apps

The output of occ app:list (if possible).

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2

No backup of those lost files available? That’s bad. Sorry to hear that.

This sounds like the reason for your issue. Your consultant moved the data dir. Probably forgot to move it back in place (or moved it only partly, who knows). Did a rescan, thus, the database was cleaned up (files removed from database). Even if the data was moved back afterwards, nextcloud was not aware of those files anymore and a forced sync could lead to deletion.
I suggest to look for another consultant who knows what he’s doing and generally, it’s a good idea not to place the data dir within the main folder of nextcloud.

2 Likes
3

No backup of those files I am sorry to say.

But after the recovery service have spent 5 weeks scanning the 4 disks that was Raid 5 to do a recovery (I have done this many times on Windows servers myself)
They find no remnants of any files that where supposed to be there in all the different group folders. And there should be terabytes of data there.

Which for me is extremely strange.
There was no problems with the raid, I could see all the other files for the individual users except as I write the group folder app.

My thoughts where that with the upgrade from group folder to teams group folder all files where moved somewhere.
By somewhere I don’t mean another folder on the raid as the files are not found there, I have used Locate and manually gone trough the folder structure and nothing. And the recovery company got a list of files from a user that was offline.
(Not all files are there for that folder)

Where do deleted files from groupfolder go for example.. are they moved to a folder in a database..

I will get the disks back from the first recovery company this week and I am close to sending them to https://www.ontrack.com/ which is as far as I know the best at this there is.

4

For what it’s worth, the “group” versus “teams” is purely a name change. Nothing fundamentally has changed. Internally the app is still called groupfolders.

Any idea why they “had” to do this? If they really moved the data directory, all sorts of things can happen. Running a files:scan suggests they did a fairly intrusive move/change here for unknown reasons.

I shut the server down less then 2 hours after the upgrade was done and tried to recover the “deleted” files

Do you have Nextcloud log files from the upgrade and the period immediately after the upgrade? (Ideally the audit_log too).

Where do deleted files from groupfolder go for example.. are they moved to a folder in a database..

That really depends on how they were “deleted”. But IIRC, groupfolders files deleted by users/clients end up in two places:

  • dataDirectory/__groupfolders/trash/
  • dataDirectory/USERNAME/files_trashbin/groupfolders/

Deleted files get names like originalName.dTimestap

And the database table group_folders_trash stores the contents of the trash bin.

But the Trash Bin isn’t relevant if the files were lost at some point during the course of manipulating things outside of Nextcloud.

5

Thank you for the answers, I have asked for the disks back from the recovery service and hope that there will be some files there.

This has been a horrible wait :slight_smile:

T

6

Shooting a bit into the blue here…

A set of subfolders within one base folder vanished completely without a trace, right?

Could it be a missing mount (or symlink) that was in place before the Ubuntu upgrade from 22 to 24 and is now missing?

7

I dont know, I just got the drives back.. and from having a working nextcloud server with missing files in the groupfolders, I have now drives that are not working and will not boot the server.

If there was a symlink there or not, I must admin I can’t remember. But I am pretty sure this is a vanlilla ubuntu, with a somewhat vanilla Nextcloud installation.
And that when I installed it, I did not add that.

They say that the drives might have been damaged in transport to them (from their office in Norway to Sweden) as they where working and packaged when I hand delivered it to them.
And the drives have been opened by them I can see.

They found 0 files under groupfolders and no trace on the Raid 5..

When going trough the recovered files I got back (that where on the disks), I find no files with delete in front or back of a lot of files in any folder.

So I will try to get the server to boot up again to see if it can be another place.. but this seems unlikely..

Unfortunately I cant just boot with the recovered files on the external USB I got and at least according to chatgpt I have to reinstall to a new server and do stuff that are outside of my expertise.

But I am now taking a backup of the backup just in case.

In my over 25 years of work, I have never heard of this, neither has all the other geeks I have talked too. They all tell me it cant be right.. which is kind of irritating :wink:

I am a bit at odds with what I should do, if Ontrack can do more then what the other company in 2 months couldnt.. or not.

Not a good day to be a small IT contractor for me today :slight_smile:

8

Hey, check all the partitions on your drive!

9

It has been 2 months at a company that recover data for a living.. I presume they have gone through everything.