Understanding release / upgrade cycle for a safe practice

[robnicholsonmalt]

@rawtaz

Naturally, the first thing one does when seeing a new release and pondering whether to upgrade, is to read the changelog/release notes. If there aren’t any, it’s hard to make a decision for staging and production environments.

Agreed - pretty standard practise.

[Darkk]

I haven’t seen NC 26.0.0 yet to upgrade so going to wait out a bit for that. Also, since I am still running PHP 7.4.33 so need to upgrade to PHP 8 series. I’ve tried upgrading to PHP 8.2 which broke NC 25 so had to revert back to previous snapshot. Fun times. lol.

[opensourcerules]

You got it! Every open source project depends on its users a great deal for testing before they publish a production release. I’m still on 23 because I don’t use any of the apps and its been rock solid for me. I just need basic functionality.

Careful, don’t let the new goodies entice you to rush unproven versions into your prod env. And definitely add additional security measures to keep the threat landscape minimal; such as, geo-blocking.

Been running my server for about 7 months. Early on I came across an issue with my clients having their NC apps stuck in a weird loop of re-syncing and having troubles with certain files. Once that issue cleared out, I have not seen another issue since. Great job NC!

[bb77]

@Darkk

Also, since I am still running PHP 7.4.33 so need to upgrade to PHP 8 series. I’ve tried upgrading to PHP 8.2 which broke NC 25 so had to revert back to previous snapshot. Fun times. lol.

PHP 8.1 would have been fine. 8.2 is now supported with NC26.

@opensourcerules

You got it! Every open source project depends on its users a great deal for testing before they publish a production release. I’m still on 23 because I don’t use any of the apps and its been rock solid for me. I just need basic functionality.

I agree that on a production system you should wait at least until the first point release before upgrading, or to be extra safe, you could use always a version lower than the latest one. However, Nextcloud 23 is EOL now, so sooner or later (sooner would be better) you need to upgrade to a newer version. The longer you wait, the harder it gets, because you can’t skip major versions.

[opensourcerules]

Thanks for the tip bb77! Getting stuck in no mans land would mean I would have to rebuild it from scratch again and make all the optimization changes as well. Being that I’m EOL already, I think that might be the case

[just]

@gonzalo.cao

Yes, I agree with you guys. In a major release, I prefer to wait to xx.0.1 release for a production environment.

I recommend following the conservative NextcloudPi release cycle.

It isn’t uncommon to wait two or three point releases before most seasoned Nextcloud admins upgrade major versions. You might also be waiting for unresolved issues with particular apps: Any apps not compatible with Nextcloud 26?

[Darkk]

I’ve tried upgrading to PHP 8.1 but it wouldn’t let me so was stuck at 8.2. Now NC 26 supports 8.2 shouldn’t be a problem anymore.

[just]

@Darkk Please start a different topic for your support request.

@opensourcerules

Thanks for the tip bb77! Getting stuck in no mans land would mean I would have to rebuild it from scratch again and make all the optimization changes as well. Being that I’m EOL already, I think that might be the case

Are you saying you do not keep backups?

[rakekniven]

@rawtaz

It’s common practice by the Nextcloud company to not release changelogs with the software releases. It has been asked several times why this is the case, but as far as I know there was never a reply or answer to this question.

That is simply not true. Nextcloud did > 150 releases the last 6 1/2 years and changelog has been there most of the times.

[rakekniven]

@i7-13700K

Nextcloud 26.0.0 update doesn’t appear in admin settings.

Please read https://nextcloud.com/release-channels/

[MonsieurKoZo]

Another Versaillais ?

[just]

@rakekniven

That is simply not true. Nextcloud did > 150 releases the last 6 1/2 years and changelog has been there most of the times.

Adding on this, changelogs and all details of what is changing have always been available on GIthub itself as pull requests. Adding these details to the blog or forum announcements is something we can continue to kindly ask for, but best to track it on Github as intended.

• Milestones is a good place to start on the nextcloud server repo.

@q-wertz

There are several possibilities:

• you can always look into Releases · nextcloud/server · GitHub for a detailed diff.
• you can look here where the changelog is usually posted (at least after few days)
• a nicer release post with pictures and colors is often available in the blog
• another option is the forum where release news are posted

Nice.

