I tried to selfhost Nextcloud at work (feddit.it)

submitted 2 days ago by Moonrise2473@feddit.it to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

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And it failed spectacularly.

We only needed a simple form, but we wanted to be fancy, so we used "nextcloud forms".

The docker image automatically updated the install to nextcloud 30, but the forms app requires nextcloud 29 or lower. No warning whatsoever. It's an official app, couldn't they wait that it was ready for NC 30 before launching it? The newsletter boasts "NC hub 9 is the best thing after sliced bread" yet i don't see any difference both in visual or performance compared to NC hub 2

Conclusion: we made our business to rely on nextcloud forms as a signup form, but the only reason we were using it was disabled who knows how many weeks ago.

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[-] irotsoma@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

Docker automatically upgrades if you tell it to by specifying "latest" or not specifying a version number. But it only upgrades if you issue the pull command or the compose up command. There are ways to start without a pull like using start or restart. So yes, there was warning and something you did actively told it to upgrade.

And it's really bad practice to update any software without testing, especially between breaking/major version numbers.

Finally, it's not uncommon for a platform to release its update and then the plugins or addons to follow. Especially with major updates that require lots of testing before release. This allows plugin/add-on makers to fully test their software with the release version of the platform rather than all of the plugin makers having to wait for one that may be lagging behind.

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 12 points 1 day ago

Why did you do automatic updates without testing? That is the real issue.

Honestly your IT department sounds like it could use some help

[+] Moonrise2473@feddit.it -8 points 1 day ago

Manual docker upgrade issued my me after reading the official blog and newsletter. The upgrade notes described the new version as the best thing ever and didn't mention that one of their selling points would be disabled without any notice.

I'm starting to see a pattern in those comments like "why did you wear a skirt that night? It looks like you asked for it..."

[-] non_burglar@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago

Whoah, dude.

Not only are you being told what could have and will ward off unplanned breakage, but you have somehow characterised yourself as an unsuspecting victim here? Inaccurate and really inappropriate comparison.

You knew enough to take on deploying a service, now comes the grown-up part where you hedge against broken updates.

[-] Moonrise2473@feddit.it -3 points 1 day ago

I don't know if maybe it's my bad english in explaining it or it's your comprehension skills that lack something.

I write it again for the 10th time: I'm 100% ok having 1-2 weeks of downtime, and this is why i do it live. It simply doesn't make sense to dedicate several hours every month on testing if all i need is getting 3 useless surveys filled per year. If it was essential for work and i needed 99.99999% uptime i would directly subscribe typeform or surveymonkey. If tomorrow my install completely bricks and disappears in thin air, i would have lost 30 minutes of time and no valuable data. I literally spent more time designing the logo for the instance than managing it. This is just to state how unimportant the data stored on it.

This post wasn't made about "oh no i lost millions and all my irreplaceable data thanks to nextcloud stupid updates" but how stupid is to release something that breaks features that they're using as selling point.

ok, now that we established that my IT skills are lacking and i should be fired because one single survey couldn't be filled, this is the release notes: https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/release_notes/upgrade_to_30.html

Please tell me where they say that this feature is automatically disabled and also tell me why you think that this is acceptable.

I don't understand why you think that is acceptable.

I even can't find other examples where a release is so rushed, that selling points are disabled without ETA. I never saw for Libreoffice 24 dropping support for opendocument files for a couple months just because they had to meet a self imposed deadline

[-] gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 day ago

I'm starting to see a pattern in those comments like "why did you wear a skirt that night? It looks like you asked for it..."

Cute victim mentality, but gross and insanely wrong comparison

Learn from your mistake and don't update without testing next time, it's 100% on whoever updates the production environment to make sure that shit isn't broken for whatever reason before pushing it customer-side

It's more like you bought a random white powder from your dealer without asking what it was and are now upset you almost died

[-] Moonrise2473@feddit.it -4 points 1 day ago

ok, please tell me where in the release notes they say that the forms app will be automatically disabled without warning after update, thanks https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/release_notes/upgrade_to_30.html

[-] gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago

Literally just googled "nextcloud forms" and looked at their supported versions and whaddya know, it says right on that webpage that there's no stable version for 30 yet, so safe bet would be that it wouldn't properly work when upgrading:

There is a supported nightly build, though, so you could probably have tried that

It's on you to look up what will break when you update, or to test and see what happens when you do. A major update page isn't going to list all of the things that rely on it that break because that's fucking unreasonable

[-] Moonrise2473@feddit.it -3 points 23 hours ago

go to watch who is the maintainer of nextcloud forms, then see if they could have known that NC 30 was about to go out or not

It's definitely not unreasonable that if I make product X and I make product Y, and they're not compatible, then a bit of warning is suggested.

