Submitted 17 hours ago by otto@programming.dev to selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Nextcloud asked in a poll at mastodon.social/…/115095096413238457 what database its users are running. Interestingly one fifth replied they don’t know. Should people know better where their data is stored, or is it a good thing everything is running so smoothly people don’t need to know what their software stack is built upon?
That is actually good news. Means that people more likely to be “normies” are adopting an alternative solution.
I mean… I set it up many many years ago… Without looking it up I can also just guess.
Nextcloud is pushed as an easy to use docker setup these days, heck most people I know who “use” it don’t do much with it at all so what database it is using is gonna be way back in their list of priorities…
Plus the users outweigh the admins surely (as in those that just install then forget)
If you’re running it in a prebuilt container, as long as it works it shouldn’t matter.
Of course, when your database gets corrupted after Nextcloud updates because you had an app running that isn’t supported in the new version, it will suddenly matter a lot.
I‘m using a hosted Nextcloud instance from Hetzner and I have no idea what this is running on either. There’s a significant number of people who didn’t set up their Nextcloud instance, so people not knowing what it’s running on isn’t too surprising.
Will Nextcloud run apps not marked as compatible with that version?
No.
I write software for a living, and have worked with all 3 database options in the past. I don’t know what DB backend my nextcloud server is using, nor do I care.
Yeah, that is the kind of concern for the service developer or a very opinionated sys admin. For self-hosting, few people will reach the workload where such a decision has any material or measurable impact.
Exactly. Unless you are actively doing maintenance, there is no need to remember what DB you are using. It took me 3 minutes just to remember my nextcloud setup since it’s fully automated.
It’s the whole point of using tiered services. Do you also worry about your wifi link-level retransmissions when you are running curl?
Self hosting doesn’t mean “being wasteful and letting containers duplicate services”. I want to know which DB application X is using, so I pool it for applications Y and Z.
I also have no idea if my place has PVC or galvanized steel plumbing; or its designed electrical load. Why should users care about the DBMS.
I found this way funnier then I think you meant it… PVC wasn’t persistent volume claim was it?
Unless he installed kubernetes pipes, no.
Every person using a computer should know what their filesystem is and what database they are using. Otherwise they are fools.
Can you believe kids don’t know what NTFs or APFS are these days?!
Haha at some point it did matter to regular folks though. I remember in Junior high when I would try to pirate games or software on Windows, I learned the big difference between fat32 and the new filesystem Microsoft released, NTFS because I couldn’t download files larger than 4GB on fat32.
It’s important if you’re using flash drives although even that’s pretty rare these days. My wife has run into this problem by formatting as NTFS (GUID partition table) when print shops’ terrible machines only support FAT32 and/or MBR partition tables.
Thankfully our Macs understand NTFS otherwise those formatted drives from her Windows work computer wouldn’t even work at home.
At that point, were you regular folks though?
I still have a FAT32 external drive that this (very) rarely still bites me 😫 there’s nothing important on it, so I’ve been lazy
Holy Poe’s Law…
Wait is APFS a new file system than NTFS? Guess I’m too busy on my Tiktoks and Nintendos to keep up to date
Damn kids with your twitternets and me mes.
Armor piercing fin stabilized.
It’s used on popular toys and consumer gadgets. Most well to do tech nerds don’t bother with such riff raff either.
Kids don’t event know the folder struture of their Home directory, so why would they know what a File System is? Lol
Sir, this is a Wendy’s :)
That kid is never going to figure out if they downloaded the assignment pdf to “Downloads (iPad)” or “Downloads (iCloud)”
I don’t think it matters
You could deploy a container and not know what DB is used
The rule of internet polls is that the funniest answer is always over-represented.
People don’t care and/or haven’t looked at the serverinfo page. That actually mentions the type of database in use.
So the “I don’t know” option was probably just the easiest.
My instance did required me to fix some db issue after an update(it still works but the fix was recommended*). So I knew I am using mariadb. Its not super smooth sailing.
