Week 2 of switching to NextCloud

guyinpv

All these people need a "public" folder where everybody deals with files.
Then the boss wants a private area for some corporate stuff, payroll, taxes, etc.

But they always find ways to complicate things.

You can build the most advanced toy ever, but if you let in a gang of monkeys, they will poke and prod and pinch and push and pull and yank and tear every possible weak point.

Sometimes these things only make sense to nerds, others just refuse to get it.

Emad R

@guyinpv

Dude I can totally relate, but with a good night sleep or drink you will be okay.

Let me tell you store I deployed Fedora LXqt to users as thin client for an environment that needs only chrome app, we dont have chromebooks here in this region.

You can only imagine what they can do with standard limited account without root, IMAGINE ... I saw one laptop with default window manager changed from Lxqt to openbox window manager with yellow background and red icon text, but guess what Chrome opens and launches fine, and dont let me tell you on the task panels, I saw one user made task panel half the right corner of the screen.

Users do this, usually this tells you that you are working in bad enviroment where they dont get appreciated so they feel the need to destruct any new idea, for the fun of it. They are no longer professional and they have reasons but most importantly it is not related to your NC idea. My point if you do the same steps the same deployment in another environment they could love it and be very professional and learn it quickly.

guyinpv

What seems to happen here people mess things up but won't confess, always blaming the technology, "the stupid store just automatically removed everything I added!". The "stupid cloud put my files in the wrong place."

By always shifting blame to the technology, it shifts the blame on me. Then I get those evil-eye stares from the boss "we need these tools to work solid...."

So yes, we have ecommerce software that turns products on an off or deletes products as it wishes. Changes prices without notice, adds/removes stock, all automatically on its own! Imagine that!

Cloud software that simply moves files around as it wills, renames things, makes extra copies and tosses them around. All on its own! Nobody's fault! Imagine that!

We have financial tools that simply remove paid bills, move records into different categories, tag things at random. We have shipping management tools that retags orders, moves around statuses, arbitrarily removes notes and changes assignees.

Amazing all the tech we use has a mind of its own, nobody ever makes mistakes, and it's my fault for choosing such ill behaved software.

scottalanmiller

@guyinpv said in Week 2 of switching to NextCloud:

Cut and paste causes issues. This is intermittent. The users report that someone simply cuts a file and then pastes it into a different folder. But after this, everybody else sees the file in both locations still. Like cutting the file didn't actually delete it from the original location or something. Thus we ended up with duplicate files across multiple folders.
Note that moving files between folders, and renaming files, is a very common daily task for organizing things.

That's a problematic process from NC's perspective. Because to it, it is a deletion and new file creation, with people potentially still using the deleted file and putting it back.

Consider using the web interface for moves so that instead of deleting and uploading again, the server can actually move the file itself.

scottalanmiller

@guyinpv said in Week 2 of switching to NextCloud:

I am giving up on cloud sync technology. It is still in an infant phase, it confuses everyone, nobody understands the concept of users and sharing, and there is never an end to bizarre sync issues, errors, client bugs and crashes, duplicate files, and other nonsense.

In the case of the inept manage, how was cloud the problem? They have all these challenges the old way, too.

scottalanmiller

@jaredbusch said in Week 2 of switching to NextCloud:

@guyinpv said in Week 2 of switching to NextCloud:

NC seems to forget or starts unchecking synced folders in the desktop interface. I know in the settings there is this thing about "ask for confirmation before synchronizing folders larger than...". I've had to turn that off for everybody or it drops various folders from our system.
But beside that, other top level folders become unchecked. I can't seem to tell the program to just sync ALL things period. So every time someone has a problem, I have to go in and make sure it's set to sync all folders and that the settings to skip large folders hasn't turned itself back on.

I have never experienced this ever. I have had ownCloud and then Nextcloud desktop clients installed since ownCloud version 7.

I do always set the settings like this.

Of course I have missed a setting a time or three, and I have still never had older be unchecked without a user unchecking them.

I have the various versions of the desktop client installed on more than 200 machines across various clients.

