[Solved] Syncing Will Take 16 Days

Nextcloud version: 15.0.5
Operating system and version: 5.0.2-arch1-1-ARCH
Apache version: 2.4.38
PHP version: 7.3.3 (cli)

The issue I am facing:

I am attempting to use Nextcloud to back up all of my data from my Windows 10 machine. I have roughly 1.6TB of data in total. The storage drive on my Windows 10 client is an ExFat hard drive. The storage drive on my Arch Nextcloud server is an ExFat hard drive as well. I have not modified any of the files so they shouldn’t need to reupload everything. Yet my client says I have to wait for 16 days to re-upload everything.

Is this the first time you’ve seen this error? (Y/N): Y

Steps to replicate it:

  1. Placed all files from windows onto an ExFat external storage
  2. Copied them to the ExFat drive on arch
  3. Ran the following command in my nextcloud directory

sudo -u http php console.php files:scan --all -v

Everything worked exactly as expected

  1. Selected my storage drive to sync. Displays that it needs to upload 1.6TB over the course of 16 days.

  2. Checked the modify time of a bunch of files that needed to be reuploaded. The modified time is the same.

The output of my Nextcloud log in Admin > Logging:

No recent errors

The output of my config.php file in /path/to/nextcloud (make sure you remove any identifiable information!):

    <?php
    $CONFIG = array (
      'instanceid' => 'REDACTED',
      'passwordsalt' => 'REDACTED',
      'secret' => 'REDACTED',
      'trusted_domains' =>
      array (
        0 => '192.168.1.2',
        1 => 'REDACTED',
      ),
      'datadirectory' => '/usr/share/webapps/nextcloud/data',
      'dbtype' => 'mysql',
      'version' => '15.0.5.3',
      'overwrite.cli.url' => 'http://192.168.1.2',
      'dbname' => 'nextcloud',
      'dbhost' => 'localhost',
      'dbport' => '',
      'dbtableprefix' => 'oc_',
      'mysql.utf8mb4' => true,
      'dbuser' => 'REDACTED',
      'dbpassword' => 'REDACTED',
      'installed' => true,
      'maintenance' => false,
    );

The output of my Apache/nginx/system log in /var/log/____:

No recent errors

Remark: Nextcloud is not a backup solution.

2 Likes

Even if that is true, is there a way to remedy the issues I am having?

After reading this tutorial again, I realized he moved the files with rsync -a rather than mv. Would that have made any difference? I don’t see how it could have made a difference but I’ll just ask to be sure.

Resolution

Apparently, if there is a change in ANY file change, the entire folder and all it’s contents will be re-synced. I thought it would only upload files that have been changed (or have lower modify times).

At the moment I am simply syncing folders I commonly work in and add more as I go.

Nextcloud checks the folder content against the filecache-table on the server. If you just place the files on the server, they are not automatically seen by the server (it doesn’t rescan the folder automatically). The first time you have to sync a file through the client, it cannot detect if a file is identical (e.g. based on size and checksum).

Oh I see. Thanks for the tip.