Just my two cents: I was struggeling with the error message as well about the .ocdata file not found.
Based on this topic and the comment by @nachoparker about checking the output of ls -la of the /media directory, I found my problem. The owner of the directory and group settings were blocking access to the directory for the www user.
So in my case, the /media/ needed additional access rights, so www user can access this directory and the subfolder the nextcloud data folder is placed.
i donât understand step 6 and 7
6. mysqldump -u -p > /path/to/dbdump/dump.sql
7. Adjust "oc_storages"database table to reflect the new data folder location:
dbuser=$(awk -Fâ â/âdbuserâ/{print $4;exit}â /path/to/nextcloud/config/config.php)
dbpassword=$(awk -Fâ â/âdbpasswordâ/{print $4;exit}â /var/www/nextcloud/config/config.php)
mysql -u$dbuser -p$dbpassword
// Inside the MySQL console:
use ;
update oc_storages set id=âlocal::/new/path/to/data/â where id=âlocal::/path/to/data/â; //take care about backslash at the end of path!!
quit;
// Again outside the MySQL console
unset dbuser dbpassword
please help, it hard to follow for me (newbie). i donât know path /path/to/dbdump/dump.sql
You can use any path you think is good for a backup. When unsure use your current users home directory:
mysqldump -uroot -p > ~/dump.sql
Step 7 is mostly copy&paste. Only replace <nextclouddb> with the database name, usually itâs simply nextcloud. Ah this can be found in the config.php as well, aside of database user and password. And replace the old and new data path of course.
Is this topic still relevant?
Iâm on Nextcloud 21 and found this topic after already moving the datadirectory by simply moving it and editing the path in config.php. It seems to work fine (not shure about shares, I donât think I had any active ones). Also, filepaths in the oc_filecache sql table seem to be relative to something (files/âŚ). In fact, searching the database dump for the old location gets me only one entry which is the one in oc_storages. Besides that, latest documentation for âMigrating to a different serverâ states âIf you change any paths, make sure to adapt the paths in the Nextcloud config.php fileâ.
https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/maintenance/migrating.html
Therefore I suppose it has changed at some point and moving the data directory is supported now? Or is that a wrong conclusion?
Please see the discussion above that it indeed works without changing the database, but wasnât advised to rely on by a NC engineer: HowTo: Change / Move data directory after installation - #15 by MichaIng
Sad to see that the migration docs are still inconsistent with this. If someone finds time, would be good to send a PR, updating this page to include updating the database storage entry. The bonus of this is that we may have some more NC devs discussing the question 
.
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does anybody knows if i can change the database after moving the datadirectory?
Last week i changed the datadirectory and everything seems to be fine but afterwards i realized that the shares are not working anymoreâŚ
my other solution would be to write a script that goes in the database to change the new fileids to the old ones⌠but dont know if this would workâŚ
Strange that (only?) the shares were lost. I wonder if some metadata is associated to the storage index as well. So Nextcloud adds the required new storage to the database by itself, but it is a new row while the old one with related index remains (invalid).
Did you do any changes to the files/shares etc since you moved the data? As when we change the storages table now, while old shares may be recovered, new shares may be lost. The new storages entry would need to be removed to avoid a duplication. The following query will give an overview:
select * from nextcloud.oc_storages;
yes i think that metadatas are affected as wellâŚ
files have been changed since then⌠but we have not created any new shares⌠and if anyone created new shares it is not a problem if they are lost afterwardsâŚ
in oc_storages i have the old storages at the top /nextclouddata and three new storages at the bottom /mnt/nextclouddata/nextclouddata & /mnt/nextclouddata/nextcouddata (typoâŚ) & /mnt/nextclouddata
our new datadirectory is /mnt/nextclouddata/nextclouddata
Okay (after enabling maintenance mode, of course!), first you need to remove the new row, to avoid a duplicate, then replace the old entry:
remove from nextcloud.oc_storages where id='local::/mnt/nextclouddata/nextclouddata/';
update nextcloud.oc_storages set id='local::/mnt/nextclouddata/nextclouddata/' where id='local::/nextclouddata/';
And of course you can remove the additional two entries, if those are not used (anymore):
remove from nextcloud.oc_storages where id='local::/mnt/nextclouddata/nextcouddata/';
remove from nextcloud.oc_storages where id='local::/mnt/nextclouddata/';
Btw, every query should have an output as result, indicating that 1 row was affected, so you know it worked as expected.
Letâs see if that helps. Would be a strong argument then to fix the official migration documentation, or otherwise having a review into the code whether shares should be valid for a specific storage entry only or not.
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Maybe I just donât get it and this might be some newb issue, so please correct me. But there are like tons of guides how to move data directory after installation. And there is always mentioned it would be a great idea to choose a suitable location during installationâŚBut there is no reachable information about how to configure a non default data directory during installationâŚThink this is the largest issue in the nextcloud documentation.
It is one of the things you can select when you connect to the web interface the first time, where you choose the admin account name, enter the database credentials etc. Should be hard to overlook, actually 
.
