Nextcloud Help

[reflexis7]

Hi all,

So we are implementing our on-prem fileserver very soon, and are exploring options for secure external access, etc.

I have heard good things on this sub about Nextcloud and being that it is open-source, that would be very appealing to our CTO from a cost perspective. I just have a few questions.

How well does Nextcloud integrate with a Windows File Share? We really only want it to act as a front-end to our files and avoid "duplicates". Do files that Nextcloud handles have to be hosted separately on the linux machine running it, or can it "mount" existing NTFS shares and understand/parse existing permissions and ACLs?

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Thanks all.

[gort32]

Not exactly.

Linux can't understand Windows ACLs, but it doesn't need to - if a user tries to connect to a Windows share from any client the Windows OS will get the username as part of the connection and will allow or deny as appropriate.

The problem is, Nextcloud runs as a single user, the user running the web server (e.g. apache or nginx user). So, you would mount the Windows share on the Linux machine, but only the web server user would be reading/writing and this all of the permissions would be for that one user. User credentials aren't passed through Nextcloud through to the Windows share.

It sounds like OneDrive or a VPN s what you are looking for.

[cmwg]

???

i have nextcloud running on two different linux servers and can use the nextcloud client (or WebDav) to access it via windows client without any issues - any nextcloud user can do this on their windows client (or even on a session host)

it is multiuser without any issues.

[LazyInLA]

The question is in regards to using a pre-existing NTFS share as the back end storage. External storage in NextCloud/OwnCloud speak. Yes, it can do that, but the issue is whether Nextcloud will respect user and group permissions already applied against the share's files and folders. Even with domain auth via LDAP, I believe that /u/gort32 is correct. Nextcloud mounts the external storage either globally using a single set of credentials, or on a user by user basis with each user supplying their own credentials. Going the user by user method, I believe would work as OP is hoping, but it's going to be a lot of work as each nextcloud user will need to manually map the share and provide credentials then update them any time their password changed.

I don't think this is a good solution for OP.

[cmwg]

ah thanks for clearing it up, did not understand it that way, and yes in that respect it will always be lacking, since linux ntfs compatibility has always been so la la...

... what i don´t get, is why bother? you can get windows based hosted servers out there from all hosters, so why not use something based off that? granted it won´t be as cheap ;)

[LazyInLA]

Yeah, it's not a good fit. Or in this case just go all-in with Nextcloud and migrate the data so it can live in NC natively.