Since my daughter was born I am searching for a solution to share pictures of our child with my wife and create a copy of each smartphones photos and other files (documents).
At first I tried nextcloud, but there is a lot of overhead and the administration feels kind of complex for what I need.
Anyone else having some input on which software to use?
So my main goal is:
Software running on raspberry pi (preferable docker).
Has abilities like shared folder where pictures and documents get uploaded from multiple users and can be viewed (collaboration editing is not needed).
Automatically copy files from smartphone (android) to raspberry from selected folder for a simple redundancy.
I chimed in on the vote for Seafile on this thread. But I think it’s worth trying NextcloudPi image to see if that does what you want. I’ve been presently surprised by how well it works compared to my experience with the AIO image.
I’ve used Seafile for years just for this. I haven’t ran that on pi, but on virtual machine it runs pretty smoothly and android client is pretty hassle free.
Came to say the same. Unlike Syncthing, it all syncs to the server and only downloads to your various devices when you want it to. Vital for my small SSD on MacBook Pro. Syncthing can do similar but requires individually selecting files and folders to ignore, which I did not want to do.
personnaly i have try a lot Syncthing at different times and all times I had synchronization problems in the first minutes of testing with few files (between android lineageos and/or two linux desktop)
(fw, ip, setup, are “fine”, so i dropped and go back with nextcloud/rsync/kdeconnect -_-)
I have syncthing set up between my phone, tablet, and desktop. I’ve only noticed it not syncing once, but as soon as I opened the app on my phone it scanned and synced, so it just hadn’t run in the background yet.
I use syncthing for backups including some phone files, but I’m not sure this would be good.
Syncthing devs clearly don’t want this app used as a sync-and-archive tool so all phones would have all copies and any phone can permanently delete any file. I wouldn’t trust that.
(Yes, there is a roundabout way, I do it too, but it is prone to errors and sync issues)
I second immich and backup. immich can archive as you want, and Syncthing can make backups of files.
Is the roundabout way file versioning? Cause its been pretty stable for me, just toss a device with lots of space on the cluster and crank up the versions to your hearts content
It honestly sounds exactly like what you want, and the support is even built in to call an external command if you don’t like their default options provided
I have found synching to be very useful for making copies of files across devices. I have it setup to mirror photos from my phone, photos from my wife’s phone, and various other things (to-do lists for todo.txt, notes and shopping lists for obsidian… stuff like that) back to my desktop and my NAS. You can set it to do one-way sync (which is more like a backup) or two way sync (where changes anywhere are propagated to everywhere else).
As others have said, it’s not really a true backup solution, but handy to have immediately accessible copies of what’s on your phone in case of phone loss or damage.
For photo viewing and sharing, I am more or less pointing the photo sharing app on my NAS to the photos I sync from phone. They all get dropped into an “inbox” when first synced and then can be organized from there.
You may also want an actual backup solution. There are quite a few and that’s a different topic. The reason I bring it up, though, is that simply mirroring what’s currently on device is not considered a real backup by most people, and for good reason.
I’ll be the contrary one: I tried a lot of things and ended up, eventually, going back to Nextclolud, simply because it’s extendable and can add more shit to do things as you need it.
File sync and images may be all you need now, but let’s say in the future you want to dump Google Docs, or add calendar and contact syncing, or notes, or to do lists, or hosting your own bookmark sync app, or integrating webmail, or…
It’s got a lot of flaws, to be sure, but the ability to make it essentially do every task you might want cloud syncing with to at least a level of ‘good enough’, has pretty much kept me on it.
Nextcloud can’t do two-way sync on Android. At all. That’s like core functionality for the product IMHO and there’s a feature request open I think. When I found that out, I basically spit out my coffee. It’s fine if you just want to upload photos you take, that kinda works (but my god is it fragile).
Nextcloud is pretty good at quite a few things, including extensibility, but having some omissions in functionality that boggle the mind.
Not saying you’re wrong, but what doesn’t work right? I haven’t noticed any behavior that seems wrong to me. Usually interact with nextcloud via the nextcloud section that gets added by the client in the file picker/file manager on the OnePlus Nord I’m using.
The native Android client just can’t do two way sync. Just put a text file or something into any folder (from the web or desktop). Now sync that folder to Android. Now edit it on the web/desktop, and look for the changes on Android (without actively telling it to “sync”). Then change the file on Android, these 2nd changes are never sent back to the server unless you explicitly tell it to “sync” again, manually. That’s what I mean with 2 way sync.
There are quite a few files where you just need that to work to use them properly, like the database of a password manager as a prime example. Mine can talk to Nextcloud natively, so I don’t need the client for that, but I was incredibly close to just switching to syncthing, if I didn’t have active users that use the web office integration of Nextcloud.