[mic78000]

Not very far from Versailles. Now in 92

Pas très loin de versailles. Maintenant, dans le 92

[bb77]

@opensourcerules

Getting stuck in no mans land would mean I would have to rebuild it from scratch again and make all the optimization changes as well. Being that I’m EOL already, I think that might be the case

No you don’t have to rebuild it, but if you are using an EOL version, you are potentially vulnerable to known security issues, and you have to upgrade one major version after another, which also means, if you wait for too long, you also have to upgrade PHP before you upgrade to a NC version, that doesn’t support the currently installed PHP version anymore. Otherwise you are (kind of) in no mans land, although even that is not an unsolvable problem.

@Darkk

I’ve tried upgrading to PHP 8.1 but it wouldn’t let me so was stuck at 8.2. Now NC 26 supports 8.2 shouldn’t be a problem anymore.

Sorry, but if you want to run a manual installation of Nextcloud, you have to meet some basic requirements. Yes, you heard it right, you, the server admin, has to meet those requirements:

1. You need to know how to mange a LAMP stack on the Linux distribution of your choice. That means you have to know how to install and maintain Apache, PHP and MariaDB and, if needed, how to upgrade them to a version that meets the requirements of the Nextcloud version you are running.

2. For security reasons, you should always keep all dependencies and Nextcloud itself on the latest patch level. Note: “Latest patch level” does not mean “latest major version”. For example, PHP 7.4 is still supported and will get security fixes, when you are e.g. on Debian 11. Also NC24 and NC25 will still get security upgrades, and both are still compatible with PHP7.4.

3. Running a manual Nextcloud installation, will never ever come close to something like a “setup and forget” or “hit an update button once every month” solution. It needs constant maintenance.

4. If you, for whatever reason, don’t want to put that much effort in server maintainance, I would recommend to take a look at appliances like Nextcloud-AIO, NCP or the Nextcloud VM, because they will take a large part of this effort away from you.

[opensourcerules]

Thanks bb77! Ahhh…its time to rebuild anyways. Was waiting for Rocky Linux to age a bit. Big RedHat fan until they took away CentOS.

[rawtaz]

@rakekniven

@rawtaz

It’s common practice by the Nextcloud company to not release changelogs with the software releases. It has been asked several times why this is the case, but as far as I know there was never a reply or answer to this question.

That is simply not true. Nextcloud did > 150 releases the last 6 1/2 years and changelog has been there most of the times.

I’m sorry to break it to you, but it is indeed true! Even if this worked back in the days, it does not work at the moment:

• Version 23 - there was absolutely no changelog available with the release, and it took around ten days before something that wasn’t a changelog but at least resembled one was published.
• Version 24 - there was no changelog available with the release, and it took two weeks before a changelog was published.
• Version 25 - I did not personally check this release for a changelog at all, and the reason for this was simply that I expected there to be no changelog, so why bother.
• Version 26 - There is again no changelog available, as of writing this one week after the release.

Surely you too can see that the Nextcloud company is (unfortunately - I am not just ranting here) simply not releasing changelogs with the releases of Nextcloud properly and in a timely manner?

They are free to do so, naturally, but it is utterly odd and weird and what not that they don’t simply make a changelog generated as part of the release process - almost every other software project out there does this. When there’s a release, there’s a changelog. So why is this not done for Nextcloud (in particular considering this is such a big software project)?

I don’t mean to come across as demanding, I’m just trying to be very clear about the question that has so far been unanswered for years

[Darkk]

I’ve actually built the container (ProxMox LXC) from scratch with custom Apache2 settings and paths. NextCloud webserver is behind my pfsense’s HAProxy with let’s encrypt that auto renew on it’s own. The data folder is hosted on my TrueNAS via NFS shares so wouldn’t have to worry about trying to backup over 2TB of data.

I’ve installed fail2ban for added security measure.

Yes I know what you’re saying that it’s more than just apt update and hope for the best. At least we do try keeping our servers up to date whenever possible. I use ansible to push the updates to all of my servers. This is my home lab!

[rawtaz]

@Darkk

The data folder is hosted on my TrueNAS via NFS shares so wouldn’t have to worry about trying to backup over 2TB of data.

What happens if you find that you accidentally deleted a file (and it’s not in the trash), or the NAS catches fire and the data on it is totally lost? Can you recover your data from such events

[Darkk]

Sure can! I use daily snapshots via ZFS and rsync to my backup server.