Hey everybody, first time post here.
Here’s a quick rundown of my setup. I’m running an ubuntu server with a Nextcloud/redis/maria db stack. I’ve enabled collabora online built in CODE server for my online nextcloud office. On my pixel i use the collabora app and my linux mint desktop I’m using either libre office or collabora office. I’m currently just a single user and I use a wireguard server on my router for remote access. I’m fine with not having live web based editing for now as I’m the only user. My syncs between my phone and my nextcloud server UI are flawless.
The PROBLEM I’m experiencing is on my desktop when I open say a .xls(using calc) or .docx(using writer), libre office or collabora opens them with a “.~lock.” When this is opened it wipes the data in the file and resyncs my nextcloud server UI and my phone nexctcloud app with the wiped version.
Has anyone else experienced this and found a solution??
I’ve also only recently been tinkering with servers and self hosted applications for about 5 months, so this is all new to me and I could easily be overlooking a few things.
Many thanks in advance
I’ve rarely had nextcloud office work well, to the point that I’ve given up. That said, it’s supposed to work through the web interface to properly track different users and changes like a google doc. Opening up the file in libreoffice/collabora on desktop is a different process and works just as normally opening a file on your computer, including creating the lock files. I don’t think there’s a way to use a desktop office suite with nextcloud office to leverage the collaborative aspect of it.
Now that I think about it, I don’t think any collaborative office suite has figured that out without it actually being a web app disguised as a desktop app.
The lock file is there to prevent another person from opening up the document at the same time as you, when you save the document in your desktop app, close it then let it sync, is the document still wiped or are you and you open it with the correct changes on your other devices?
Hey thanks for the input! Although a bit disappointing to hear your frustrations with nextcloud.
So right now I’m not even trying to setup the “live collaboration” features (although that ultimately was a feature I’m interested in). I guess I’m just testing how well the file syncing works before I commit to moving all my stuff off google drive. Right now I’m just doing tests, I create a .xlsx file from my phone collabora/nextcloud app, make a few edits and save… refresh… wait 10 to 15 minutes, then I try opening the newly saved .xlsx file on my nextcloud desktop file synced folder (after hitting the sync button) with say libre or collabora, and its hit or miss if the file I open is the same as the last edit from my phone. Right now its definitely not at the point where I would trust a large/important file that I frequently collaborate between my phone and desktop. However, the notes, like markdown files or just pdfs are syncing flawlessly between my client devices. So it seams like its got something to do with the office files.
Anyways, I guess I’m just a bit disappointed in the reliability of the syncing with office files and am just curious if anyone else has a nextcloud setup where this all actually works… Also, maybe my expectations are too high coming from my google drive desktop sync which performs very well. Or maybe suggestions to another application that is more reliable and maybe less features and overhead of nextcloud.
I’ve not had any issues with file syncing on desktop. Android has a few issues due to google screwing with permissions and making it unable to sync all file types through nextcloud, but I don’t recall having any issues with collabora on my phone syncing. Nextcloud does seem to have full file sync permissions in it’s android/media/etc. folder, and that’s where I open my documents from, so if you’re not opening your files from there, maybe that’s the issue.
To address your android permission comment, I’m opening all my office files on my phone from the nextcloud app, not the actual storage on my phone.
Are you saying you edit documents stored on your phone storage and nextcloud syncs your phone folder?
I am seeing an issue with nextcloud not syncing a file within the folder that should automatically two-way sync. I have found that the file needs to be uploaded to nextcloud in order for syncing to happen, but once it is uploaded, it syncs normally when two way sync is enabled. I don’t think that has anything to do with you’re issues, but it’s food for thought.
It should be saving the file you open to that folder, then. It needs a local copy in some capacity for you to edit it, and that’s where it should be at. Once you’re done editing, it should upload automatically. I should also note that I’m using the F-droid version of nextcloud on android, they did have to make changes to the play store version due to syncing policies from google messing things up.
