Nextcloud 11 released

[Posted December 13, 2016 by ris]

Nextcloud 11 has been released with many security and scalability improvements. "Nextcloud 11 introduces Apache Solr powered Full Text Search, enabling users to find words or phrases in text, pdf and common office documents on internal, external, shared and encrypted storage. The next generation Federation technology introduces a central lookup server, enabling Nextcloud users to find each other irrespective of the server their account resides on. The experimental Spreed app integrates secure, peer to peer audio and video chat in Nextcloud."

Nextcloud 11 released

Posted Dec 13, 2016 22:08 UTC (Tue) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (11 responses)

It's got a fancy WebRTC chat program? That has me interested; I've been looking for an escape route from Mumble for months.

Nextcloud 11 released

Posted Dec 13, 2016 22:14 UTC (Tue) by ccfi (guest, #96655) [Link] (6 responses)

In the feature frenzy wonderland of Frank Karlitschek things tend to become stable only after several years. I wouldn't dare to try this before 2020.

Nextcloud 11 released

Posted Dec 13, 2016 22:57 UTC (Tue) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (4 responses)

I can live with “unstable for years on end” if there's a light at the end of the tunnel — like I said, I'm coming from Mumble. It requires old versions of OpenSSL, doesn't support crypto more modern than RSA, is dragging a Qt4-sized boat anchor behind it, and actually goes out of its way to emulate the bad parts of Windows 2000's UI.

Nextcloud 11 released

Posted Dec 14, 2016 0:49 UTC (Wed) by jengelh (guest, #33263) [Link] (3 responses)

From the looks of https://github.com/strukturag , spreed might be the implementation in question, is it? However, being a browser-based implementation (for the videocall participant), spreed pulls in chromium - or at the very least, some browser of your choice that supports webrtc. Not sure if that is any better than the "Qt4-sized boat anchor".

Nextcloud 11 released

Posted Dec 14, 2016 4:33 UTC (Wed) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (1 responses)

As much as I hate the size of modern web browsers, they're more or less unavoidable. An obsolete version of a GUI toolkit isn't as useful to keep around, and in Mumble's case it also has to live on the server.

Nextcloud 11 released

Posted Dec 14, 2016 7:05 UTC (Wed) by MattJD (subscriber, #91390) [Link]

While the current version of mumble is qt4 based, the next version does use qt5 which isn't obsolete anymore.

Not that I know when the qt5 version will be released, but it does seem to receive updates, taking a quick look at their git repository.

Nextcloud 11 released

Posted Dec 14, 2016 16:50 UTC (Wed) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

The new Spreed app is actually built on simplewebrtc.com - not our own cooking nor built on the Go based Spreed.ME app from Struktur.

It is market experimental because it is quite new but it works pretty decently as far as WebRTC is concerned. That is, with all the caveats that come with WebRTC in general. See our blog for more details: https://nextcloud.com/blog/video-calls-in-nextcloud-11-wi...

To replace mumble you'd also want stuff like text chat, I suppose, and perhaps scaling to over 6 people and that just isn't there. Also, to get reliably through firewalls you have to set up a TURN server. We included a STUN server which we operate. Not 100% trivial either.

And jengelh is right that you need a WebRTC capable browser - much further than Firefox and Chrom(ium/e) don't your choices go, yet.

I suggest to give it a try, as that is super duper easy and quick. From my experience, for a quick one on one call it works just fine and you can just sent people a link which they open in their browser. TURN increases the chances it works massively, though...

Nextcloud 11 released

Posted Dec 14, 2016 1:40 UTC (Wed) by jebba (guest, #4439) [Link]

I've migrated servers from Owncloud to Nextcloud and I haven't seen any stability issues. It is the same or better than Owncloud. It is cleaner too. I think the OpenOffice --> LibreOffice comparison is close to the mark.

Nextcloud 11 released

Posted Dec 14, 2016 3:58 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (2 responses)

Rocket Chat is supposed to offer a solution to the 'remote devops that need to communicate' crowd. Supposed to be a open source alternative to things like Slack chat.

Nextcloud 11 released

Posted Dec 14, 2016 9:39 UTC (Wed) by ptman (subscriber, #57271) [Link] (1 responses)

Then you might be interested in matrix.org and riot.im - federated, open, (optionally) end-to-end encrypted chat, signaling for webrtc and more.

Nextcloud 11 released

Posted Dec 15, 2016 5:14 UTC (Thu) by HybridAU (guest, #85157) [Link]

+1 to this, I've been using riot.im to make video calls from Perth (Australia) to Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam) and it's been great, no noticeable lag, it works well enough on 3/4G and great on WiFi. I'm running my own Synapse server and that was pretty easy to get setup and going.

