I’m running Nextcloud AIO on my home server and I want to manage external storage in a way that each user only sees their own assigned folder. The goal is that users can upload and delete files as if it was their own space, not something “shared” by another user.
To achieve this, I mounted external SSDs on the server and configured them as external storage in Nextcloud. Each user has their own folder (e.g. /mnt/ssd1/username) which is added as an external storage entry and assigned only to that specific account.
In general this works — users can see their assigned folders. However, I’m facing two problems:
- Folder permissions & access control
- Even though I assign a folder as external storage to a single account, the permissions don’t always behave as expected.
- I want each account to be able to read, upload, and delete in their assigned folder — but not access other users’ folders.
- Deletion problems on Android clients
- On Android (Nextcloud app), when I try to delete files inside these external storage folders, I often get an error saying the file is “in use by another user” or similar.
- This happens even though the external storage is writable, shows green in the admin settings, and the filesystem permissions on the server are set correctly (
www-datahas ownership and write access).