Update on 32-bit support: decision to block the update on Nextcloud 26 reverted

[Petrusko]

Thank you for 32 bits support !
I have 2 Raspberry Pi alive ! They will not go to the trash and pollute the planet
We have all the time needed to wait for good and stable releases as it’s free

Thx guyz !

[mortee]

Somehow I just came across this announcement now.

Anyhow, I greatly appreciate that after the initial debacle, this issue has been taken seriously, and the team decided to improve communication and predictability. This goes a great length to restore trust in the NC project as a whole.

(It’s a little bit overshadowed by the unannounced deprecation of the Projects feature in the same release, which caused just as much headache to many of us, but that’s another discussion.)

[mortee]

I think we’re all aware that support for 32-bit isn’t going to last forever. However, it would be really nice to have this as long as possible, and as long as existing 32-bit hardware have mostly adequate performance to run NC nicely (e.g. my Odroid HC2 is still plenty capable).

The other thing that we would like to have is clear communication about roadmap (concerning 32-bit, among all the other aspects of NC), and sufficiently early notice of future drop of support to enable us to properly prepare. In my understanding, the result of the above explained reflections is an emphasis on this by the team, which is hugely welcome and appreciated.

[mortee]

I’ve already offered my help in testing the upgrade process here.

[tflidd]

@dg1sek

working iMac27 away just because some nextcloud guy thinks that I am taking unreasonable security risks to run a 10y old machine that is not updated

Well, it’s not the fault of Nextcloud that your Mac does not receive any updates. I’d try to see if you can get other OS running that still receive support, perhaps there are some Linux or BSD images that can run. On these OS, you can easily run Nextcloud as well.

[MichaIng]

Wow, how could I have missed that until now . I’m positively surprised!

Having a 32-bit Nextcloud instance here as well, so can help testing too, and did/will do so for future Nextcloud (beta) versions.

[Daphne]

@Daphne

Update quoting @Andy :

As a side-note we are currently working on having 32-bit compatibility brought back by 26.0.0 Beta 2, hence end of next week 2nd/3rd February. Out automated CI tests we recently put in place to test for 32-bit target the application(s) themselves, not the updater mechanism, so any tests of updating an Nextcloud instance to 26 on 32-bit are highly appreciated! heart

Update on this: Andy informed me the beta 2 release was not feasible to reach for 32-bit support, it will be for beta 3.

[MichaIng]

Will it require another subversion of NC25 to have the NC26 blocker removed, or is the blocker in NC26 or update server code only?

[just]

@MichaIng

the blocker in NC26 or update server code only?

The new beta3 of nc26 claims compatibility with 32-bit. Have not seen any 25.x release which reintroduces support (yet).

Can anyone confirm if any upcoming 25.x release that will include 32-bit support, which was originally assumed for the 25.0.2 point release in announcements?

[MichaIng]

I mean the blocker for updates from NC25 to NC26 on 32-bit systems can theoretically be within the NC25 updater code, somehow placed on the update server, or within the NC26 code. If it was within the NC25 updater code, another NC25 update would be required to unblock updates to NC26 on 32-bit systems.

@just

Can anyone confirm if any upcoming 25.x release that will include 32-bit support, which was originally assumed for the 25.0.2 point release in announcements?

NC25.0.2 has 32-bit support. The only left issue I am aware of compared to NC24 is that user quota does not work.

[SysKeeper]

I think it needs 25.0.4: [stable25] Revert #34908 to allow 32bit setups to upgrade to 26 by backportbot-nextcloud[bot] · Pull Request #36593 · nextcloud/server · GitHub

[Andy]

What SysKeeper wrote, the next release of 25 (25.0.4) due to this week Thursday 16th Feb. 2023 will remove the 32-bit upgrade blocker so you will then be able to upgrade to the v26 beta versions, later RCs and stable releases.