Nextcloud 11 released

Posted Dec 14, 2016 16:24 UTC (Wed) by SEJeff (guest, #51588) [Link]

Look at mattermost.

No joy with update on centos7

Posted Dec 14, 2016 6:15 UTC (Wed) by imitev (guest, #60045) [Link] (21 responses)

I just tried to upgrade a centos7 server to 11.0.0, and...

"This version of Nextcloud requires at least PHP 5.6.0
You are currently running 5.4.16. Please update your PHP version."

<rant>

What am I supposed to do ?
1- don't update anything; I don't care about new features, but it looks that there are security fixes, so no.
2- build php from source (and then recompile/install at each update), or add a third-party untrusted yum repo to an otherwise pretty well secured server in order to update php ; and then, spend an unknown amount of time to check that all the other php apps running on that server are running OK after the update.
3- create a separate VM only for nextcloud, configure fw/dns/certs/... and point users to the new address; even more time consuming than 2-, and would require another VPS instance (= $).
4- revert to owncloud ? Is that even possible now that the DB is migrated to NC ?
5- remove that service. No - only a few people use it but they'll scream if I do that.
6- ignore the message and hope that the older php version works. Nope ("syntax error, unexpected 'class' ..." error).
7- investigate recent container/packaging technologies (flatpak & co). Probably interesting, but no time for that now.

So, probably 2-. or 3-.

That's beyond me. When will php app developpers learn to stick with php versions used by major stable/enteprise/LTS distros ? If a new feature requires a newer php version, is it so difficult to make that feature optional ? I know I get nextcloud for free and I should be thankful for their work (which I am) but really, those are small things that make sysadmins upset (or, in case of "product evaluation", make NC unsuitable when a company's policy forbids third-party package repositories).

No joy with update on centos7

Posted Dec 14, 2016 6:39 UTC (Wed) by burki99 (subscriber, #17149) [Link] (3 responses)

You can install it in parallel (fcgi) with software collections:
https://developers.redhat.com/products/softwarecollection...

No joy with update on centos7

Posted Dec 14, 2016 9:55 UTC (Wed) by imitev (guest, #60045) [Link] (2 responses)

Thanks for the tip !

I did a quick search before posting my rant, and none of the results - stackexchange, centos forums, ... - ever mentioned software collections (which I've heard of but never used, so it didn't click). The only options were either build from source, get rpms from third parties (eg. webtatic), or use a more bleeding distro.

No joy with update on centos7

Posted Dec 14, 2016 13:13 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (1 responses)

And if there weren't a software collection, Remi Collet does all kinds of PHP packaging for Fedora and, I believe, CentOS.

http://rpms.famillecollet.com/

No joy with update on centos7

Posted Dec 14, 2016 17:53 UTC (Wed) by burki99 (subscriber, #17149) [Link]

Remi Collet is responsible for PHP in the software collections

No joy with update on centos7

Posted Dec 14, 2016 13:04 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (15 responses)

> When will php app developpers learn to stick with php versions used by major stable/enteprise/LTS distros ?

An alternate way of looking at it: "Why do major stable/enterprise/LTS distros insist on shipping an obsolete, EOL version of PHP?" (PHP 5.4 was EOL'd, even for security fixes, in Q3 2015. PHP 5.5 was EOLd' Q2 2016. PHP 5.6 will be supported until Q4 2019)

(See http://php.net/supported-versions.php)

Oh, feel free to replace 'PHP' with just about anything else.

Speaking from personal experience, newer versions of PHP include quite a few enhancements and fixes, and it's a considerable maintenance burden to drag along workarounds for missing or broken functionality.

No joy with update on centos7

Posted Dec 14, 2016 13:51 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (3 responses)

> An alternate way of looking at it: "Why do major stable/enterprise/LTS distros insist on shipping an obsolete, EOL version of PHP?" (PHP 5.4 was EOL'd, even for security fixes, in Q3 2015. PHP 5.5 was EOLd' Q2 2016. PHP 5.6 will be supported until Q4 2019)

Upstream support is not very relevant for an enterprise distribution. The reason they don't push all the latest versions immediately is preserving stability. If you want the latest version, use something like software collection. You have that option.

No joy with update on centos7

Posted Dec 14, 2016 14:47 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (2 responses)

> Upstream support is not very relevant for an enterprise distribution. The reason they don't push all the latest versions immediately is preserving stability. If you want the latest version, use something like software collection. You have that option.

Well, yes -- that's the entire raison d'etre of an enterprise distribution. But one has to acknowledge the downsides of that approach.

My point is that upstream support is very relevant for the folks actually writing applications. At some point you have to draw the line.

