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My next ‘system’ I’m eyeing is Peergos!
It’s fairly clunky. The developer is a nice guy and responds really quickly, but files sometimes didn’t sync and I got an error twice where it just didn’t sync anymore.
There also isn’t a proper setup guide or documentation (but you can always add the help flag halfway through your jar usage to know what parameters you’re missing). The developer has been kind enough to help me through that though.It might just be a skill issue on my end of course. Though needless to say I moved back to something else after a couple of months (In my case to Seafile)
Also its Dutch translation is acceptable (I did that)
@pixeldaemon Syncthing. We have one “authoritative” fileserver running syncthing, and then a bunch of “clients” (laptops, phones) that sync up to the fileserver. This doesn’t work for, say, terabytes of movies/music, but for important stuff like photos/tax records/whatever, it means we can make changes on any “client” and it gets synced to the “server” and all the other “clients”
For more traditional cloud, I recently installed copyparty (https://github.com/9001/copyparty) w/ https://github.com/romaan7/white-gold-theme-for-copyparty
How do you set up syncthing with a host/client configuration?
I planned on setting it up with 5 devices but as soon as I got to 3 devices I started having issues and didn’t like the structure conceptually of “everything syncs to each other” vs having a “source of truth” with 2-way sync.
TBF my issues with syncthing were probably user error but still frustrated me enough that I bailed.
@yestalgia So I set up syncthing between a server and one client. Share folders between them. Figure out how you want the folder data replicated; for my phone pics, for example, the sync is one way from (phone) -> (syncthing server). For kids’ health stuff, it’s a two-way sync; because the sync might be (my laptop) <- (syncthing server) <- (my wife’s laptop), or vice-versa. Then add another client to the syncthing server, following the same process. Never sync client-to-client; always via server
@yestalgia I will say that the configuration is not the most intuitive. Part of it is just that the web UI is, imo, not that good. There’s a lot of confusing stuff exposed to users that isn’t really important for like 99% of use cases.
(who cares whether compression is metadata only or all data or none? wtf is “introducer” vs “auto-accept”? why do I need to see a random hash for device or folder id in addition to a device or folder name?)
@pixeldaemon I used to use Seafile, but it is clunky and annoying, and it will also never ever be in debian due to upstream copyright sketchiness.
I currently use NextCloud, but I have been looking to move away from it. My main use case is for syncing photos and videos to the cloud from my phone (Android) and this used to work flawlessly. But, some time in early 2025, it just stopped working. I can still manually upload files and sync still works for other folders (e.g. Documents) just fine. But, photos and videos just won’t sync automatically. Not sure if there are other options which would work better, but NextCloud on Android just seems to be broke.
Yeah I just spent a few days trying to get Nextcloud on Android working and it was a disaster. I ultimately decided to use Cryptomator to handle the sync since I’m already using it on my PCs, but I’m looking at maybe Syncthing or FolderSync (not sure which is better) because Cryptomator lacks some functionality like keeping local copies and making files available to other apps like galleries, music apps, etc.
It might not have the functionality you are looking for as far as app integrations, but my progression was Dropbox -> Cryptomator over Dropbox -> rclone over Backblaze B2.
You can nest a “crypt” remote (end-to-end encryption with your own private key) over tons of cloud providers. You can mount it like a drive in Linux.
Round Sync is an Android client that can schedule cronlike backups. Pretty much set it and forget it on my phone. I delete things on my phone when I need space and every couple years go cleanup what’s in B2.
Dropbox was better priced at max capacity when I used it ($120/yr for 2TB?). My Backblaze bill started at $1/mo and is like $4/mo now. Its been a couple years since I cleaned things out and could probably cut that in half.
Thanks for the suggestion! I have a few questions, if you don’t mind: what did you like more about
rclonethan Cryptomator? Is it suitable for sync, or is it more for backups? I’m ideally looking for near-ish to real-time sync for contacts, notes, files, and pictures. Are there any frontends for Linux you’d recommend, or do you script out the functionality you’re looking to implement?
The just stopped working was the client stopped syncing? NextCloud decided to stop allow private made certificates with its client in 2025 and its what made me switch. I went to Syncthing which works well and is a lot faster and less resource intensive than NextCloud. I also had to move my calendars and chat as well.
The just stopped working was the client stopped syncing?
The client doesn’t seem to detect new photos as they are created/taken. If I manually upload an image from my photos folder, it syncs just fine. Files in other folders seem to sync just fine. But, photos and videos just never even try to sync.
NextCloud decided to stop allow private made certificates with its client in 2025 and its what made me switch.
