 And we are live welcome to the homelab show episode 15 We're gonna talk about next cloud and it's perfect timing We'd plan this and the next hot has some updates. So bonus great Yeah, I checked my news feed this morning when I first woke up, you know, my my eyes are blurry I'm just hoping to get some caffeine in my system. I checked the news. Oh new next cloud What a coincidence. We're doing the next cloud episode today Yeah, we actually I think Tuesday is when we decided to do this The circumstances of life occurred on Wednesday. So now it's Thursday and yeah, I was just like hey cool Yeah, it worked out really well. So I'm really happy to talk about next cloud It's one of my favorite apps that you can host yourself So we're gonna talk about that why you might want to use it. Who's it for? What's the setup process like the things I like about it the things? I don't like about it. I'm sure Tom will have some thoughts, too He said it up before so it's gonna be fun Yes, and where could possibly one host next cloud either in your own server or maybe on the node Yep, they have a one-click marketplace app for it Oh, it's which is great because if you just want to get it going then you can get it going and You know, some people might ask if especially if they're new to the show, you know Why are you talking about a cloud provider? This is a show about home lab. Well Sometimes you're making an intelligent decision as far as what you want inside your network and what you want outside your network And I've always had a mix of both and next cloud is portable you can just tell it wherever you want and Linode has it as a marketplace app. You could just set it up. You could click on that You probably want an instant size. I'll get to that later. Probably two gigs or higher But we'll talk about that. Yeah, it's a sponsor of the show. That's why I brought them up So this is completely not hiding it. If you're listening to the show, you've hit the website. You're actually viewing this on Linode literally, yeah, we did this entire operation for our podcast here is on Linode and my entire operation on learn Linux TV is on Linode and Honestly, I know you guys hear this a lot But they're a sponsor of my channel and a sponsor of this podcast because we actually like it It's not gonna be one of those things. Oh really we have to use them as a sponsor I guess I'll go along with it, but we really like it and they have an amazing service. I actually use it It's like all the things that learn Linux TV that are public-facing are on Linode Yes, it's it's a great service What do you say we run this on there? We do have an offer code down below for the homelab show It's in the show notes. It's in the links. It'll get you started with there and then of course like Jay said they do have a Next cloud installer which takes some of the pain out if you I mean Hey, we're all for and encourage people to learn to all themselves But if you want to try it and decide if you even want to play with this product that one click install Essentially the Linode makes it really easy to get deployed to at least play with it first. I you know auto scripts I got a love hate relationship with and so does Jay like I want to get something working really fast But I also love understanding how it works But sometimes you just want to test it out and test drive it so go ahead and use our offer code Linode get signed up and take take next cloud for a test drive see if you like it and start your learning path there And we're gonna talk about the automatic methods Versus doing it manually and like Tom said, I mean I do it manually all the time. I like it It gives me it makes me understand it better, but also let's be honest have a YouTube channel I'm not gonna create a video that snap install next cloud although we'll talk about it because that's all of like a two-minute video, but You know it is what it is This is the the type of learning that we like and we like to host our own stuff. So yep company So we should probably start with defining what is next cloud? What is next cloud? So next cloud it's it has a new name now which I'll get to in a minute, but we're always gonna refer to it as next cloud So it's a suite of applications that you can install on your server And they're you know next cloud itself gives you the ability to have various apps There's some that come with it and there's others that you can you know basically install and there's a ginormous number of apps I mean this isn't like your NAS pro, you know that your NAS solution that has like ten different apps You can install. I mean we're talking I don't even know how many like there's a bunch Everything from an ebook reader to bookmark sync for your browser. There's calendar. There's chat All kinds of things now don't go installing all the things that you see that are available We'll talk about that too, but it's basically a hub of different apps They name themselves or rename themselves next cloud hub, which is the new name as a version 18 and that makes sense because they're targeting enterprise and They're a hub or they're trying to be the hub that enterprises use for their group where basically and So basically that's what it's for generally speaking enterprises and companies, but let's be honest What apps do we host ourselves that are not intended for the enterprise and companies originally and we're here just hosting it on our own Stack in our house That's not stopped us before and next cloud is used by a lot of people