shared groupfolder empty

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The Basics

I’m running the nextcloud in a VM on a home server, the proxy is on the same host and so is the database and filestore.

  • Nextcloud Server version (e.g., 29.x.x): 31.0.8
  • Operating system and version (e.g., Ubuntu 24.04): ubuntu 22.04
  • Web server and version (e.g, Apache 2.4.25): 2.4.52-1ubuntu4.16
  • Reverse proxy and version _(e.g. nginx 1.27.2) haproxy
  • PHP version (e.g, 8.3): 8.3
  • Is this the first time you’ve seen this error? (Yes / No): yes
  • When did this problem seem to first start? recently (a few months ago it worked)
  • Installation method (e.g. AlO, NCP, Bare Metal/Archive, etc.)from zip archive
  • Are you using CloudfIare, mod_security, or similar? (Yes / No) no

Summary of the issue you are facing:

A shared folder (I have home server with a few accounts) in my user’s files which I share with my wife was suddenly empty. We rarely use this, so it wasn’t immediately obvious when this has happened, but we both have used it this year.

I have regular backups of the /var/nextcloud-data folder holding the data, but the folder isn’t where I expect it to be (in my files/), and has not been there for years if I look back in the backups.

So I’m guessing the groupfolders may be stored elsewhere? Where would I have to look for the files in my backups?

The funny thing is, when I look in my trash, there are some files that were deleted there, but when I restore them from the trash, they don’t appear back in the folder that is now under “Team Folders”.

Is this a bug which is hiding my files somewhere, or did they really disappear?

My main question is, can I retrieve the data from my backups somehow or better, is there something to make the files appear again?

2

This is a known issue.

See Groupfolders are shown empty after upgrading to 18.1.5 / 19.1.4 · Issue #3972 · nextcloud/groupfolders · GitHub

Wait for an update or revert to previous app version.

3

Thanks for the tip, I’ve just downgraded to 19.1.3 of groupfolders and the files are visible again.

I’m still wondering where the actual files are stored, because if I run into this kind of problem again, I’d like to at least be able to get the files from backups… (I know you should always test your backups, but hey, this is a home system and I thought I had a fool proof system by backupping all the “nextcloud-data” files) Any hints?

4 
$datadirectory/__groupfolders

datadirectory is where your userdata is stored. You can also find it in your config.php. By default, it is a directory named data located in your Nextcloud installation directory.

5

Thanks, found them, it was in __groupfolders/1/ (Backups of this place were all there)
I don’t know why I missed that before…

6

But keep in mind that if you delete or move data in the file system, you have to run a filesan command, otherwise Nextcloud will not recognize the change.

# for groupfolders
occ groupfolders:scan <folder_id>

# without groupfolders
occ files:scan <user_id>

For example, this is necessary when you restore data/directories.