Onlyoffice vs Collabora in Nextcloud

brandon220

@stacksofplates Did you have any luck?

stacksofplates

@brandon220 said in Onlyoffice vs Collabora in Nextcloud:

@stacksofplates Did you have any luck?

Sorry I haven't had time. I'll make sure I do it tonight.

brandon220

@stacksofplates I'm going to work at it more too. It seems like I'm so close to having it functional. I know it is because of nginx.

stacksofplates

Ok so it looks like Collabora isn't that great. It seems like everyone has issues from it (looking at their site) and it looks like OnlyOffice might be the better option (from the posts on the Collabora site). I got them to talk to each other in the same pod, but I get cryptic log messages.

I get this message along with these log messages:

wsd-00029-00085 2019-06-19 22:06:44.514243 [ docbroker_007 ] WRN  Client session [0011] not found to forward message: o84 signaturestatus: 0| wsd/DocumentBroker.cpp:1798
wsd-00029-00030 2019-06-19 22:11:54.640649 [ prisoner_poll ] WRN  ForKit not responsive for 5284 ms forking 1 children. Resetting.| wsd/LOOLWSD.cpp:427
wsd-00029-00089 2019-06-19 22:12:07.144677 [ docbroker_008 ] ERR  #20: Wrote outgoing data -1 bytes. (EPIPE: Broken pipe)| ./net/Socket.hpp:1058
wsd-00029-00089 2019-06-19 22:12:07.145078 [ docbroker_008 ] WRN  Client session [0013] not found to forward message: o96 signaturestatus: 0| wsd/DocumentBroker.cpp:1798
wsd-00029-00099 2019-06-19 22:12:17.482320 [ docbroker_009 ] ERR  #25: Wrote outgoing data -1 bytes. (EPIPE: Broken pipe)| ./net/Socket.hpp:1058
wsd-00029-00099 2019-06-19 22:12:17.482704 [ docbroker_009 ] WRN  Client session [0014] not found to forward message: o108 signaturestatus: 0| wsd/DocumentBroker.cpp:1798

stacksofplates

Just for kicks here's what I set up:

pod

podman pod create -p 8080:80 -p 9980:9980 --name nextcloud-pod

Nextcloud

podman run --pod nextcloud-pod -d nextcloud

Collabora

podman run -d -t --name collabora --pod nextcloud-pod -e "extra_params=--o:ssl.enable=false" -e "domain=example\\.com" collabora/code

Then I just pointed the Collabora app in Nextcloud to http://127.0.0.1:9980.

brandon220

I've decided to go with OO because of its strong use of native MS Office file formats. I have Nextcloud, nginx, and onlyoffice all running as VMs and both NC and OO have certs and can be accessed via https. NC can connect to OO fine and I can generate a new document in NC - however, the document opens as a blank page and throws an error inside the webpage if you look at the logs. I am sure that it is a problem with the .conf file in nginx but I haven't been able to narrow it down. I think it has something to do with connecting to the OO server as http behind the proxy. Most of the documentation shows using certs directly on the OO server but that defeats the purpose of my proxy.

travisdh1

@brandon220 said in Onlyoffice vs Collabora in Nextcloud:

I've decided to go with OO because of its strong use of native MS Office file formats. I have Nextcloud, nginx, and onlyoffice all running as VMs and both NC and OO have certs and can be accessed via https. NC can connect to OO fine and I can generate a new document in NC - however, the document opens as a blank page and throws an error inside the webpage if you look at the logs. I am sure that it is a problem with the .conf file in nginx but I haven't been able to narrow it down. I think it has something to do with connecting to the OO server as http behind the proxy. Most of the documentation shows using certs directly on the OO server but that defeats the purpose of my proxy.

That's the same state I remember getting stuck at.

brandon220

@travisdh1 I was really hoping to get it working. It would be a great tool and I know I would use it. I've read so much about it and keep getting stuck. I don't know why it has to be that difficult and why they put so much info out on a Docker setup. Not everyone wants to use docker in production. Maybe I'm alone in that way of thinking ?

black3dynamite

@brandon220 said in Onlyoffice vs Collabora in Nextcloud:

@travisdh1 I was really hoping to get it working. It would be a great tool and I know I would use it. I've read so much about it and keep getting stuck. I don't know why it has to be that difficult and why they put so much info out on a Docker setup. Not everyone wants to use docker in production. Maybe I'm alone in that way of thinking ?

This guy post nothing but Nextcloud related howto.
https://www.c-rieger.de/nextcloud-and-only-office-nginx/

brandon220

@black3dynamite I have read a lot of his documentation. The problem is that it uses Docker and no proxy server. There HAS to be a way to get it working behind a proxy. I also have everything on Fedora and CentOS. I could build this following his guide in my lab and it would probably work but that doesn't help my existing systems.

stacksofplates

Ok onlyoffice seems easier. It's pretty easy with the container. I'm not running NGINX in front of it but it should be pretty much the same.

Here's what I used:

Nextcloud

podman run -d -p 8080:80 nextcloud

Onlyoffice

podman run -i -t -d -p 80:80 --restart=always onlyoffice/documentserver

Each container is running in it's own Vagrant box so when I pointed Nextcloud to Onlyoffice I just used the IP of the Vagrant box that Onlyoffice is in.

brandon220

@stacksofplates Ok. Fair Enough... I have the NC server and the nginx both as VMs (fedora 30) in Hyper-V. Would you recommend setting up another Fedora 30 vm just to run Docker or perhaps another OS? I have ZERO experience with Docker.

brandon220

I still need this to work with nginx as I will be adding more web-facing servers soon. It would keep the cert management and renewal a lot more simplified.

stacksofplates

@brandon220 said in Onlyoffice vs Collabora in Nextcloud:

@stacksofplates Ok. Fair Enough... I have the NC server and the nginx both as VMs (fedora 30) in Hyper-V. Would you recommend setting up another Fedora 30 vm just to run Docker or perhaps another OS? I have ZERO experience with Docker.

You could. I'd just spin up a Fedora 30 vm, install podman and run the command I showed. Then just point NextCloud to that.

You don't need Docker. You just need a container runtime engine, podman is pretty awesome

Make sure to open whatever port you use on the host. If you want to use 80, you'll need to be root. If you use something like 8080:80 you can do it without root.

brandon220

When I enter the OO server in the app on NC (16), it will only allow me to put in an http address. How did you get around this?

stacksofplates

@brandon220 said in Onlyoffice vs Collabora in Nextcloud:

When I enter the OO server in the app on NC (16), it will only allow me to put in an http address. How did you get around this?

Not sure. I didn't have HTTPS set up. Are you accessing Nextcloud without HTTPS? I thought it was forced to use whatever method you are using to connect.

brandon220

@stacksofplates I am accessing as HTTPS. That is my issue with the proxy. It is breaking the connection to the document server somehow. I installed podman and I get errors when trying to pull down the container. Troubleshooting that now.

stacksofplates

@brandon220 said in Onlyoffice vs Collabora in Nextcloud:

@stacksofplates I am accessing as HTTPS. That is my issue with the proxy. It is breaking the connection to the document server somehow. I installed podman and I get errors when trying to pull down the container. Troubleshooting that now.

What address are you using for the document server? Are you using the internal address or the FQDN from the proxy and doing it through the proxy?

black3dynamite

Will you show us your nginx config for OnlyOffice?

brandon220

@stacksofplates FQDN because of the requirement for https. I only have 1 static ip on the WAN side hence the reason for the proxy. I could try putting certs directly on the OO server and using a different port. Just seems like a bunch of extra steps versus they way I would think it should work.