symlink for appdata folder not working

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1
  • Nextcloud Server version (e.g., 29.x.x):
    • Nextcloud 32.0.5 (nextcloud-aio docker container)
  • Operating system and version (e.g., Ubuntu 24.04):
    • Debian 13.3
  • Installation method (e.g. AlO, NCP, Bare Metal/Archive, etc.)
    • AIO

Hello,

I run nextcloud-aio on a Debian (which is installed on proxmox, but it shouldn’t matter here).

The system runs on a fast SSD, the data is stored on an HDD. Now want to put my appdata folder to the root partition, to have it on the SSD.

I already read some different threads and a symlink seems the way to go. So I copied the appdata folder to the root directory, created a symlink on the host system and set ‘localstorage.allowsymlinks’ => true in config.php.

When I start nextcloud now, the nextcloud-aio-nextcloud container fails to start with

Appdata is not present. Did you change the datadir after the initial Nextcloud installation? This is not supported!See https://github.com/nextcloud/all-in-one#how-to-change-the-default-location-of-nextclouds-datadirIf you moved the datadir to an external drive, make sure that the drive is still mounted.
The following was found in the datadir:
total 49
drwxr-x--- 5 www-data root       11 Mar  7 17:36 .
drwxr-xr-x 1 root     root     4096 Feb  1 12:59 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data  542 Feb  1 13:00 .htaccess
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data   52 Feb  1 13:00 .ncdata
drwxr-xr-x 4 www-data www-data    4 Feb  1 13:02 admin
lrwxrwxrwx 1 www-data www-data   22 Mar  7 17:01 appdata_oc97qixfyh77 -> /appdata_oc97qixfyh77/
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data    0 Feb  1 13:00 audit.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data    0 Feb  1 13:00 index.html
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data    0 Feb  1 13:00 nextcloud.log
drwxr-xr-x 3 www-data www-data    3 Feb 15 13:55 <user1>

So the link is present, but for some reason nextcloud is still missing something. What am I doing wrong?

Oh and no worries about the 0777 permissions of the appdata folder, I wanted to make sure this is not the point. The appdata folder on the root drive has also 0777. As soon as it is running, I will set proper permissions. :slight_smile:

Thank you in advance!

2

AIO is running Nextcloud in a Docker container, so your underlying host volumes aren’t mounted within the container(s).

Post your Compose.

AIO does support doing this with the entire data directory, but it may be a bit challenging to do your specific scenario (i.e. just the appdata folder) though with AIO due to the architecture.

3

I see…I had the naive assumption that the link is on filesystem level and also valid in the docker container.

My compose.yaml:

services:
  nextcloud-aio-mastercontainer:
    image: nextcloud/all-in-one:latest
    restart: always
    container_name: nextcloud-aio-mastercontainer
    volumes:
      - nextcloud_aio_mastercontainer:/mnt/docker-aio-config
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro
    ports:
      - 8080:8080
    environment:
      - APACHE_PORT=11000
      - NEXTCLOUD_DATADIR=/zfs0/nextcloud/data
volumes:
  nextcloud_aio_mastercontainer:
    name: nextcloud_aio_mastercontainer
4

Hi, I think a bind mount on system level might work instead of the symlink. Can you try that and report back if it works?

5

A bind mount is working, thank you for your help!

6

Great! Would you mind sharing the bind mount config that you used? This might be valuable for people searching for the same solution. Thanks in advance! :slight_smile:

7

Sure. Just put this line in your /etc/fstab:

/appdata_<your_instanceid> /path/to/ssd/dir none bind 0 0

To mount the directory instantly, execute “mount -a”.