Even people that are not part of companies that just want to de-google. They just want their own Online collaborative editing for their family or maybe just themselves and they don't really want to Have their data in a cloud environment that they don't control next cloud gives you that so that's why even though it's for companies Mostly, it's great for us Yes, the Challenges, I mean we mean you talk a little about this like de-google filing your life A lot of people use the collaborative tools provided by large cloud providers such as Google or Microsoft Those all come with different pros and cons one Obviously is the fact that there are certain amounts of fees that maybe pets be paid to those companies The other sacrifice may be if it's free. You're the product that is paid Companies so you have the concerns of whether or not your data is privacy Oriented whether or not it's you know due diligence is being done about your privacy on there These are all valid concerns that people have which is pushing the popularity of next cloud Exactly, and there's no judgment if you if you like Google services, that's great if it works for you That's awesome. I think the best part of home lab is you can decide what you care about Maybe virtualization is your thing and networking and stuff like that. That's what you want to focus on You don't want to focus on your you know office editing and email and all these other things Let a company handle that or maybe you do care about that You'd rather not let a company handle that for you You want to take that into your home as well and as home lab people? We have full control to host whatever we want and not host whatever we really don't resonate with so Next cloud is a great choice for people that want to have their own collaborative editing Their own syncing utility. I don't think I mentioned that in a list of features like cave earlier Which I should have that's a big one. We'll talk about so there's definitely a lot of great things about next cloud Absolutely, and I see people commenting. Yes, you will have to deal with some certificates in there we not only it's a challenge because you really want a Valid cert when you're setting up next lot if you don't have a valid cert It's it's definitely one of the challenges. Good news is I've talked about this before and I believe I have you Done some videos on setting up certificates. Yeah, I have at least a good one for h a proxy. I know I have I you know now that you mentioned it I think I probably should create a standalone video for next cloud or excuse me for let's encrypt But usually what I do is I set it up as part of the topic So I'm going to be updating my next cloud video I don't remember off the top my head if I used let's encrypt to do ssl in that video I could tell you that the new one will I'm going to be redoing it, but it's not going to be that different Don't worry. You can still use the video I have now for the newest version of next cloud totally fine No need to wait. It's just a minor update. But yeah, usually that's how I do it just as part of the particular topic at hand But it's a great thing to have. In fact, you really should let's encrypt is free. So why not? Yep And uh, do they have that fully integrated now for doing the certificates in lexcel? That's a little separate piece, isn't it? That's a good question. I don't know because sometimes I don't know if this happens for you. I I get so used to the manual way that I keep Check to see if it's automated like I saw True nas at some point got the ability to do let's encrypt in its UI It doesn't integrate with linode yet. Unfortunately But it's there and they snuck that in at some point and I and I I had this manual github downloaded Thing that allowed you to you know set up let's encrypt that I now no longer need apparently so yeah They could I hope I hope they do that would be a great thing to have absolutely now one of the things I like about it is It kind of forces you to think about security and backups, but not in a way that I feel is mundane At least for me. I've always felt like Next cloud it might be a little complicated sometimes, but it's not like a google search is going to steer you wrong 99 of the time I find whatever I need on a google search probably within 15 minutes And someone's already run into it. So they have a security scanner and we'll talk more about security later, but It um causes you to think about those types of things and it's kind of fun to use next cloud and then think about But what what am I not doing so well that I could tighten up when it comes to security and it's it's great to see how You can modify it For example, which versions of tls are you supporting? Maybe it's time to just play around with that and sunset some of the older versions in Apache and so on What we'll get to that And one thing I want to talk about is sync synchronizing files this at least when I first started With own cloud, which is what it was previously long story. I'm not going to get into that There's a history you can find on that to stick How the on own cloud transition net cloud or some good reading you can do on that. It's a rabbit hole though Yeah, it is taking a rabbit hole One of the versions of my book mastering a boon to server not the newest one. It's good. Trust me An older version out of the first edition or the second edition. I think it was the first edition I was Showing how to set up own cloud and they changed the name like right as it was going to press