Nextcloud version (eg, 29.0.5) : 28.0.5 (NextcloudPi)
Operating system and version (eg, Ubuntu 24.04) : Debian bullseye
Apache or nginx version (eg, Apache 2.4.25) : 2.4.62
PHP version (eg, 8.3) : 8.1.18
The issue you are facing:
So I’ve been having loads of issues with external storage CIFS shares, and I finally found some advice that indicates I should be using php-smbclient instead of the standard smbclient so I installed php-smbclient. My question is how do I get NC to use php-client instead of smbclient? I’ve been running top and it shows one or more instances of smbclient running frequently so I assume something’s not configured correctly.
If by ‘external storage CIFS shares’ you mean shares that are mounted directly on the host OS, then php-smbclient won’t do anything, but with it installed you should be able to mount SMB/CIFS shares directly in Nextcloud via the External Storage app, rather than at OS level.
Nope - I mean shares mounted as external storage by NC, not directly on the host. When I first created them in NC I only had smbclient installed - would deleting them and re-creating them after installing php-smbclient do the trick?
A ok. I don’t use SMB shares in Nextcloud myself, and was under the impression that the php-smbclient is mandatory in order to mount SMB shares directly in Nextcloud, but according to the documentation, Nextcloud should be able to use either the php client or the standard SMB client of the OS.
I would test it by uninstalling the default smbclient of the operating system, and If all the shares are still working, it was most likely already using the php client, if they stop working, mount them again and see how it goes…