Just tested that and uh, yeah, what the hell? Not something my workflows need, but that’s a shocking oversight considering damn near everything else 100% does that.
Yeah I was just so confused when I found out that this isn’t possible. Like, it’s a file hosting and sync-ing application. That’s like absolute basics. It isn’t even “just” an open source project any more, there’s a company behind this product now. I am the last person to be angry about an open source project, run by a volunteer or three, not being feature complete.
For what it’s worth I think it works in the iOS version of the app (possibly always has?). But that’s doesn’t exactly help me either.
Honestly it feels like they’re trying to get away from being just a file sync platform, and are pushing for more corpo feature sets to compete with gsuite or O365.
Which I mean is great: that’s exactly what I needed and why I use it - it let me ditch almost all of my Google services and move it all to selfhosted.
But I bet it also causes incentives to prioritize fixes and features that are focused on that, and pushes stuff like ‘make the android sync app work like every other file sync app in history’ to the bottom of the list.
You are probably right… I did spend two hours today trying to get it running in my current docker environment and couldn’t get it running… That’s when I decided to look for somethinfg else…
Happy to share the docker-compose.yml I’m using for my setup. It includes OnlyOffice so that I can edit files internally, Google Dcos style. You can skip that section and remove the oonet network definition if you don’t need/want it. You’ll want to change the volume mount paths (or define volumes if you’d rather not use bind mounts) and change the ‘supersecretpasswordhere’ to something actually uh, secure.
Ugh, not the best marketing for Nextcloud to have a public share not work, lol. It seems like 25% of people just can’t see them but they work for everyone else so who knows.
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Syncthing like others suggested is probably the way to go.
But if you want more options you can do a lot with WebDAV. https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-configure-webdav-access-with-apache-on-ubuntu-18-04
I chimed in on the vote for Seafile on this thread. But I think it’s worth trying NextcloudPi image to see if that does what you want. I’ve been presently surprised by how well it works compared to my experience with the AIO image.
I’ve used Seafile for years just for this. I haven’t ran that on pi, but on virtual machine it runs pretty smoothly and android client is pretty hassle free.
Came to say the same. Unlike Syncthing, it all syncs to the server and only downloads to your various devices when you want it to. Vital for my small SSD on MacBook Pro. Syncthing can do similar but requires individually selecting files and folders to ignore, which I did not want to do.
@zipping2583 @selfhosted
perhaps #immich work for that.
https://immich.app/
I went for immich. It’s awesome! :) Looking forward on seeing what it will become!
Syncthing may fit the bill.
personnaly i have try a lot Syncthing at different times and all times I had synchronization problems in the first minutes of testing with few files (between android lineageos and/or two linux desktop)
(fw, ip, setup, are “fine”, so i dropped and go back with nextcloud/rsync/kdeconnect -_-)
I have syncthing set up between my phone, tablet, and desktop. I’ve only noticed it not syncing once, but as soon as I opened the app on my phone it scanned and synced, so it just hadn’t run in the background yet.
I use syncthing for backups including some phone files, but I’m not sure this would be good.
Syncthing devs clearly don’t want this app used as a sync-and-archive tool so all phones would have all copies and any phone can permanently delete any file. I wouldn’t trust that.
(Yes, there is a roundabout way, I do it too, but it is prone to errors and sync issues)
I second immich and backup. immich can archive as you want, and Syncthing can make backups of files.
Is the roundabout way file versioning? Cause its been pretty stable for me, just toss a device with lots of space on the cluster and crank up the versions to your hearts content
It’s changing settings to only allow one way sync and disable deletion. The sync folder basically becomes an automatic archive destination.
They are soooo close to having this cool tool, but many feature requests have been shot down because it’s not a true sync. I get it, but it sucks too.
Oh I see, have you tried file versioning?
It honestly sounds exactly like what you want, and the support is even built in to call an external command if you don’t like their default options provided
I third Immich
I’m liking ente for photos at the moment.
immich had too many breaking changes.
It can even be self-hosted https://help.ente.io/self-hosting/
I have found synching to be very useful for making copies of files across devices. I have it setup to mirror photos from my phone, photos from my wife’s phone, and various other things (to-do lists for todo.txt, notes and shopping lists for obsidian… stuff like that) back to my desktop and my NAS. You can set it to do one-way sync (which is more like a backup) or two way sync (where changes anywhere are propagated to everywhere else).
As others have said, it’s not really a true backup solution, but handy to have immediately accessible copies of what’s on your phone in case of phone loss or damage.