like if I was just a week earlier I could have Did a find and replace because at that time that's all it was Um, but that's when you cover tech like tom and I we uh, we have to sometimes just go back and redo things sometimes Um, yeah, anyway Um, so synchronizing files that was the thing that most people talked about like yeah, you can edit documents Collaboratively but everybody was really excited about the syncing And it's not the core feature, but it kind of seemed like it because that's what everybody was talking about and um I don't use it for that. I use sync thing. That's always been my tried and true But it's there's nothing wrong with the next cloud sync in my opinion It does have bad reputation if you search for next cloud sync You'll probably still find people complaining about it, but it's from a while back And those complaints are valid. It was bad. It was unreliable. You probably were going to have some data loss duplicated files All kinds of shenanigans going on with that, but after a while it um stabilized and I actually used it for syncing Everything for about a year The only reason why I stopped is because I like the fact that sync thing is you know, do one thing do one thing Well, it syncs. That's all it does. I kind of like that being standalone and not yeah upon next cloud Um, but again, there's no problem. I didn't run into any issues. It was solid So um, whatever issues they had that resulted in their bad reputation I feel personally unless they have new bugs. It's it's pretty solid now Yeah, and that's one of the I did a video in people say I'm comparing apples and oranges And in some way I am but I was actually just making the use case why Syncing is how I do a lot of things and granted it's because it's a very focused particular way of synchronizing things. It's not the Everything that next cloud offers. So one of the reasons and we don't need everything the next cloud offers At least my needs in my business are not for that so It comes on the use case and if you only have a need for syncing next cloud is kind of overkill for doing it Just that way too So if you go, you know, all I really want to do is synchronize four different people Four different systems and this data next cloud may or may not be the right choice for that It's like because it has a lot of other great features that we're going to cover But it's not as narrowly focused as something like sync thing Correct. Yep. And I think the apps that they offer Are great There's there's just an overwhelming number I mean, it's almost like you get like when I got a smartphone for the very first time And then you go to the app store. It's not like that I mean, there's not like tens of thousands of apps or anything like that But it's just kind of like, oh, I could try this I could try that and that looks cool It's like being a kid in a candy store again, right? Just have all these things and it's fun But and I think that's a great thing I really do and I think anyone who installs next next cloud should check those apps and just see what's being offered but I will caution you guys though because It's not all rainbows and all this other stuff when it comes to apps there's some Quirks and I ran into one today So it'll tell you the next cloud if something is tested or not It'll tell you that like it'll tell tell you on tested or something like that in the in their little app store It might still work if you click on it install it anyway It also might prevent next cloud from working at all, which is what happened to me today I wanted to check out the ebook reader, which is a Or at least it was a really great app Where you have all your ebooks on your next cloud server, which is great since it syncs files perfect fit And then it just you know E pubs pdfs whatever you have it'll keep track of like where you were you know your notes Where you left off everything you want in an ebook reader and it's like in next cloud So you don't have to worry about which computer was I reading that book on which computer has my bookmarks? Well, it's next cloud. It's all there. So I installed that even though it said untested it um, it broke everything I I went into the apps folder like you can't even disable it because you can't even log in anymore You can't even access the ui so I would like to see separation here Where if an app is making it so that you can't access anything that it it's sandboxed in a way That it's not going to bring everything crumbling down. So um What I did is I just used ssh got it in the server went into the apps folder and deleted the folder for that particular app um, which causes an inconsistency because the ui says it's enabled Well, it doesn't exist. You can't enable something that doesn't exist anymore So to click on disable and everything was fine Um, it almost makes me think like if you're using this in like production at a company in an enterprise You probably should have like a sandbox version where you could test the apps first But the other problem is that when you install a dot zero release It takes the the developers of the individual apps some time to actually catch up all the apps So you might not want to update to a major version right away You definitely should keep it updated for security reasons But you might be able to wait till dot one if there's no like um security issues at least wait a few weeks if you can right, um Just to kind of see which apps have been updated in which apps have not been When you update it it will tell