No joy with update on centos7

Posted Dec 14, 2016 16:57 UTC (Wed) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

I have little to add... You're entirely correct, the load to support PHP <5.6 became unreasonably big. If people don't want to upgrade their PHP but still expect to run the latest and greatest Nextcloud, yes, they are out of luck.

For them, Nextcloud 9 and 10 are indeed still supported for a bit longer and, for those who have the need it, for many, many years to come by purchasing a support package from Nextcloud.

No joy with update on centos7

Posted Dec 14, 2016 17:42 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

> My point is that upstream support is very relevant for the folks actually writing applications. At some point you have to draw the line.

Sure. My point is that you have repositories that can handle this.

No joy with update on centos7

Posted Dec 16, 2016 12:11 UTC (Fri) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] (10 responses)

How should an enterprise distro upgrade PHP when that will break applications? And that's not even a maybe, it's a definite, "this will break". AFAIK the PHP language doesn't even provide any means to support backwards compatibility with old code bases.

No joy with update on centos7

Posted Dec 16, 2016 13:34 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (9 responses)

Like I said, there are two sides to this coin.

If you want "newer" applications, you're going to have to accept "newer" dependencies.

You can't have it both ways -- At least not with PHP.

Meanwhile, complaining that a state-of-the-art application requires a language runtime that was released more than two years ago is rather silly. Especially when no money is changing hands.

No joy with update on centos7

Posted Dec 16, 2016 17:03 UTC (Fri) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (4 responses)

If you want "newer" applications, you're going to have to accept "newer" dependencies.

That is the problem with distributions and that's why flatpak, snappy, docker and all the other stuff is happening - people want newer and older applications running on the same server, no matter how the distributions fight against it.

No joy with update on centos7

Posted Dec 17, 2016 12:36 UTC (Sat) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (3 responses)

So, pray tell how flatpack/snapper/docker will allow you to have two complete, parallel PHP runtimes (and all their dependencies) running on http port 80?

Not everything is the distribution's fault, ya know.

No joy with update on centos7

Posted Dec 17, 2016 14:41 UTC (Sat) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (2 responses)

I do this all the time with 5 or so different PHP installs. Proxying to different fcgi sockets from single nginx process works great. And that's with FreeBSD's jails which you can do just as easily using Docker.

No joy with update on centos7

Posted Dec 17, 2016 19:16 UTC (Sat) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (1 responses)

...which requires a hell of a lot more configuration than "just install a docker image and go"

No joy with update on centos7

Posted Dec 17, 2016 21:26 UTC (Sat) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

For me, it is adding fcgiwrap (or spawn-fcgi, I forget which) to the target jail, add a couple dozen lines to nginx and a certificate. Not zero, but also not a gigantic burden.

No joy with update on centos7

Posted Dec 21, 2016 16:57 UTC (Wed) by valhalla (guest, #56634) [Link] (3 responses)

What about people who don't really want *newer* applications, just security fixes for the applications they are currently run?

One could install said application from a distribution, where some maintainer more-or-less promises to try and do exactly that, but that is not available for Nextcloud because the upstream is actively preventing it.

No joy with update on centos7

Posted Dec 21, 2016 16:58 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (1 responses)

"but that is not available for Nextcloud because the upstream is actively preventing it."

How?

No joy with update on centos7

Posted Jan 20, 2017 14:27 UTC (Fri) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

No idea what he's talking about. We actually offer exactly that: up to 15 years (!!!) support for existing Nextcloud installations. So yeah, if you want a decade of only security and stability fixes, https://nextcloud.com/enterprise is your best bet.

No joy with update on centos7

Posted Dec 22, 2016 1:01 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> What about people who don't really want *newer* applications, just security fixes for the applications they are currently run?

So how much are these people willing to pay for the privilege of getting what they want?

No joy with update on centos7

Posted Dec 16, 2016 2:17 UTC (Fri) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]

Your comment triggered me to check my Debian stable systems. (I have to update Nextcloud some time in the future in my copious spare time(TM).)

It has PHP 5.6. I'm astonished to learn that there is a current distribution that has software that is more out of date than Debian stable. That reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, dating back to 2003[1]:

> Debian comes in three flavors: Stale, rusting, and broken, which
> are renamed once or twice a decade. Actually, rusting is stale yet
> currently, but it can't be officially released before 2004, because
> Gnome2 and KDE3 aren't sufficiently outdated, and a messed-up inn for
> broken is missing

Cheers, Joachim

[1] Frank Küster hat this quote as his signature in 2003/2004; you can find citations via Google. He attributed it to Frank Paulsen, but I could never locate the original posting. So, while the quote could be fake, it's too good portraing a common meme to let it pass. (Don't get a wrong impression: I sometimes use Debian old-stable and am satisfied with it, FWIW, but that quote is great, ain't it?.)