Again, wordpress updates break plugins all the time, but automattic plugins (same people of wordpress) never break. Coincidence? They just launch a new wordpress without checking if woocommerce or jetpack don't work?

[-] gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 18 hours ago

then a bit of warning is suggested

Which was given by the app that gets broken by the update

Windows doesn't tell you that upgrading to 11 will break x, y, and z that you have installed, you're expected to go to the sites for those programs and check if they work. Same exact idea

The same company making both apps is never a guarantee that they'll play nice day 1, for many reasons

I'll repeat: learn from your mistake instead of blaming other people for your naivete. If an app is important and might break during an update of something: check the apps documentation to see if it supports said update

[-] Moonrise2473@feddit.it 0 points 18 hours ago

Ok i get it, it's best practice to do rushed releases without QA because users are the free testers.

They definitely had no way to know that their own app was incompatible, this is definitely a problem of the stupid user. Idiot user who believed their newsletter "update now, hub 9 is the best thing ever". The user should have known that stable = untested beta

Also, this issue happened exclusively to me in the whole world, because everyone else isn't an idiot like me and checks 30+ release notes scattered in 30 different repositories to guess any incompatibility. I was lazy and only checked the main notes! Such an idiot! Why I didn't check every single installed app? It's just 30! Nextcloud devs couldn't have known that nextcloud devs didn't update the manifest of the forms app! I should have checked before! Completely my fault!

Now if you excuse me I got an update to the Windows nextcloud desktop app and it must reboot after update because reasons even if there's a GitHub issue with 200 angry comments about that. No wait! Stupid me! First I have to fire a VM and use a whole week to write automated tests that account for every possible combination of settings, language, power management, installed apps and so on. Otherwise I could lose a worthless survey that nobody reads and that will definitely get me fired!

[-] gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 15 hours ago

Ok i get it, it's best practice to do rushed releases without QA because users are the free testers.

You literally used the wrong version. As I stated: the app you're talking about clearly states it does not have a stable release for the version of nextcloud you're running.

They definitely had no way to know that their own app was incompatible

They knew, and told you, right on the app page

Idiot user who believed their newsletter "update now, hub 9 is the best thing ever

You said it, not me. I tried being nice but that really is what happened: you fell for what the marketing team wrote and skipped basic IT steps in doing so. Now, rather than just admit you made a mistake that a LOT of people have made (including me, I'm a fucking idiot too) you are whining and doing your best to me talk gymnastics this into you being a victim of something

How you managed to convince your IT department of anything with a knowledge that shallow and an attitude like that I'll never know. Grow up.

[-] Moonrise2473@feddit.it 1 points 8 hours ago

When on my personal install the music app was broken after an update for months, I didn't complain at all. Because I went to see who was the maintainer: owncloud. Not their fault. In this case was my fault. Definitely my fault and without sarcasm. A third party plugin is expected to have problems after updates. Completely understandable. They're even competitors.

First party plugins instead, MUST work at all times versus the latest stable release. It's the reason I didn't check compatibility.

This is the concept I want to say. It's not hard. I'm not saying "the update process must be idiot proof". When shit like this happens, it completely erodes trust in users. It's not stable, it's beta. It's a tiny detail. It's just a number on the manifest. What does it cost to update that number to 30 for the forms app? (The "incompatible" version runs perfectly fine when the check is overridden)

But no, let's defend this behavior of moving fast and breaking things for no reason, like that issue thread on GitHub where users are rightfully pissed that the Windows nextcloud desktop client reboots without confirmation and fanboys are dismissing it "eh the cloud indicators in explorer.exe are so important, must reboot at all times, what's the problem"

Do you agree that first party stuff must work? (unless it's discontinued)

Would you expect Microsoft Office 365 being disabled after upgrading to Microsoft Windows 11?