[moresoka]

Hello everyone

Lately I start to consider setting up my own Nextcloud server and hesitated when I see that 64-bit is a requirement in the nextcloud documentation, so I used KVM to setup a few nextcloud servers on 32-bit and 64-bit processors, and tested on my own. So far 32-bit servers seems to be running well for my workloads (I didn’t reached the 2GB/3GB limitations since I’m only storing some work documents and private notes on it), so I began to get my hands dirty setting up nextcloud server on my physical device (RasPi 2 with 1GB RAM, now you see why I do these tests ) with the experience I learned from virtual machines. It’s good to see that 32-bit hardware is still supported

The VMs I set up has the following configuration:

• 2G RAM 20G VirtIO Disk + Debian bullseye i686 + Apache2 2.4.54 + PHP 7.4 + MariaDB 10.5.18 + Redis 6.0.16
• 2G RAM 20G VirtIO Disk + Debian bullseye amd64 + Apache2 2.4.54 + PHP 7.4 + MariaDB 10.5.18 + Redis 6.0.16
• 2G RAM 8G VirtIO Disk + Alpine Linux i686 + Apache2 2.4.55 + PHP 8.1 + MariaDB 10.6.12 + Redis 7.0.8
• 2G RAM 8G VirtIO Disk + Alpine Linux amd64 + Apache2 2.4.55 + PHP 8.1 + MariaDB 10.6.12 + Redis 7.0.8

[ronaldte]

Hi! What a great news!
Today I finally took the courage to dive into this again, thinking I might have to disable remote access.
Right now after an upgrade it says I’m running Nextcloud Hub 3 (25.0.13) And it says my version is up-to-date. Upgrade channel is Stable. How can I upgrade to 26 and higher now?

It still says:
It seems like you are running a 32-bit PHP version. Nextcloud needs 64-bit to run well. Please upgrade your OS and PHP to 64-bit! For further details read the documentation page about this .

[SmallOne]

You might get away with upgrading php to a newer version. That is the most likely blocker.

In the long run You should consider switching to 64bit

[ronaldte]

Thanks a lot! That got me in the right direction. I got some hurdles, which I will describe below for those in a similar situation (plain Debian).

I probably won’t be switching hardware the next 5-10 years, because it fullfills my needs. The bare minimum I need can be done with a separate carddav server and rsync, though with quite a bit more hassle - and without the nice addons like the Notes app. So I’m very happy that the very convenient user experience of NC is supported on 32 bit for longer now!

For those in the same situation as me:

• Debian Buster ships with php 7.4 out of the box
• NC 25 update check does not return anything unless the check parameters contain something higher (I checked with 8.2).
• I checked that after upgrading to Debian Bookworm, which ships with 8.2.
• NC 25 does not support php 8.2.
• Finally, I got it all on track again after doing the manual upgrade like described in the NC 26 upgrade manual. After that I was able to upgrade to NC 27 the regular way.

[e-raser]

Looks like the testing for 32 bit platforms is not done anymore?

[Bug]: Composer dependencies require a 64-bit build of PHP

Ran into this MAJOR ISSUE, taking Nextcloud DOWN. It upgraded fine but since then… dead!

---

Edit:

(hopefully) solved by “downgrading” to 27.1.5.1 (without database or data directory) by

• restoring $nextcloud-data-dir/updater-ocXXXXXXXXXX/backups/nextcloud-27.1.5.1-1706394934 over my /var/www/nextcloud
• and running occ upgrade afterwards.

Many double checks, backups and tests before and after that included made this freaking 27.1.6.2 update steal me 5 and a half hours of my life time (instead of the usual 10 minutes for minor updates), making this the worst update experience EVER.

Because of this personal experience with a stable (!!!) release AND the fact that

• a) [Bug]: Composer dependencies require a 64-bit build of PHP · Issue #43157 · nextcloud/server · GitHub got absolutely no attention so far (only someone constantly minimizing comments, so watching but not responding/helping at all)
• b) this should have been discovered in the RC version (RC4 of Nextcloud 28.0.2) already and
• c) likely there’ve been NO tests made with 32 bit systems which violates the promises made at Update on 32-bit support: decision to block the update on Nextcloud 26 reverted

… I currently can’t trust Nextcloud('s update mechanisms) anymore. I don’t hope but expect others to run into this very same issue once the 27.1.6.2 or 28.0.2 update is performed by other 32 bit users. Have fun with that.

I’ll check back in a few weeks once [Bug]: Composer dependencies require a 64-bit build of PHP · Issue #43157 · nextcloud/server · GitHub is hopefully confirmed to be fixed in the 27 channel.

[jtr]

For anyone that runs across this thread, an update can be found here.