How to migrate your owncloud desktop client to Nextcloud

đź“‘ How to
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I’d love to switch over but have a question before that: I currently use the owncloud desktop client on Ubuntu 16.04 with 3 Nextcloud accounts being connected to. Each of them comes with 50.000 to 130.000 synced files. How will the migration work though? Does it have to re-sync everything or can I “just” switch client and continue with what I’m having?

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  1. Stop the owncloud client
  2. Remove the owncloud client
  3. Install the nextcloud client
  4. Start the nextcloud client once, and close it right when the wizard asks for the server etc
  5. Copy you existing owncloud.cfg to the nextcloud.cfg created in by the client in step 3.
    On Linux distributions:
    $HOME/.local/share/data/ownCloud/owncloud.cfg
    On Microsoft Windows:
    %LOCALAPPDATA%\ownCloud\owncloud.cfg
    On MAC OS X:
    $HOME/Library/Application Support/ownCloud
  6. Start the nextcloud client. It will ask for the password and afterwards pick up where your owncloud client finished -> no new data will be transferred.

edit: put in the default paths where the config files can be found.
This worked flawlessly for me. Just make sure that no client is running anymore before you do step 5.

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I moved this to a new howto.

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This is working great, thanks a lot.

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Don’t forget to to to the Settings -> General and ensure that Launch on System Startup is checked. It wasn’t on the two I’ve just migrated across, even though the old Owncloud client was. I’ve not investigated, but I’m assuming this is down to different executable file names or something similar.

A major plus point of migrating is that it now survives a suspend/resume cycle which the Owncloud one never did (at least the one from the Ubuntu 16.04 repositories didn’t).

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If you are using Linux, be aware of this bug: https://github.com/owncloud/client/issues/5817.
You will have to close the client using the systray icon!

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I followed the steps and my account didn’t appear in the nextcloud client. After removing a line in the nexcloud.cfg file, everything works ok. The line in question is:

clientVersion=2.5.0 (build 10213)
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It’s also worth it to copy the sync-exlude.lst file if it exists

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In case others didn’t know where the Nextcloud desktop app created its config file, on linux I found the target directory for the migration in:

~/.config/Nextcloud/

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someone managed to make a bat to copy it automatically?

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But first be aware of: https://github.com/nextcloud/desktop/issues/1000

Nobody really cares to solve this bug - i will stay as long as possible to the owncloud-Client - this one works like a charm.

Regards, A.

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Seems like the config directory has been relocated. I’m on MacOS 10.13 and the ownCloud directory is no longer in the Application Support directory, instead it is in:

$HOME/Library/Preferences

This is where Nextcloud creates it’s config directory also.

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