you that it's disabled some apps That haven't been updated yet for the new version. So keep that in mind that being said I know I just gave you guys a lot of downsides about apps Just trying to warn you it's fine as long as it's a tested app and you just um pay attention There's a lot of great apps and I think that's um an amazing feature To have all those Yes, it's you can also look at the apps and figure out whether or not they've been updated to work with the If there's a major release as well This is one of those things that people don't realize is is this is complicated And this is often why companies choose to run just the microsoft share point or office 365 or g-suite Is because there comes a point and you know i'll be straight up honest for my business We use g-suite and the reason we use it is because we're spending so much time maintaining other systems I didn't want to add to the burden of maintaining a system Especially because we use a lot of shared documents with external vendors I need someone else and google has so far been a good steward of being on top of that security layer for their business suite In order to take care of that these are you know, it's not that you can't run it yourself You just have to decide where your commitment level is. Do you want to commit to uh maintaining it? These are just a couple of business thoughts I have when people say why isn't just deployed at every business Um, and we've given businesses quotes on maintaining next cloud and they're like Way to cost money to maintain it. I thought I could bypass all this google stuff I'm like no someone has to maintain these servers for security and patching therefore there's still costs associated with it So those are just considers things to consider when you're thinking about this as a product Yeah, I agree and I think that for a lot of people the complexity is a good thing I know it sounds weird, but I do so I'm not talking about complexity like running your own mail server, which you shouldn't do We've talked about that. Yeah, not on that level. It's nowhere near on that level. We're not trying to say Oh, it's so hard. It's like taking calculate. No, it's nothing like that. It's not like taking calculus. It's um, literally Pretty straightforward. There's videos like mine for example There's tutorials if you're good at following instructions, you'll get it set up but The complexity what I like about it is for people that are in it or more importantly trying to get into it Or they're lower level trying to get advanced level This causes people to think in an enterprise it way meaning How you know, how do enterprises deal with this type of thing with any app? It's usually There's a new version that comes out So they'll clone the production one or have a production clone That's you know updated every now and then and they can update the clone to the new version They could test the apps the use cases. They have test cases documented that they can go through Um, just to make sure everything works everything works. They they've already done the update So they've you know listed out all the steps that they had to do to update the sandbox version Go to production maintenance window time. Let's get it updated You know what to expect and it kind of trains You know non-it people or entry level it people to adopt that mindset which is used in enterprises And then as always if your boss ever comes to you's like, yeah, have you heard the next cloud? Should we be using that? It's like, let me tell you about next cloud I run that at home actually and I will show you right now. I will VPN it to my home Office and I will just show you what it looks like and you'll pitch it Great one of the other things too I I see a lot of popularity of a next cloud in the european market because The dependence on the two big major players in that space, of course would be the fact that there Well three if you count dropbox But the major players in that space are all us based companies and some of the european Areas like, you know It we're not a big fan of this and we've worked and consulted on different companies in europe And that's where I've actually seen some of them massively deploy this the other thing for risk mitigation is of course You can lock this all behind a vpn So only the people you're the friendliest with and are willing to give vpn access are able to do it whether that's internal or external Contractors or staff members and employees. It's just you know all the little considerations of it of that data privacy Yeah, exactly. Also when it comes to microsoft, um, I don't want to make this the anti microsoft podcast just a Personal story was um, I won't say the name of the company because I don't think I can but a certain company that I worked with quite a while ago um had You know probably thousands of employees and you know thousands of installations of microsoft office You probably already know where i'm going with this and they had this situation I don't know. I forgot what you call it But you have to true up or something like you have this like if you have more seats than you've paid for you Yeah, the difference or whatever, but they were very very late on that and um, they had an audit failed it And microsoft is like, yeah, we we're gonna sue you. Yeah, um, and even though they're like, well, we'll make it right Just just let us know. Sorry about that Responsibility for it. They're like, yeah, you're right. We're sorry. We should have kept up on that