For photo viewing and sharing, I am more or less pointing the photo sharing app on my NAS to the photos I sync from phone. They all get dropped into an “inbox” when first synced and then can be organized from there.
You may also want an actual backup solution. There are quite a few and that’s a different topic. The reason I bring it up, though, is that simply mirroring what’s currently on device is not considered a real backup by most people, and for good reason.
Immich but it has a lot of breaking changes, good news is that going stable is on their road map for this year. They also joined FUTO.
Is there an Immich Android app that auto upload pictures?
https://f-droid.org/packages/app.alextran.immich/
Thanks!
There is. It seemed like every time I opened it, either it or the server needed to be updated though.
Thanks, I did’t know that.
I’ll be the contrary one: I tried a lot of things and ended up, eventually, going back to Nextclolud, simply because it’s extendable and can add more shit to do things as you need it.
File sync and images may be all you need now, but let’s say in the future you want to dump Google Docs, or add calendar and contact syncing, or notes, or to do lists, or hosting your own bookmark sync app, or integrating webmail, or…
It’s got a lot of flaws, to be sure, but the ability to make it essentially do every task you might want cloud syncing with to at least a level of ‘good enough’, has pretty much kept me on it.
Nextcloud can’t do two-way sync on Android. At all. That’s like core functionality for the product IMHO and there’s a feature request open I think. When I found that out, I basically spit out my coffee. It’s fine if you just want to upload photos you take, that kinda works (but my god is it fragile).
Nextcloud is pretty good at quite a few things, including extensibility, but having some omissions in functionality that boggle the mind.
Not saying you’re wrong, but what doesn’t work right? I haven’t noticed any behavior that seems wrong to me. Usually interact with nextcloud via the nextcloud section that gets added by the client in the file picker/file manager on the OnePlus Nord I’m using.
The native Android client just can’t do two way sync. Just put a text file or something into any folder (from the web or desktop). Now sync that folder to Android. Now edit it on the web/desktop, and look for the changes on Android (without actively telling it to “sync”). Then change the file on Android, these 2nd changes are never sent back to the server unless you explicitly tell it to “sync” again, manually. That’s what I mean with 2 way sync.
There are quite a few files where you just need that to work to use them properly, like the database of a password manager as a prime example. Mine can talk to Nextcloud natively, so I don’t need the client for that, but I was incredibly close to just switching to syncthing, if I didn’t have active users that use the web office integration of Nextcloud.
Just tested that and uh, yeah, what the hell? Not something my workflows need, but that’s a shocking oversight considering damn near everything else 100% does that.
Yeah I was just so confused when I found out that this isn’t possible. Like, it’s a file hosting and sync-ing application. That’s like absolute basics. It isn’t even “just” an open source project any more, there’s a company behind this product now. I am the last person to be angry about an open source project, run by a volunteer or three, not being feature complete.
For what it’s worth I think it works in the iOS version of the app (possibly always has?). But that’s doesn’t exactly help me either.
Honestly it feels like they’re trying to get away from being just a file sync platform, and are pushing for more corpo feature sets to compete with gsuite or O365.
Which I mean is great: that’s exactly what I needed and why I use it - it let me ditch almost all of my Google services and move it all to selfhosted.
But I bet it also causes incentives to prioritize fixes and features that are focused on that, and pushes stuff like ‘make the android sync app work like every other file sync app in history’ to the bottom of the list.
I use nextcloud to sync our photos, with the memory’s add-on and mobile app you can even have collections.
You are probably right… I did spend two hours today trying to get it running in my current docker environment and couldn’t get it running… That’s when I decided to look for somethinfg else…
What part were you getting hung up on?
First i tried nextcloudpi image but couldn’t get it to run with beneath pihole (same raspi).
Then I tried the AIO Image, this one seems to not even start at all. I found I have to open ports on the router. Will try again later this day.
To avoid opening ports, have a look at Cloudflare tunnel.
Happy to share the docker-compose.yml I’m using for my setup. It includes OnlyOffice so that I can edit files internally, Google Dcos style. You can skip that section and remove the oonet network definition if you don’t need/want it. You’ll want to change the volume mount paths (or define volumes if you’d rather not use bind mounts) and change the ‘supersecretpasswordhere’ to something actually uh, secure.
Anyway, file is at https://thecloud.home.uncomfortable.business/s/32HoxHajW33PRbf
Thank you very much! But seems like the file is not accessable
Ugh, not the best marketing for Nextcloud to have a public share not work, lol. It seems like 25% of people just can’t see them but they work for everyone else so who knows.
Anyway, have a pastebin instead: https://pastebin.com/zPyvgxYX
Thank you very much!