And finally, how I persuaded the it department. Here I make a list of all the members:

We were just searching a way to host a worthless survey that nobody is watching instead of paying $350 to Surveymonkey. We drank the marketing cool aid and assumed that something heavily promoted just 6 months ago would be supported. But this is unreasonable.

Solution 1: waste a week doing your suggested way of multiple installs and custom unit tests and every quarter check carefully everything because nextcloud "stable" is as stable as a house of cards.

Solution 2: delete nextcloud and write a form in PHP+HTML in an afternoon, don't have the same problem with nextcloud 31 next quarter.

[-] admin@lemmy.nowhere.moe 1 points 1 day ago

take a VM snapshot, upgrade the app, validate it still works as intended, if not, revert from snapshot

[-] JASN_DE@lemmy.world 76 points 2 days ago

Wait, you update productions systems without running a staging environment? Or even checking the update notes and your installed apps? Also no backups? What kind of business are you running over there?

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 day ago

One that lacks a good IT department apparently

[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 53 points 2 days ago

Oh, Nextcloud docker is a joke. They follow no standards or best practices when it comes to docker. They keep the entire app directory mounted as a volume, which means it does upgrade you without you "needing" to upgrade the docker image. They have volumes within volumes they need to mount. Their configs can (and do) override environment variables. Most actions that need to be taken require running an occ command which can only be done by exec'ing into the container.

Nextcloud docker is honestly just such a joke. They should have rethought their application from a docker sense and they didn't. God just number one - Docker images should never update. It's a freaking pinned version for a reason. If I want to update, it should be as simple as upping the version tag, and it does any upgrades in place when I do that.

I honestly steer people away from Nextcloud now because of how mismanaged their images are.

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago

The images work fine for me. The problem is that Nextcloud is a complex app that doesn't really work with the design of one container to do one job. It is pretty much a regular application that uses docker for packaging.

[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 1 points 1 day ago

That doesn't make up for bad container decisions. I run much more complex containers both that split out responsibilities and that contain everything as one container. The size and complexity is irrelevant to the bad design decisions. You can have an image that eats up gigabytes of space that runs off of proper environment/config variables with properly mounted volumes.

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago

Again there docker image is just a packaging format and a health check. I very much wish it were better but for now it works

[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 1 points 1 day ago

Just because it works doesn't mean it follows best practices.

https://docs.docker.com/build/building/best-practices/#create-ephemeral-containers

[-] Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Yep, and I'd guess there's probably a huge component of "it must be as easy as possible" because the primary target is selfhosters that don't really even want to learn how to set up Docker containers properly.

The AIO Docker image is an abomination. The other ones are slightly more sane but they still fundamentally mix code and data in the same folder so it's not trivial to just replace the app.

In Docker, the auto updater should be completely neutered, it's the wrong way to update the app.

The packages in the Arch repo are legit saner than the Docker version.

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[-] matzler@lemmy.ml 19 points 2 days ago

Specify a Version Tag in docker compose and update nextcloud deliberately through the webapp, that way it doesn't update automatically on a pull

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago

You can't update it in the web app. You need to do a docker-compose pull followed by docker-compose up -d

[-] hperrin@lemmy.world 31 points 2 days ago

Backups and rollbacks should be your next endeavor.

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 day ago

Seems easier to blame Nextcloud

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[-] ShortN0te@lemmy.ml 29 points 2 days ago

The docker image automatically updated the install to nextcloud 30, but the forms app requires nextcloud 29 or lower.

Lol. Do not blame others for your incompetence. If you have automatically updates enabled then that is your fault when it breaks things. Just pin the major version with a tag like nextcloud:29 or something. Upgrading major versions automatically in production is a terrible decision.

[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 17 points 2 days ago

Docker images should never self update - that's an anti pattern. They should be static code. The only time I would expect a docker image to "auto update" is if I was using the "latest" or "stable" tag and Compose/Kubernetes/I repull the image - but the image should never update itself.

Yes, OP bit off more than they could chew. Nextcloud, however, is breaking the entire purpose of Docker images by having an auto-updater at all.

[-] GBU_28@lemm.ee 17 points 2 days ago

If you say

Thing:latest

and then redeploy your compose file or what not,

well, you're getting the latest!

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[-] ikidd@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

The forms app is useless. It's basically for surveys. I can't see how you'd use it for signups.

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this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2024

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