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 https://help.nextcloud.com/t/android-client-does-not-auto-upload-all-images/216849/14

  • spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    6·
    5 days ago

    I’ve been using Syncthing for years and it’s been almost flawless with only rare file sync errors that are clearly shown in the UI. Was going to switch to Nextcloud for everything. Looks like I’ll be sticking with Syncthing for the foreseeable future.

    Thanks for posting this.

    • brb@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      5 days 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…

      • vas@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        4 days 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.

        • brb@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          4 days ago

          That is what I usually end up having to do. The worst problem I’ve had so far was one directory endlessly reappearing even after deleting it from all devices manually. I looked into it and found out it was because android syncthing can’t handle some characters in the directory names, but of course it doesn’t tell you this. Just renaming the directory duplicated the data with the old name, so I had to setup everything from scratch like you said.

  • yeehaw@lemmy.caEnglish
    4·
    5 days 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.

    I spent many nights running diff and comparing sources and destinations and md5sums and so on

    • tatann@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      4 days 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

        • tatann@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          4 days ago

          Thanks but the goal is to sync with the “cloud”, for backup in case of fire or something.

          I have hundreds (thousand ?) of albums I need to backup. I can reencode them cause 98% are on CD, but if I loose both my computers and my CDs, I’m done :/

          I only use cloud backup for music and the few photos I take with my phone so I don’t really need real-time syncing.

          • yeehaw@lemmy.caEnglish
            2·
            4 days ago

            I sync to TrueNAS scale with photosync and then I sync scale with back blaze b2

  • Mikelius@lemmy.mlEnglish
    3·
    5 days 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).

  • Darkassassin07@lemmy.caEnglish
    4·
    5 days 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 :( (power saving is set to un-restricted in android, and background data usage is allowed. I’ve been through troubleshooting very thoroughly, it just doesn’t work)

    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.

  • ☂️-@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    4 days ago

    i stopped using it for a while because of this bug. this is the entire purpose of using something like nextcloud. syncthing is much worse, so…

    • skiguy0123@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      51·
      5 days 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.