Post Azn21l7s4OBW2KduWO by platymew@layer8.space
(DIR) More posts by platymew@layer8.space
(DIR) Post #AzmXjXxvGRGjNnOBLE by surfhosting@mastodon.pirateparty.be
2025-10-31T22:16:50Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
so, some random thoughts on #selfhosting decisions I've made as a technically-homeless semi-nomadic digital serf:it would benefit me to be "dogfooding" Nextcloud more than I do, because my partner in Wordpress crime and I are learning it in order to be able to sell services installing & maintaining it for people who don't want to use MS365 or G Suite.I do use Nextcloud for purposes related to our business together, but I don't yet have a personal install.for calendar, todo, and contacts I use an install of Baikal on a penny webhost, with aCalendar and Tasks.org on my Android device (a desktop frontend is an unsolved problem)for notes & documentation, I use Tiddlywikifor file sync, I use Syncthing.Nextcloud could do all of this in one fell swoop, so why don't I use that instead?the answer, in short, has to do with *resilience* - specifically in the context of life instability which leads to an occasional inability to pay bills.
(DIR) Post #AzmXjiJulWnnUtkt0a by surfhosting@mastodon.pirateparty.be
2025-10-31T22:22:15Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
now one could observe that I have my own servers, and can and do host a bunch of stuff reverse-proxied thru a $1/mo VPS. so why not #selfhost Nextcloud that way?well... I do. that's how I host our business Nextcloud, which we use for file sync, wiki documentation, and maybe kanban in the future.but that isn't the right choice for my personal setup.when it comes to calendar+todo+contacts, wiki for note keeping, and personal file sync - I need these services to remain viable for as long as possible even if life renders me incapacitated for months. these are core services. they must work properly and be available, or I have got big problems. my limitations in my current life situation are cognitive, and if I lose access to those services, I might not be able to come back from it.
(DIR) Post #AzmY3RMLXEQsgbIb5s by matthew@social.retroedge.tech
2025-10-31T22:28:38.831279Z
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Good to hear your thoughts on this. We also host Nextcloud for one client and also another instance for ourselves. I use it most for calendaring.From here on out, though, we are looking for a different solution for "cloud" type file storage: an alternative to Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive. We are pretty confident we've found a good solution in OpenCloud, a fork of OwnCloud Infinite Scale. Need to do some more testing, though. https://github.com/opencloud-eu#opencloud #cloud #onedrive #googledrive #nextcloud
(DIR) Post #AzmYVmTsbDRAIlKvGi by surfhosting@mastodon.pirateparty.be
2025-10-31T22:31:11Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
with my CalDAV+CardDAV setup, it costs me about $0.06/day, domain included, on a webhost where I can prepay as much as I want. so, dropping $20 in my account will keep that service available for almost an entire year, even if the entire rest of my setup becomes unavailable for any reason. and if I stopped using my own domain for it, which I will probably do the next time I reinstall my phone, the cost would be down to about $0.02/day.with Tiddlywiki, as long as I have access to my Tiddlywiki files on a device that can run a fairly modern browser and a copy of rclone, I'm in business. no need whatsoever for any other infrastructure (although I sync my Tiddlywikis to multiple devices with Syncthing so I have multiple redundant copies).in fact, my very first lesson in why I should set things up this way came over 10 years ago, when I experienced the first acute burnout of my life, couldn't pay my hosting bill, and lost access to all my personal notes because they were stored in Mediawiki on a $3/mo webhost. all I had was a MySQL dump to pick thru, and when my brain came back online, Mediawiki was 3 or 4 major versions ahead.NEVER AGAIN.it's the same with Syncthing. I can set it up on any device built within the last 15 to 20 years and it Just Works, and then I have another copy of my files.
(DIR) Post #AzmcDZgZpfubDpqjXU by surfhosting@mastodon.pirateparty.be
2025-10-31T22:45:49Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@matthew interesting project! I do tend to like web apps shipped as Go blobs, they tend to be pretty easy to maintain.
(DIR) Post #AzmcDgphGAMlO9AcE4 by surfhosting@mastodon.pirateparty.be
2025-10-31T22:46:51Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@matthew also, Syncthing is a lot less appropriate for file sync in many business contexts than it is in personal ones.
(DIR) Post #AzmiCAYYNR1cihoGXY by gewin@mas.to
2025-10-31T23:51:33Z
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@matthew @surfhosting Haven't looked at opencloud, but did move from owncloud to nextcloud because of the infinite scale direction. Call me paranoid but I hate vendor lock in even if it is open source. With infinite scale from what I could see if the app went down there was no way of getting to the file data easily, it was buried in the database and file names were all changed. With nextcloud I can always get to the file data regardless of what the app is doing.
(DIR) Post #AzmiCC3mmnbPNrQirQ by matthew@social.retroedge.tech
2025-11-01T00:22:10.638672Z
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I think I have a way of dealing with that. It does that random file naming thing to be able to have past versions and then uses an internal database to keep track of which file is at what path and which version. So a bit complicated... but for a reason. I think I'll be able to have backups of the files in the places that you expect them to be with folder and file names. That way, I can export to to another solution or restore if the main server goes down and needs to be rebuilt (but I'll have backup of that, too).
(DIR) Post #AzmzozAqKRtVvsoXpo by platymew@layer8.space
2025-11-01T02:53:10Z
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@matthew @surfhosting Oh my! Is this a Yoda kind of situation?"..no, there is another!" 😅..i thought #Nextcloud was the only fork of OwnCloud! ..fascinating! 🖖Edit: i've just read the GitHub readme - i'd only get "essential features" in my bare-metal/VM use case - i need proper block storage for LUKS-crypto, and i'm not learning how to frickel Docker(/compose) to achieve that. I'll remain in my comfy zone - a fat Nextcloud VM, via libvirt+virt-manager/virsh. 🍻
(DIR) Post #Azmzp0YzAAngF37L6W by matthew@social.retroedge.tech
2025-11-01T03:39:09.296419Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
Yeah, NextCloud is a fork of the original OwnCloud (PHP based LAMP stack platform) and now OpenCloud is a fork of OwnCloud Infinite Scale, same original company but next generation technology (not LAMP stack). It surprised me, too.
(DIR) Post #Azn21l7s4OBW2KduWO by platymew@layer8.space
2025-11-01T03:49:59Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@matthew i've begun my journey on the original OwnCloud, before they added "Infinite Scale". Then, the Nextcloud scheme of things were more agreeable, imho, so i've switched.I'm only running a single-user instance at home - it's got some quirks, but it's good-enough. Files, Calendar, Contacts - that's all i need.
(DIR) Post #AzoRMjfjMWyJcYXV1k by matthew@social.retroedge.tech
2025-11-01T20:23:07.068649Z
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Excellent! Great to hear.
(DIR) Post #AzuIFU37JdvAV9hlC4 by sebastian@social.itu.dk
2025-11-04T15:40:01Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
@matthew @platymew @surfhosting been doing #owncloud for ~15 yrs, both for private use, for a university (500-1000 users, before it went all Microsoft) and for smaller projects among universities (1 - some 10 users).For values reasons my solidarity is with #nextcloud, but i m still running both in parallel, for different projects.From a merely technical point of view, both work fine for me, but i m also very "give me simple tech" & "dont change unless broken".will check #opencloud