Thank you, was getting sad seeing people saying " must not temper with Nextclouds files" over and over.
Either “you don’t support”, or “you support it, but there is a recommended way to do it”. It’s an open source software, not enterprise locked in software. People have lots of reasons that they may not want to follow exactly the intended use of the software, but that should be ok.
Such an attitude isn’t, either "you shouldn’t do … but … " or “It isn’t built to support that, so I don’t know how to change it …” would have been a much better attitude.
Use case for me where I have need for external access for it. NextCloud web lacks LIVE photo capability, strong photo editing options, more indepth metadata viewing. But I can’t use external storage mode as maps, some sharing capabities, photo albums, and other features NextCloud has that I want to use requires it to be in local storage mode. So I have external tools to modify the files, which will automatically run files:scan once the file is updated to let NextCloud reindex them. I have no use for trashbin and versioning because I have an external backup solution that already handles it.
I understand your requirement but I don’t think this fits good into the application support forum for the reasons I explain below.
as you say Nextcloud is open source which allows you to use as you want (respecting OSS license). If you do something the software is not built for or you are unhappy with the limitations - feel free to improve. but don’t ask for support in this forum - where people like me spend their spare time to help users with valuable requests. If you want and you know how nothing prevents you from braking your instance - but again if you do so - don’t come back and complain about data loss, missing functionality and ask for support to recover your system.
Sorry if I came across as rude.
I understand that my “requirement but I don’t think this fits good into the application support forum”, which is why I didn’t create a new post for myself. I would have been very fine not finding a solution to my particular case.
The comment was purely a frustration at seeing comments on the post very similar to what you would see on something like Apple’s forum, and not something I would expect to see in an OSS forum as big as NextCloud’s
Like I said, it wasn’t the lack of “knowing how to resolve something”, but rather the “you must do it this way and only this way”, that is very disheartening. Which is why I feel your title is disingenuous. An example of what I would expect would be the response in this thread. Setting umask for Nginx or Caddy server. bb77 expresses their thoughts, says what the original design for NextCloud is for, it likely doesn’t support their usecase, and opening accepts that they don’t know whether it is possible.
Of course, it is certainly long, and I don’t expect someone I’m not paying to have to spend that much time in a response like that. But even a “Nextcloud is not intended to be a web front-end for a traditional file server. It is meant to be a replacement for it. A lot of it relies on having full control of the file system, and I do not know if anything would break if you changed the file outside of the application” Would have been plenty good.
Even your whole response, just rewording the two sentences “It’s best access files stored in Nextcloud through official interface e.g. WebDAV so the application can keep track of changes and offer functions like trashbin and versions. If you temper with Nextcloud’s storage you would have to perform repair steps e.g. occ files:scan” would have been perfect.
And while this shouldn’t change much, I am not a freeloader just waiting for other’s help. Like you said, I do follow feel free to improve, and have submitted pull request to the NextCloud Photo’s app for a support on HEIC files in the docker environment. Someone else’s change that included more things was better, but I am certainly not someone who just expects others to wait on me. I am not attacking you, and highly appreciate anyone who spends time answering questions on these forums.
You have to understand something about this type of question. He wanted to change the group and I ask so users could access Nextcloud’s data folder over SMB. Nextcloud will literally not work if the web server doesn’t retain ownership and permission on the files. In other words, you must not change them and they must be a certain way. We aren’t just saying that to be stubborn. It’s because we know either it will definitely break it, or doing it will create a propensity for accidents that could break it, or maybe it’s something just off-the-wall strange and we don’t want to rubber stamp something that might cause unpredictable behavior.
Another example would be that I tell people all the time to use occ instead of hand-editing config.php. Can you edit it by hand? Sure. As long as your typing and syntax are perfect. But I advise to use occ because it prevents accidents that might be hard for someone to figure out. I wonder how many servers would have ended up broken over the years without that little bit of sage advice.
Try looking at it from the perspective of someone who helps out in their free time and just wants to see people have successful deployments.
the goal of a support forum in general is to keep the system running smooth which works only if it is used in a way it was designed to work. This is a reason you receive similar answers everywhere.
many thanks for a nice wording I will definitely use it in the future!
we have very high user numbers here in the forum many of them with zero IT knowledge. showing “unofficial” ways to interact with a system could result less trained users brake their systems. We try to support even in this case and from time to time cover occ files:scan as well… but this definitely nothing to become somewhat recommended… dealing with underlying file system must remain an exception reserved for special circumstances.
if you know how you achieve the result you expect and can deal with the drawbacks - perfect! but please don’t ask about direct interaction with file system or database of Nextcloud server in the support forum. You are welcome to discuss your use case - I remember interesting discussion and creative solutions for special requirements.
The reason is that the files are not only in the filesystem, they are as well indexed in the filecache table and by default, Nextcloud doesn’t rescan the folder. You can reforce a scan, then I’m not sure if it is still the case or not, but it could reindex files and if they indexed again, if there are other information linked (shares, tags, comments), this information can be lost.
A way you can do this officially, just use webdav, so it passes through the Nextcloud connector and it handles all the database stuff. If you want to have direct access, you can use external storage (which can be a network storage, but it can be a local folder as well. External means it is not exclusive to Nextcloud).
Photos was not picking it up as a image extension because it was lacking in the extension list, and the official docker container was missing libheif. But that’s beside the point.
Many thanks to @wwe for reading my less than kind comments. I would not have thought there would be “many” with zero IT knowledge, but you’re the one with the experience, so I will keep that in mind when formulating my perception of people here in the future.
I will definitely use it in the future!