Same here, never seen this before.

scottalanmiller

@guyinpv said in Week 2 of switching to NextCloud:

@jaredbusch said in Week 2 of switching to NextCloud:

@guyinpv said in Week 2 of switching to NextCloud:

Apparently (not totally verified or tested) we had file name length issues. Reach path character limit in Windows or something? There was a file that one person created just fine, it and synced to the other computers, everybody saw it, but if you tried to open it, Excel said it couldn't find the file, maybe it was deleted or renamed, etc.
When I renamed the file and dropped about 8 chars from the total path length, people could open the file again.

This is your problem, not Nextcloud. Plan ahead, there are many ways to get around this. But instead of getting around it, I would clean up all the subfolders that make something get this long.
You likely left NC in the default user folder. So tha tmeans the base path is C:\User\Username\Nextcloud\. You could have use C:\nc\ if you wanted.

This is simply about not planning things out carefully or not knowing your existing folder structure well enough to plan things out.

That may be true, woulda been nice if NC had warnings or helpful hints about file path lengths. Instead I had to research it like crazy and troubleshoot myself only to find years old github issues about path lengths that appear to have never been solved. It's not like they tell you "here's is how to prepare to run NC, so that you can tell Jared you DID do your research first..." No, you just have to run into mystery problems first and then figure it out later.

We also ran Box from the default user folder and didn't come across this for 2 years. Switch to NC and suddenly everybody wants to create 37 folders deep nesting!

The normal OS acts the same way and doesn't have warnings. This is "generic Windows stuff" and nothing to do with NC. This is, quite literally, a problem with TRADITIONAL Windows filesystems, the thing you are moving back to. Literally you are choosing the component that caused the problem over the component that had to make due with the limitation.

scottalanmiller

@guyinpv said in Week 2 of switching to NextCloud:

I assume it's also due to inexperienced users doing weird things like messing with the root folder structure.

My configuration has become exactly as yours.

Yes, why are they doing this? Why are things needing to be moved all of the time? That won't work well in any situation, cloud or legacy.

guyinpv

@scottalanmiller said in Week 2 of switching to NextCloud:

@guyinpv said in Week 2 of switching to NextCloud:

I assume it's also due to inexperienced users doing weird things like messing with the root folder structure.

My configuration has become exactly as yours.

Yes, why are they doing this? Why are things needing to be moved all of the time? That won't work well in any situation, cloud or legacy.

Because they want to use "the cloud" no different than managing files on their local hard drive.

I can explain the nuances till I'm blue in the face but I'll just get commanded to go find "better" tools that have no problems at all.

It's the spoiled attitude of 2018. There is ALWAYS some other choice, some other software, some other company to go use if the one you have isn't working right. Grass is always greener. If this thingy acts weird, there must be another that does all the same things AND doesn't have that problem AND includes even more features AND costs less.

This attitude stinks!

I try to tell people how to use the cloud better. For example don't open a file, make changes, click save, then immediate rename the file then immediately cut it and paste it into a different folder....before the system has had a chance to sync any of those changes in the first place.

Cloud sync always seems to bugger up when you do multiple operations on a file successively.

I know some of this stuff is not NC's fault per se, I mean who knows, maybe the coding actually could be better? But I had hoped to go more than 1 week before people complaining that the system is arbitrary just "doing things" that aren't caused by people. Complaints the desktop sync tool is throwing errors. Complaints of duplicate files created. Complaints that "someone else changed this file but I'm not seeing the changes on my computer."

Maybe all sync tools suffer from this, I don't know. I've only tested about 15 of these things and they all have their issues.

scottalanmiller

Yeah, entitled users is the new norm. No requirement for competency. People get a free pass in lacking essential literacy or understanding.

IRJ

I'd venture to guess that your users have local admin rights?

Remove admin rights from everyone including yourself and you will solve so many issues. Admin accounts should only be used when needed by IT.

IRJ

One day, you'll stop giving a shit about making end users happy. Just make sure they can do their job and lock it down so they can't fuck it up.

scottalanmiller

@irj said in Week 2 of switching to NextCloud:

One day, you'll stop giving a shit about making end users happy. Just make sure they can do their job and lock it down so they can't fuck it up.

One day, all the emotions go away.