What do we owe you? We'll even it out. Oh, no, it's too late. We're just pursuing you and a lot of companies would be like Yeah, okay fine. Um, we'll pay the settlement or whatever and then we'll we'll get it all squared away They're like, uh, no f microsoft. We are just going to de microsoft everything And um as a result of that which is not common. Most people would just pay it because change is hard But that's you know that sometimes frustrates companies into trying something like this because it's like maybe we don't have to deal with that Um, yeah, who knows maybe microsoft is nicer now. So that was a no Given the benefit of the doubt or like not I was talking with the two here. Um, it is what it is, right? Um, as a business person you make a decision What's the platform of choice and that's uh, considering each and their so Where do you install it? So This is kind of a big topic and I already see like comments in the live stream You know, I there's an individual lexie. They had it running there. Someone mentioned the docker container Um, you you can install a snap package on ubuntu and any distro that supports that packages um next or excuse me true nas has a plug in um You can install it in virtual box. I mean, what do you do here? So we already mentioned linode is an option. Um But we need to talk about the requirements before we can even talk about where to put it. So, um Next cloud recommends they recommend. Let me see here. Um, and this is weird to me They they recommend a minimum of 128 megabytes of ram Raise your hand if you have a linux server with 128 megabytes of ram Does anyone um The thing is There their minimum recommended amount of ram is 512 excuse me 512 megabytes. I disagree with all of that I just they need to update that. Um, you probably want minimum one gig preferably two I'm I'm guessing um minimum one core. Obviously can't have lower fewer than one. Anyway, um comfortably Probably depending on how many apps you have whether you have the office collaborative editing You probably want more. I would say people could just start with one cpu one gig of ram kind of look at the load average and um run htop kind of see how it's responding. Is it slow? Is it constantly peeking out? Then maybe might want to go to you know two gigs of ram If you start adding the collaborative editing you're going to need to have more So you got a little you got to play around with it. So if you're running it in linode This means that as you step up you are using a higher instance size at a higher cost So that will give you a determination as far as where you should install right and it should always be reminded This is not just a next cloud issue But the difference between your minimum recommendations are functional versus usable Functional is what the minimum it tries to meet we can make this run on this minimal functionality And if you really want it to work and perform well, so you get into usability That's where you have to increase the amount of memory and resources you have dedicated to this particular project So this is just this and this is one of those things they want everyone to try it So they put these minimum 120 makes ram. Surely you have something old that will run this Unfortunately that sometimes creates a bad user experience because if you try running this on something that's underpowered You'll go wow, this feels like a really sluggish slow app. It doesn't feel as smooth as it could be Go back to you know functional versus usable I would even argue though that 128 megs of ram If that's what your server has I mean, you're just asking for the out of memory killer to kill next cloud Yeah, I can't even imagine it running for long. Um, just a personal opinion. I haven't tried to run it on 128 megs, but um, I just up the instance size of mine to four gigs because I have all kinds of craziness going on mine probably more than most people but You know, you just kind of keep that in mind look at future growth and whatnot But anyway, the question was where do you install it? And here I am talking about requirements. Well, you have to get it out of the way but um There's there's kind of this one thing that I have to mention first That's important to remember next cloud is not an application. You can let go unupdated You absolutely cannot and that's true of all the actual host Especially if it's publicly available The next cloud is a target people are looking for this They're they're wanting to you know, there's a vulnerability next cloud and it's publicly available. We're gonna try There was a time in the past where the next cloud developers were angry at Debian because the version of in Debian was too old That makes sense. You really can't have that be too old. It's potentially public facing. So Just keep in mind that you do want the latest version You don't necessarily have to go to like dot zero the day or the week it came out But you do have to keep it updated and that's one of the problems here because depending on where you get next cloud from You might not have the latest version as of recording time. It's version 22. That's what we're up to today Um, maybe in a few months we'll be up to 23. I don't remember how often they release but They they put out point releases all the time and they're not just point releases. They're like two or three fixes I mean look at the changelog. I mean, I don't think I've seen one that had fewer than 20 plus Fixes on each it's it's serious. They're doing some real development here. So