Windows Desktop Client fails to download and stalls

📱 Desktop & mobile clients 💻 Desktop
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1

Windows desktop client 3.13.2 changed behaviour after updating Nextcloud server to 29.0.4. Files selected via the Windows Explorer dialogue do not download (windows times out). Thereafter new files added via the windows explorer dialogue do not get uploaded, client sync is triggered once the file has been added but the sync is stalled and does not complete. If the client is restarted, or the sync connection deleted and recreated, or .sync*.db deleted, then new files and deletions are correctly synced. A right-click request to make a file always available locally also stalls and client has to be restarted. Webdav is working fine. No error log data can be found.

Issue reported is on PC running Windows 10 professional, issue not found on Laptop running Windows 10 Home Edition. NC debug archive shows some sort of issue around ‘hydration’ which is cancelled. Note that there are persistent permissions issues with the PC & W10 professional which do not occur on the laptop with W10 Home Edition. I am struggling to pinpoint content in the logs specific to the problem.

When clicking a file to open in windows explorer, the sync symbol changes from cloud to the download arrows and the windows % complete dialogue opens, NC client also displays the blue sync mode icon but the sync never completes.

If ‘skip’ is pressed after the windows dialogue timeout the % download acts out a download completing and, for my xlsx file, opens Excel - which then reports that the file format is not valid.

2

What did you use before?

If you go through the files and folder with the webinterface, or a native webdav client (e.g. winSCP), there is no problem, even if you upload larger number of files?

You don’t have by chance a different NC setup, so you could check if your desktop clients have an issue with the other setup as well. With the update, and the stalling uploads, it looks a bit like server issues, but that should create some errors in the logs.

If you check with top the load on the server during the clients try to upload, is everything at 100% maxing out? iotop?

3

Thank you very much for responding to my plea for help.

Before was a 28.x.x version of NC server.

Web interface OK, webdav via an Android app OK.

I pulled my PC out of hibernate to investigate as you suggested and, to my astonishment, all worked ok! Whilst good to get back to normal, it is exasperating to have had a transient issue with little hope of finding out what was amiss.

To be sure, I have restarted all system from fresh and all is good.

In summary, after carrying out an update of NC server from 28.x.x to 29.0.4 via the NC update web interface, my windows NC client became problematic. After some time elapsed, proper operation re-appeared.

4

I have seen hickups on the web interface after updates, when some content from the old version was still cached by the browser. But for the desktop client, not sure where that should happen.