This hasn’t been an issue for me. I pay for a domain and have a certificate issued by Let’s Encrypt. The only certificate errors I get are when I refresh the certificate every 6 months, and that’s just the client asking me if I want to trust the new certificate.
Syncthing
I had looked into this a while back, but it seemed to be more of a point to point solution and not a client-server system. I was aiming to have an authoritative server with everything and clients (both phone and desktop) able to pull the needed/request files. I also like the ability to share via a web link when needed. Am I wrong in that understanding?
A computer.
opencloud, i just moved from nextcloud and wow, the performance is insane.
Wanted to use open cloud but they archived their helm chart. Very niche I know, but still a shame
Nextcloud. It does the job well enough.
It took about 2 days of using nextcloud files across devices to experience unreliable syncing from Nextcloud on Android.
I installed folder sync pro on android and that has helped a lot, but it still irks me to use 2 tools when 1 should do the job.
Did you try Syncthing at all? I ran into the same issues with Nextcloud on Android and I’m trying to decide on Syncthing or FolderSync and I wanted to see what people thought. I’m currently using Cryptomator but it doesn’t do everything I’d like yet.
I set up Nextcloud with RPi4 based RAID NAS. Via sftp as apparently it is not really that much slower and NFS felt weird to me
I bet my answer is going to be the least interesting one but let’s represent casuals too ;)
Keep it simple, stupid my friend :D
Well, now I see that I’m going to move to have sshfs instead. There are issues with spamming sftp connections for all the small files. But in general I’ve learned that really “done is better than perfect”. Just make it work, observe, iterate
I actually moved away from classical self-hosted cloud storage solutions after trying the usual suspects like opencloud, nextcloud etc.
And for me the time and effort (also the ressource-hogging if you don’t use quite overpowered servers) just weren’t worth it. Not when the used interfaces most of the time are open standards anyway and simpler solutions do the job:
Radicale for contacts and dates via a webdav subset. Webdav concidently being widely supported for integrating online storage into any filesystem (or as the backend for several other things like for example syncing my bookmarks over several devices and browsers). SFTP or the million tools being just a frontend for it.
One shiny platform like for example Nextcloud to do it all might be nice for a lot of users when they have someone dedicated to maintain it. But for selfhosting (as in: mainly for myself) the constant attention needed to fix stuff was quite tedious.
When I think of “Google Drive” or “Dropbox” alternatives nowadays it’s just a drive hooked up to some low-spec device and accessed via one (or several) already existing open standards.
(Bonus point: that lost phone is simply cut off by deleting its keys - unlike so many dedicated platform where you have to manage -if you even can- multiple dedicated users and their rights just to easily separate your personal access from your devices that are by design not all equally secure.)
Same. None of that self-hosted cloud storage is going to save you from data loss in the event of a fire or theft unless you plan for offsite.
I just use rclone with Backblaze B2, end-to-end encrypted with my own private key, and call it a day.
I have a mirrored BYOD setup for my media server but its all stuff I can download again. Its just an onsite cache with a little redundancy against a failed drive.
I run Nextcloud all-in-one containers and I literally have to do nothing, ever, to manage it.
One shiny platform like for example Nextcloud to do it all might be nice for a lot of users when they have someone dedicated to maintain it. But for selfhosting (as in: mainly for myself) the constant attention needed to fix stuff was quite tedious.
I have run nextcloud for many years, I would love to know what this “constant attention” you talk about is.
Occasionally I need to run an “occ” command after an install to fix some indexes, but other than that I don’t do much?
Occasionally I need to run an “occ” command after an install to fix some indexes
That then fails and breaks it (in about 1 out of 3 cases). Which requires rolling back everything, running the commands again pre-update, then updating and praying to not have to do another re-install (~ 1 out of 5).
Yeah, over the past 5 years or so I can’t say I’ve had to do a lot with it either. There was a time I accidentally nuked it, but that’s why I had a backup.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters NAS Network-Attached Storage NFS Network File System, a Unix-based file-sharing protocol known for performance and efficiency RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage SFTP Secure File Transfer Protocol for encrypted file transfer, over SSH SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access
4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 6 acronyms.
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Synchthing if I want local copies, otherwise I just mount sshfs shares from my nas (using sftpman as a helper)
some mix of sftp, nfs and copyparty
Tried Seafile, Nextcloud, and Filebrowser Quantum. Nextcloud won out, although FBQ with a few files for select individuals does remain.
Syncthing for files, Nextcloud (synced to fastmail and file tree using vdirsyncer) for calendar and contacts.
Filebrowser quantum is really good! Easy to setup and use.
