I haven’t used nextcloud in years, but last I read about it was to avoid AIO at all cost. There is another version and for some reason AIO was shit and not AIO was OK. Can’t remember why though.

it is like complaining about wordpress. it is there. it has many devs. it does a lot quite ok. take or leave it.

Nextclouds docker setup is an absolute disaster, I don’t blame you for giving up. It’s also slow as molasses to sync anything.

A couple things to look at, I would probably say look at KaraDAV first.

• KaraDAV, this is a simple webdav server that’s compatible with the Nextcloud sync clients. Uses SQLite for a DB so setup is super simple. Has a basic web based file browser too.

• Owncloud Infinite Scale, still a bit of a setup, but it’s better than what Nextcloud offers.

• Syncthing, this is my current setup, just a robust and solid file sync program. You can pair it up on your server with something like SFTPGo or KaraDAV to provide a web file manager and WebDAV server if you need that. Downside is there’s no selective sync or virtual folder support.

I haven’t used nextcloud but it seems frustrating that there isn’t any really good selfhosted file cloud. Nextcloud is really chunky and inefficient but it seems to be the best option despite that.

Use docker or podman compose https://hub.docker.com/_/nextcloud/

Nextcloud does not need a domain. Ip is fine.

There’s a lot of stuff going on here, so let me break down your post for each issue:

1. You need to understand the difference between a docker run command, and detaching to run a container in the background. Just running it with ‘run’ keeps it in the foreground.

2. For the passphrase issue: https://github.com/nextcloud/all-in-one/discussions/1786

3. Lastly, if you’re not familiar with containers, and this is a single purpose machine, you’d be better off just running the bare project on the host. If there’s no need for containerization, just skip it.

Nextcloud file sync is a convenient centralized solution but it’s not designed for performance. Nothing about Nextcloud is designed for performance. It’s an “everything and the kitchen sink” multi-user cloud solution. That is nice for a lot of reasons. Nextcloud Sync is essentially a drop-in replacement for Google Drive or OneDrive or Dropbox that multiple people can use and that’s awesome. It works the same way as those tools, which is a blessing and a curse.

Nextcloud is for the same role you SAY you want, “All I want is a simple file sync setup like onedrive but without the microsoft.” That’s what it is. But I don’t think it’s what you’re actually asking for, and it’s not supposed to be. It has its role, and it’s good at that role. But I don’t think you actually want what you say you want, because in the details you’re describing something totally different.

If you want performance sync for just files, SyncThing is made for this. It has better conflict resolution. It has better decentralized connectivity, it doesn’t need the public IP server. It uses a very different approach to configuration. Its configuration is front-loaded, it takes a fair bit of work to get things talking to each other. It’s not suitable for the same things Nextcloud Sync is. But once you have it set up it’s rock solid reliable and blazing fast.

Personally I use both SyncThing and NextCloud Sync. I use them for different purposes, in different situations. NextCloud Sync takes care of my Windows documents and pictures, I use it to share photos with my family. I use it to sync one of the factors for my password vault. It works fine for this.

I also use SyncThing for large data sets that require higher performance. I have almost 400 GB of shared program data, (and game data/saved games), some of which I sync with SyncThing to multiple workstations in different parts of the country. It can deal with complex simultaneous usage that sometimes causes conflicts. It supports fine tuning sync strategies and files to ignore using configuration dotfiles. It’s a great tool. I couldn’t live without it. But I use both. They both have their place.

Try Synching. Its More of a file sync than file share/Cloud but it’s very lightweight and works without issue. I use it to sync many of my important files to have them always accessible offline on all devices.

I wanted something that has OnlyOffice integration and basically an selfhosted Google Drive, so tried Nexcloud as the most popular solution… but… it was a pain to set up, its internal workings make handling reverse proxying a pain and it feels extremely slow.

I will try out Seafile, they seem to have just the 2 things I need and nothing more.

And here I am having used it for a decade and perfectly happy. I try other ones like Owncloud every once in a while and find them lacking. It was slow once upon a time but if you changed to postgres and used redis, it improved immensely. Today it’s quite fast and the sync has been working great for a long time.

Use docker-compose with the AIO and it’ll be a lot easier to manage. There’s example compose files in the github repo.

I’ve never used the AIO image. I’ve heard it’s weird. This is my compose file for the community image:

volumes:
  db:

services:
  db:
    image: mariadb:10.6
    restart: always
    command: --transaction-isolation=READ-COMMITTED --log-bin=binlog --binlog-format=ROW
    volumes:
      - db:/var/lib/mysql
    secrets:
      - mysql_root_password
      - mysql_nextcloud_password
    environment:
      - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD_FILE=/run/secrets/mysql_root_password
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD_FILE=/run/secrets/mysql_nextcloud_password
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=nextcloud
      - MYSQL_USER=nextcloud

  nextcloud:
    image: nextcloud
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 8080:80
    depends_on:
      - db
    links:
      - db
    volumes:
      - /var/www/html:/var/www/html
      - /srv/data:/srv/data
    secrets:
      - mysql_nextcloud_password
    environment:
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD_FILE=/run/secrets/mysql_nextcloud_password
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=nextcloud
      - MYSQL_USER=nextcloud
      - MYSQL_HOST=db

secrets:
  mysql_root_password:
    file: ./secrets/mysql_root_password.txt
  mysql_nextcloud_password:
    file: ./secrets/mysql_nextcloud_password.txt

You can access it on port 8080 and perform the initial setup manually. For the database server address, use the db hostname. You’ll have to use a reverse proxy for HTTPS.

You could also try OpenCloud, which is a Go rewrite of ownCloud.

Seafile. It’s super fast and lightweight. There are some caveats though:

• Data is stored in git-like chunks on the server side. There is Seafuse and Sea drive functions that you can leverage to “assemble” the data on server side for backups. I personally use rclone mount, then backup.

• Paywall hiding some features. The community edition is free but is missing some features that pro has. Pro edition is free for 3 or less users.

• Documentation isn’t great. The forum is active so that’s helpful, but some of the docs take some time to understand

• Chinese owned. As far as I can tell, there is no call home for a self hosted server, so I don’t think it’s a worry in that case.

All that said, I like it much better than Syncthing for it’s selective sync. All files on each client are synced to the server. But unlike Syncthing, it doesn’t sync all data with each client. This is vital for me with some devices with small storage drives, so I would t want all files to sync. Yet I can still reach to the server from any client and pull data from any other client. Syncthing has an ignore flag, but that seemed way more trouble to setup than just sticking with Seafile.

Alternatives? https://filebrowser.org/

Here I am just glad I’m not the only one. lol.

Honestly I hate all these file sharing self hosting things. Looking at you nextcloud owncloud syncthing seafile etc. They all suck. All I want is NFS support in android, that’s my only pain point accessing my files from anywhere from my home network. I can already VPN/wireguard into my network from anywhere, but I can’t grab an ebook or mp3s off my NFS server from my phone or tablet, I have to have some other dumb infrastructure for it. Just (#@$^* put NFS in android already!!!

/endrant