when I look at um true nas and other things like snap packages One time I had a comment on my channel. Why don't she just use a snap package at that time The snap package was two major versions behind her more. That's that's crazy That is you're just asking for trouble. You're painting a bullseye on yourself as of today. It's not that far behind It's like version 21 the previous major version Still behind not as behind It's just a few point releases behind it. That's true of the snap package and uh the plugin in or jail and true nas They're they're all they're both behind. I don't really expect either one to have version 22 the same week it came out But you're also point releases behind though That's not good Right and that's what's really important because the point releases sometimes when they fix security updates It's how fast can this be rolled out mitigated? So if you're using something like the free nas a true nas specifically the jail system Which is in true nas and this is why I know there's a lot of excitement about The true nas scale because it does base them on docker and the docker images do seem to be more maintained Does next called themselves actually release a docker image or is it still third party? I don't remember. Um, I'm sure somebody in the live stream will will tell me I haven't looked in a while. I know a lot of people do run it via docker But as far as whether or not it's official. Um, I'm not really sure In someone just mentioned that manjaro has version 21 point 0 2 which which I believe that's just one point released behind Um, not the worst thing. It's a rolling release. So if you're doing a distribution package, just not the end of the world It'll be updated debbie and not rolling Um, there's a lot of different ways you can install it. I think I like manual. Sorry. Go ahead Also, it does a quick quick clarification. I did google real quick Well, this one's a docker and it does appear to have a official has a little star next to it. So yes Great. Well, then I trust it more in that case The problem I run into is that you can have a plugin in true nas or wherever and it's up to date Everything's great until it's not, you know life intervenes the person who maintains it has something else that they need to take care of they can't get around to it and You know, sometimes people get burned out. There's all these different reasons you do have to keep an eye on it Um, I like manually installing it. It's just my favorite way to do it Yeah control you learn more about it And you can fine-tune it better Um, if you want to try the snap package go right ahead. I guess what I'm worried about is While they're not terribly behind right now What's it going to be like six months from now? Are they going to be Right I don't know it just because of then once again We reminder that needs to be kept an eye on uh, and by the way The reason I I didn't say this years ago is much and I say it much more now And it's because the security landscape has changed home users and home lab people are now part of the attack vector that comes along So I say a little bit more today here in 2021 because there's a just absolute amazing amount of Bots out there looking for exploits and pushing it that really didn't it existed in a small scale before It's such a big scale. It's one of the reasons when we talk about a product We talk about if it's public facing it has to be really well maintained or you'll become part of that problem Right, right and you also have to make the decision to make it publicly accessible or not Um, in my opinion never unless you have a very good reason to just keep it keep it behind your firewall Don't even let it be exposed and if you want it to be exposed just set up vpn keep the vpn up to date and secure Two-factor authentication all that stuff. Um, keep it behind your firewall It's better unless you have a reason especially if you are working in enterprise it and You do need to have it publicly available. I'll leave that up to you But getting back to the topic at this point in the podcast. How do you install it? So I just gave you the reasons why I don't recommend you use plugins So manually installing it It's kind of hard to explain it without it sounding like a tedious pain in the butt But it's not it if you could copy and paste commands, you're fine And you could like I mentioned you could watch my video or even just avoid my video and just go to the wiki article for my video And just copy and paste the commands there. There's many other blogs out there people have done the same thing They've identified the steps for setting it up What it usually involves is downloading a zip file of the latest version in xcloud Extracting it on your server You just change the ownership of all the files to the web server user So you would have installed nginx or apache which are the two that are supported And usually like on ubuntu, it's www hyphen data as the user Just make sure it's owned by the right user put it in the place Where your web server serves files. You have to set up a database. I use maria db There's others you set up a database create a database user And allow the database or you know set it up in next cloud for it to log into the database and It'll populate it There's going to be some additional packages to install for various tweaks and fixes that I won't get into And then finally you set up let's encrypt to give you that ssl certificate And away you go and then from there the first thing I recommend