Using 2 different accounts but sync to the same HD folder

Hi all,
My Nextcloud = 10.0.1 on Bananian with a LEMP configuration, works fine

  • In my local home network I’m using to access the webinterface = https://192.x.x.x/nextcloud
  • Outside I’m using https://mynext.dyndns.org
    I do have 2 different nginx files which are reacting properly, all good
    The reason for this 2 configurations is that my home router does not allow me to divert all traffic to the mynext.dyndns.org to the internal IP adress.

My Problem is the following:
with the desktop client I’m syncing the mynext.dyndns.org to a folder myfolder on my HD, works good
But: when I’m now in my home the mynext.dyndns.org is not operating/syncing any more (due to the router issue see above). The desktop client is still operating but greyd out.
So I created a 2nd user in the desktop client accessing now the local IP. OK. But I can’t choose the same folder structure (myfolder) for syncing and get an error (local folder … is already used, please use a different folder) .

In order to prevent this I already tried to edit the windows host file and to divert all the traffic to the mynext.dyndns.org to the local IP 192.x.x.x/nextcloud but this dosn’t work. Idea was that I do have only 1 user (and not 2 as in my case)

Any idea what I can do?

This should work in theory. However, the URL must be similar, you should run it one time in a subfolder (https://192.168.x.y/nextcloud) and the other time not (https://mynext.dyndns.org).

Editing the hosts-file manually each time you come home is a bit complicated. It would be easier you let your router do the job. Some models provide an easy way to modify DNS-queries (that it returns 192.168.x.y as IP for mynext.dyndns.org).

Old topic, but I still see this being an issue. I have the same reasons for using two accounts in the desktop client as RREG. Although it is possible to sync to the same folder with two accounts, switching from one account to the other usually seems to create conflicts in sync. Not sure why though or if this is another issue.
Also I’m not sure how the client would react if by chance both accounts would be able to connect at the same time. So maybe another solution in the client would be prefarable?

That’s because people are ignoring facts, that have already been mentioned here a thousand times. And these facts apply to any self-hosted service.

These facts also mean, that you have to invest a little effort in building the infrastructure around your server. If your router does not support NAT reflection or any kind of local DNS overrides, you could spin up a local DNS server. The Internet is full of guides and tutorials how NAT works and how you can use public URLs with self-hosted services. This “limitation” is not exclusive to Nextcloud. That’s just how TCP/IP, DNS, NAT… works.

Thanks for your repy. Local DNS overrides are quite an anoyance, IMHO, but setting up a DNS server is one way to get around this I actually thought about this once but forgot about it since I found this being a minor problem for quite some time. So thanks for building this “bridge”.

This “limitation” is not exclusive to Nextcloud. That’s just how TCP/IP, DNS, NAT… works.

Call me ignorant if you please, but I guess at least for me and PREG this was/is indeed an issue exclusive to Nextcloud client - simply because it’s the only service that is used in a way where these NAT/host name issues become a real problem as we described. You can’t just type in a new host name depending on your location. Of course you have a point saying “If you self host, get your network stuff straight! You should have sorted this out from the start so stop bothering!”, but depending on the POV it may look like you’re sitting on quite a high horse there. Just saying…

My answer was specific to the sentence I quoted from you.

Old topic, but I still see this being an issue.

This will always be an “issue”. I just don’t see what the Nextcloud developers are supposed to do about it. But let me try to explain how my answer was meant…

Most commercial services and IOT devices get around this problem by using UPNP and / or some central vendor server to make things available outside your network. That’s exactly what you don’t want when you host things yourself. You want to have things under your control. You don’t want the software to use some automagic and involve external servers that you have no control over. But in order to be able to run your own server without being dependent on such services, some basic knowledge of how networks and the internet works are requiered.

When I started selfhosting I didn’t know much about these things either and it took me months to feel secure enough to make my Nextcloud available on the internet. I don’t mind people asking for the thousandth time how things work. But I don’t like it when people suggest workarounds that only shift the problems, or ask for features that imho don’t belong in a product that is dedicated to privacy and data sovereignty. At the end of the day it is better to learn how to do things properly. If you don’t want do that and instead demand that all these features should be part of the core product, you end up with just another Cloud / NAS product with which you make yourself dependent on some vendor services in one way or another. Then you could as well use one of the existing solutions, like Synology, QNAP etc…

Of course, that’s just my opinion. And again… I’m happy to help new users to set things up properly. But I’m not in favour of Nextcloud adding more features like the ones mentioned to their core product. If they want to offer this as a separate service or offer some kind of appliance with such functionality, that’s fine to me. And it might even be a opportunity to get some money from home users or small businesses if they were to sell such a product. But I think the Nextcloud GmbH already has enough to do with its bigger business customers. And these customers provide a much more stable and predictable cash flow, than homeuser appliances in an already crowded market would. In the end this cash flow guarantees the further development of the core product, of which we all benefit from. At least those who don’t mind to put a little effort into it. :wink:

Try https://pi-hole.net/. Easy to setup, override even google.com or whatever you need + Blacklists will reduce amount of unneeded requests + perfect cache.