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looking through the official admin guide it doesnât take ages to find the screenshot I referenced in this post
depending o your (automated) installation method you might not hit this screen - but I bet all of the (good) installation guides point you to the setting where you can change the data directoryâŚ
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Thank you @MichaIng for this thread, itâs incredibly helpful.
I am currently trying to implement Solution 1, but the copying is taking forever and I wanted to ask if thatâs normal.
I run NC21 in a Linux Ubuntu VM (VMWare Fusion) inside a powerful Mac Pro. I am trying to move my nextcloud-data directory from /var/www/nextcloud-data which is on my limited hdd space on that vm to a newly created share on my Synology NAS in my LAN which I mounted in /mnt/nextcloud-data. I also edited /etc/fstab for automount after reboot.
The problem that I am seeing is that when I get to step 2 cp -a /var/www/nextcloud-data/. /mnt/nextcloud-data it takes forever to process; like many many hours.
So I cancelled the cp process by doing ctrl-c and tried copying the files instead via the Files app in Ubuntu GUI, and noticed it just wants to take an ENORMOUS amount of time to copy and paste the files into the newly mounted folder.
In the command line, after I type the cp -a command, it doesnât give me any idea of how much longer it will take, whereas in the Files app in Ubuntu I can see how much longer is left (many many hours). Nevertheless I donât know how/if I can replicate the cp -a option when copying via the Files app gui. Is it possible to do that?
Do you know if thereâs another faster method of correctly copying the files over? Maybe tar? I wouldnât know how to replicate the cp -a option in tar, if itâs even possible.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Of course it depends on the storage read/write speeds, the amount of data and when copying to the network drive, the limiting factor most likely is network transfer speed. So yes, Iâd say it is pretty much expected. You can test whether its faster when copying things onto a physical drive and form there to the NAS.
Compression most likely does not speed up the whole process as then the compression takes much time and the decompression at the target. If you deal with large amount of data, things will take their time, but luckily you donât need to keep attending the copy process, just leave it in background and check back once in a while.
Thatâs the thing that strikes really odd. I have Gigabit LAN and the Mac Pro running the VM is connected via ethernet cable to the router, which itself is connected via ethernet cable to the Synology NAS, so I should be maxing out my transfer speed which should be limited by the Mac Proâs SSD read speed (fast), and the NASâs write speed (around 120 MB/s or 960 Mbps). In real life I am able to transfer from the Ubuntu VM to the NAS at around ~45 MB/s.
Instead the transfer speeds I am seeing are less than 1 Mbps, so in the Kbps range which is pretty ridiculous.
Reasons may be various, including transfer protocol and the filesystem of the servers network share. But since this is not really related to this thread, not even to Nextcloud, I suggest to open a new one about this, probably on another community platform when you can replicate by mounting that share on another client system.
Hello, I just started doing the first method, but now I have no clue what to do.
For the âmysqldump -u -p > /path/to/dbdump/dump.sqlâ command:
what is the path I need?
You donât âneedâ any path, choose where you want to store the database backup. If unsure, the home directory is probably easiest to find it again quickly:
mysqldump -uroot -p > ~/dump.sql
respectively -u<username> with whichever user you used to initially create the database.
Okay! This post dates back some years, but if you are new to your own nextcloud on your homeserver it is still actual.
I installed nextcloud via snap. The data directory in the /var/snap/nextcloud/current/nextcloud/config/config.php is located here: 'datadirectory' => '/var/snap/nextcloud/common/nextcloud/data',.
This space runs out very quickly because it is with the ubuntu server on a ssd. The datadirectory should be on one of the HDDs in the server.
I read all and hopefully made a backup of the config.php and copied and chmod all the files from the /var/snap⌠datadirectory.
There is still an error âYour data directory is invalid Ensure there is a file called â.ocdataâ in the root of the data directory.â on the webpage. To make it clear here is the output of my ânewâ datadirectory, which I named in the config.php 'datadirectory' => '/DATA/nextcloud/data',
root@mk-server:/DATA/nextcloud/data# dir -la
total 20
drwxrwxrwx 4 www-data www-data 4096 Jan 16 16:57 .
drwxrwxrwx 3 root root 4096 Jan 9 19:36 ..
drwxr-xr-x 8 www-data www-data 4096 Jan 16 16:57 appdata_ID
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 542 Jan 16 16:57 .htaccess
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 0 Jan 16 16:57 index.html
drwxr-xr-x 4 www-data www-data 4096 Jan 16 16:57 manfred
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 0 Jan 16 16:57 .ocdata
Why is there not a button in the Dashboard of the nextcloud page for the admin to change the Datadirectory?
Thanks in advance for any replies.
Manfred
Did you see the note about appliances at the top of the post? For the Nextcloud Snap appliance, follow the guide provided here: Change data directory to use another disk partition ¡ nextcloud-snap/nextcloud-snap Wiki ¡ GitHub