PSA: Don't use nextcloud's auto upload on the android app as a backup

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨skiguy0123@lemmy.ca⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

I recently noticed that my nextcloud instance was missing photos. I have the android app set to automatically upload my photos. When I need to clear up space on my phone, I make a separate backup (because I’m a paranoid SOB and hard drives are relatively cheap). I noticed that nextcloud auto upload missed about 10% of the photos. I’m not going to bash the nextcloud devs, as I recognize that I am using a free product and am owed nothing, but I’m making this post so others are aware of this risk. Apparently I’m not alone help.nextcloud.com/t/…/14

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bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Can’t wait for proper Linux phones to be more viable so that we have more control over shit like this.

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- massi1008@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Honest question: what would you do if there was a proper Linux phone to not have this problem? Fork and maintain your own nextcloud client?
  
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  - Nalivai@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    There are so maby different solutions for this on Linux. Syncing folders and backups in general is an old problem with many, many approaches
    
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  - bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Use Nextcloud’s desktop client? Or the cli client with cron/systemd timers. Or any old webdav client.
    
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spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’ve been using Syncthing and it’s been almost flawless but was going to switch to Nextcloud for everything. Looks like I’ll be sticking with Syncthing for the foreseeable future.

Thanks for posting this.

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- Cyber@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I came from Nextcloud to syncthing, you’re in the right place.
  
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- brb@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Syncthing for android is a mess. I need to redo a folder or two every couple weeks because of some unresolvable sync errors or ghost files…
  
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  - spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    When I was running a mesh topology I often had the same issue. Switching to a star topology fixed pretty much everything.
    
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  - vas@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    That’s bizarre. Did you try clearing up the hidden folders .stfolder and .stversions and starting from scratch? I’m not doubting that you experience what you experience, I just never had it and I’m curious how you can even get to such a state. Using “syncthing fork” from F-Droid and Syncthing-v2.0.12 on desktop.
    
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cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I thought with this for years. It’s unreliable and buggy on Android and iPhone. I caved and paid for some photo sync app and it’s been super stable.

That or folder sync on Android. Then feed into immich or photosphere.

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- Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Syncthing or Resilio Sync for photo/file backup from phone. Both work amazingly well.
  
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  - cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Sun thing for me was absolutely terrible. If I recall correctly, huge pain in the ass because I vlan off my wifi and had to mess with policies for discovery. I found the app would often freeze and lock up, glitch, etc. And this was on two different phones.
    
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- tatann@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Is that the proprietary FolderSync or is there a FOSS solution for syncing folders ?
  
  I used FolderSync with OneDrive (in the past) a’d it worked ok, not shitting on it, I’m just looking for a FOSS equivalent with Nextcloud
  
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  - NightmareQueenJune@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    You could use Syncthing for local folder syncing between devices. It’s been really reliable for me.
    
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Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I have the same issue with Immich on android. It pretty much never uploads files until I manually open the app; then the app refuses to acknowledge it has uploaded those new files until it’s closed and re-opened :(

FolderSync has been the only reliable (non-root) backup solution I’ve used. It’s set to monitor my image folders for changes and upload any new files as soon as they’re created; this works ~85% of the time. Then, It’s also set with a few schedules to check for changes every 3hrs, backing up everything on the phone the app can access; this catches anything the on-change/on-creation file detection misses, while also backing up more data than just my images. I have yet to see that fail after ~3 years.

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- klangcola@reddthat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Can attest that Folder Sync is excellent. I use it all day (in the background) for two-way sync (notes) and backup of photos videos etc
  
  Though a small PSA on setting up:
  I once set up a new share on a new phone with two-way sync, and the app decided to sync the (newer) empty directory to the server (i.e. delete everything) instead of pulling the files from the server to the phone.
  Easy fix: Restore notes from backup (step 0: have backups in the first place), then do an initial 1-way sync from server to phone, then change the sync job to two-way.
  
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- mal3oon@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Foldersync is not open source though.
  
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JASN_DE@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Yeah. Unfortunately a known problem, even if the cause isn’t always clear.

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illusionist@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Can you reproduce it?

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- skiguy0123@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I don’t have the time, or quite frankly the inclination, to try, when I can just switch to immich and/or syncthing (currently evaluating my options right now). I will say we noticed photos missing from my wife’s upload as well, so that’s two android clients and one server. That plus the complaints in the link I provided are all the evidence I need to bail.
  
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  - illusionist@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Ok
    
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  - univers3man@piefed.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Just wanted to watch out for you cause I ran into this with Immich. It doesn’t chunk uploads. So if you haveva big video, it will never upload because anytime it gets interrupted, it has to start over.
    
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gerowen@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’ve had very occasional issues with it not uploading new photos in a timely manner in the past. I haven’t had any issues in a long time, but I have gotten into the habit of explicitly opening the app, clicking “Uploads” and hitting refresh and making sure everything has been uploaded.

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Mikelius@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Interesting, I’ve never had this problem and have been using the auto upload for many years. I only use it for the photo taking, though. Any time I go through a phone cleanup and delete photos and videos, I’ll look at the folders I backup to on nc and actually go through them carefully to make sure everything was uploaded.

My install comes from f-droid so not sure if that’s something to do with it (unless yours is too).

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- skiguy0123@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Mine was also f-droid, but my wife’s wasn’t. Experienced issue on both :(
  
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hexagonwin@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
i just have a simple shell script that uses rsync to upload my files to a server and have a termux shortcut on the homescreen, i just press it once in a few days

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- confusedpuppy@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I do something similar using only rsync. I’ve had nothing but headaches whenever I used automated file syncing programs. The bare bones aspect of just using rsync has made it a much more consistent experience.
  
  I found using automated file syncing programs have too much complexity under the hood that just seems to lead to more time troubleshooting issues.
  
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  - VeganBtw@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Do you have any need to backup things on a mobile phone? What do you use if so? I’m trying to make everything simpler and I already use rsync on my desktop.
    
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- mmmac@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Hoping you hit it with Borg backup before uploading anywhere!
  
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  - hexagonwin@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    this is my first time hearing about borg, is there anything it does that can improve my current setup? from a quick look it seems like it creates its own backup file while rsync works with raw directory structure.
    
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