I both open from nextcloud and from the folder. I did just check my settings, and I have two-way folder sync on the folder that I edit locally. Everything seems to update correctly if it was opened through nextcloud regardless of which folder it’s in, but only the folder I have sync setup on my phone updates if edited locally and only every 15 minutes. I’ll test some more things and check if something isn’t working as I expect. I did notice some settings had been changed and I wasn’t uploading from my phone as expected, so I have some confirmations to do on my end before I can absolutely confirm my phone is working properly.
As far as desktop goes though, I haven’t had any issues with it being unable to sync.
In my situation it’s more my desktop giving me issues and not android.
So when you open office files on your desktop synced folders, they open with the changes you’ve made from your phone? Do you mind me asking what OS/distro your desktop is and what local office you use?
Right now I’m forced to use the nextcloud server UI office to see any changes I’ve made on my phone. Then, and only then if I save the file in the server UI I will see the desktop office files update… I was picturing being able to see sync changes between my phone and desktop without the need to use the server UI as a middleman.
I’m on opensuse/fedora/Debian and haven’t noticed any issues. Libreoffice for my office suite on all of those. Collabora office (not through nextcloud) on my phone.
I have disabled nextcloud office and CODE server because of the troubles it gave me. So all my edits are directly to the the file itself, even on mobile, using a separate editor.
I’ll try the f-droid nextcloud version and keep tinkering with sync settings and see if anything resolves!
In the meantime I’ve just installed Material File on my phone and am accessing my SMB server shares from my Unraid NAS and it’s doing what I need for now. I’m considering sync thing to actually have copies on my clients instead of direct editing to my NAS shares. I’ll keep nextcloud running on the sidelines to fiddle around with but I think it’s a bit of a bigger beast than I need for just myself haha.
I’m curious how you like/compare fedora and debian? Are you using them both as servers for different purposes?
Debian for servers, fedora/opensuse for desktop. I like Debian on server because it’s slow to change and every how-to will pretty much work with very little need for delving deeper. I used opensuse for a server for a little bit, but it was mostly an exercise in seeing how much I actually understood linux since there’s almost no directions for opensuse anywhere, so you really need to know how it works and translate instructions for other distros to it. I was using Tumbleweed and at one point there was an update that broke my networking that I couldn’t figure out, I wasn’t running anything really important on it, so instead of doing the instruction translation thing all over again for Leap (OK, I did actually do it, but I was already thinking of shutting it down and did a few months afterwards), I just took what I needed off of it, shut it down and moved the scraps onto my debian server.
I’ve used Debian for desktop as well and had zero complaints, it’s a little behind on updates because stability is more important. I’d actually put on par with a real enterprise distro, rather than the community testing ones like you get with Fedora and opensuse. Boring, does what it’s supposed to, misses a lot of vulnerabilities because they’ve already been fixed. All the new cool features that get added to everything shows up next release.
I liked Fedora a lot, it’s pretty really solid workstation (I use the KDE version, I’ve hated gnome with a passion since 3) but I’m not a fan of the direction IBM seems to be dragging redhat, so I’ve been transitioning to opensuse on desktop. Opensuse is pretty on par with Fedora, just a little different, but there are a few things that aren’t available of you need vendor software because they test on Debian and Fedora, release a .deb and .rpm and that’s the end of it. I keep a fedora VM around for one off packages that don’t work in opensuse or aren’t available. I’m taking some online courses, so the fedora VM is mostly used for the weird things my university requires that I can still use Linux for, and a windows VM for when things get real bad, which I haven’t actually used after the “learn to use Microsoft office” course.
I don’t do any gaming anymore or use any special purpose software for my normal use, so it doesn’t really matter to me which flavor I use. Except that I dislike gnome 3 because I have preferences that don’t fit the developers idea of hire a use should use their computer, and xfce because…I don’t really know, probably the right-click menu thing, I have no good reason.