Well that’s kind of misleading, right? If they didn’t set one up, then it’s probably SQLite. But if they did set one up, that was years ago, and who cares what it is, if it’s working.
Isn’t that the whole point of containerised solutions? Having some pre-setup, auto-updating solution with very little requirement to dive into the details like what your database is and which dependencies you need to manage…
You still need to know what database system is being used in order to make backups of the database. You can’t just snapshot or backup the data directory while a database is running, because you might end up with an inconsistent state that won’t restore properly. You need to either stop the DB before doing the backup, or use the relevant DB-specific tools to perform a backup.
Most of my containerized solutions do that for me.
So one in five doesn’t do proper backups. That’s much better than expected… 😅
I’ve made a choice a while ago while deploying Nextcloud. Now I don’t care, as I trust myself that I have opted for something reasonable which was hopefully not SQLite
why the hate for SQLite?
SQLite is awesome, but of course not for every project.
*18% of the people who answered a poll on Mastodon
Honestly, does it matter to a regular user?
There will be some that do matter, if I were to run NC I would use Lite because why throw the data to another process just to write it to a disk when I only have a single node.
Well it does depend on your exact use case, but using a proper database is usually the better option for production. Now if this is just some little service you made for yourself use whatever you want.
SQLite is a proper database. Realistically you’ll never exhaust its 278tb storage limits, it’s thoroughly battle tested, and it’s dead easy to backup.
I doubt nextcloud is running enough parallel db writes for this to actually matter — and if it is WAL mode is still probably good enough.
Once you have multiple software clients running then you will need a client server dbms like Postgres. For most home or group installations, this should not be an issue.
Since Nextcloud stores your actually data on the disk, it doesn’t actually matter all that much tbh
And 46% have no idea what a database is.
it's a spreadsheet right?
Users is the right word here, not admin, not sysadmin, not owner. Docker pull docker up users that’s it
Also just users. No docker or anything, just using the system someone else setup for them.
NextCloud is used everywhere, also in commercial use.
I can’t believe they asked end users, the question is sent over the fediverse, not X or Bsky…
Or else they would have received tons of « it’s missing my Nextcloud runs on Samsung S24 » comments
That’s because they push the all in one container.
If some of them are users rather than admins, it makes sense and maybe it’s a good sign that they don’t have to know in order to use the service.
Honestly I think if there is a hope for greater detach from “The Cloud” more broadly, it’s a testament to nextcloud that folks that don’t even know enough to know what DB they are running are able to run a server, and host things well enough to consider themselves.
This statement brought was to you by someone that set up nextcloud and had no clue what DB it was using.
Who cares.
I’m only on MariaDB because I have brain worms, I have so little data on there SQLite would have been totally fine. 🪱 🪱 🪱
SQLite actually has incredible performance these days. But I get your point :)
Exactly. Who gives a shit?
I mean… I could recite the exact setup of mine in detail, but I’d probably be happier if my brain matter was dedicated to something else. Do not shame the ignorant. Envy them.
I can think of few things more boring than databases. I just want my files synced and stored.
I don’t even know myself because I installed it via YunoHost
Same here with Freedombox.
A Freedombox user in the wild!! I’ve been following the project since 2011 but I never thought it really achieved its potential. How do you use yours, and how do you find it?
Yes that’s me. I have no idea where my Nextcloud uses
You can install NextCloud with snap.
Yeah, and after having dealt with the “I missed a few updates and then the last one put my files out of sync with my schema” Docker issues, I’m very much happy to use the snap. Been on that a couple years and it’s been quite solid, even if I did have to install snapd on my Debian base for it
Mine is managed hosted so I don’t know.
I did know when I set it up, but I can’t remember right now. I can easily go check though.
Same. I’m glad I don’t have to think about databases usually.
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 minutes ago
Theres heaps of hosted nextcloud services. Those users wouldn’t know.