Nextcloud
I finally got around to setting up my own Nextcloud!
I’ve been a file-syncing service user for a long time. There’s just so much convenience in services like Dropbox and Google Drive. File syncing and access across all of my computers and devices is awesome. The ability to automatically backup all of my phone photos to the account is also awesome.
However… Only having 7GB of available space is not awesome. Relying on a third party to control and protect my data is not awesome. Between space and privacy, I certainly didn’t want to take advantage of automatic photo syncing (particularly with all of the associated metadata and geodata for each image). The theory is great, but the implementation leaves a little to be desired, especially if you care about privacy (which I’ve written about previously).
Uses
My normal uses for a file-syncing service are pretty typical, I think. I’m a big fan of being able to continue computing how I want no matter which machine I happen to be on (work, home, laptop, etc…).
I’ll use it as a temporary file sharing location for quick and easy access (for myself between computers as well as for others). This is particularly helpful when collaborating on something or sharing quick mockups or images with friends and family.
I use Calibre to manage my ebook library, so I keep the entire folder structure there. This gives me access to the library from any other computer, particularly handy when I just need to add more books or transfer them to my devices.
I also finally switched to using a password manager, KeePassXC. It keeps your passwords in an encrypted file, and to maximize its usefulness I need access to the password file on all of my devices, so I’ve been keeping the file on my old Dropbox account.
Really, my main two complaints about using an existing service like Dropbox or Google Drive is storage space and privacy. Luckily, rolling my own service using Nextcloud on my own server solves both of those problems while keeping all of the other advantages.
Enter Nextcloud
I already have a server (Ubuntu 16.04) at home I use for Plex. There’s not a huge load on this server usually, so I figured I’d go ahead and add Nextcloud to the mix.
This was way simpler than you might think (though less simple than using the snap). I basically followed the excellent guide from Jason Bayton on installing Nextcloud with:
- Redis (in-memory data structure store)
- APCu (PHP caching extension)
- SSL (via Let’s Encrypt)
- all on Apache.
As Jason writes in the beginning of his page, after completing the guide I had:
- A newly installed Nextcloud server
- PHP caching provided by APCu and Redis for a notable speed increase when navigating even the largest thumbnail-heavy folders
- Pretty links that remove /index.php from the URL
- SSL-enabled with default self-signed certificates and all non-HTTPS traffic redirected
The project has a client for all major operating systems including my phone (iOS), and appears to have feature parity for the most part (or at least the parts I’m most interested in, anyway). Including the all-important phone-photos automatic upload. Selective sync is one of those features that’s a must-have for me (no need to sync all of those phone photos to all of my other clients).
The web interface is quite nice, and pretty snappy once the caches are built (even when trying to view directories of images in a ‘gallery-style’).
There’s a pretty nice app store available for different ways to extend your installation. One of my favorites is the Notes app that provides a nice, distraction-free writing interface that’s markdown aware.
Overall the setup was a breeze (and, dare I say it, fun?). That’s one less intrusion into my digital life, and one more way for me to take back a little control…