most people do is set up email alerts Because it'll let you know when there's updates. So Just go in there make sure that's enabled And the second thing I recommend everyone do is go into the overview inside settings because it'll give you like a quick It's not really a scan, but it detects a lot of the Common problems and some things that most people forget So you just kind of keep fixing the things there's going to be like two or three there And yeah common environment variables that to make sure that they're all set properly Those few little detail settings, but I really like that they built that in so it kind of says, hey Look, you've left this open or that open and the set like this Yep, exactly. It's just great that they gave that to us and also there's some tweaks for performance Everything might be fine, but then it'll say something like, you know, it's going to run a heck of a lot faster if you Do this or enable that install this package. It'll give you that info Which is pretty cool. Um, and I like that. So the other thing that you can consider doing is setting up office because I mean, you might be thinking, well, wait a minute. Isn't that built in? No, um, I mean A lot of things are, you know, you have your calendar. You have your file sync and everything you can store your word documents there Click on a word document. What's going to happen? It's going to try to download it It's not going to open it by default unless that's changed. I don't think it has There's instructions in most of the how tos for setting up the collabora docker container And what that'll do is give you that collaborative editing So that's another thing that you have to set up. Not hard Just a few more steps gives you collaborative editing And you could then open your your word documents excel files, whatever it is right in your browser Just like you can in google docs and edit them there. Someone else can join in and edit too Um, I like that a lot. It's really great to have it, but you have to add it They don't give that to you. Um, you have to add it just like they don't give you the web server You have to add nginx or apache. They don't give you the database server. You have to add, you know, postgres maria db, whatever you use so Sounds involved Honestly, I find it fun. I really do. It's not Over the over your head too much. It's just follow the instructions Make it a weekend project. I think that's the key here. It's a weekend project. Have some fun set up next cloud It's a great piece of software Absolutely It's a it'll let you touch a lot of different things. You can learn how to set up a database how to set up a web server dns We can't forget dns because you probably want to have a path That gets to your next cloud as opposed to accessing it by ap address So you have to have a little dns knowledge shown there as well to get it working properly And of course a lot more dns knowledge if you want to make sure you have it publicly available Where you have to match with the wildcard certificates That's correct. So and also you want to have a static ip or a static lease if it's in your land Because you don't want it to get a different ip that i mean i close up everything And then if it's external facing of course update your dns provider accordingly like tom mentioned If it is publicly accessible And this is important that everybody that wants to use next cloud bookmarks this site scan dot nextcloud.com Bookmark that it'll do a not not a like a complete security scan Of your instance, but it will give you like more security checks than the one that's built in like in the interface Will give you so you go to that url you type in your dns address for your next cloud instance It'll run some scans. It'll give you some Suggestions if there are any for how You can improve the security of it So you absolutely should do that if you run it externally or if it's externally available That'll just give you some extra information and some more tweaks that you can make to make it more secure very important And that's what that'll give you again a scan dot nextcloud.com That's the url for that Make sure you bookmark it so That was a lot of information so I want to make sure i'm not making it sound like I'm turning people off of it right because i'm telling you to be careful the apps you install And setup is involved It's still a great thing to set up because I think what you end up with is great The apps as long as you just you know don't install things that are untested unless you have the ability to roll back as you should anyway Just just keep it up to date every now and then you could go into your next cloud It's very easy. You could just click the update button Make sure you back it up first I haven't had an update fail probably three or four major versions at least But there was a time period where yeah, you're kind of gambling updating I don't know tom if you remember this I was in your studio one time and I was there I'm going to click the update button. What's the worst that could happen? Oh boy, um it failed. Um, but again, I haven't had it fail in a long time And it's cool that they have the update are right there in the um in the console You can log in and click the update button You could go on the enterprise track Stable track beta tracks you can beta test releases. You can go to stable So I'll think we'll give you the latest dot zero maybe dot one or something enterprise is going to have a slower A number of updates you can make your decision as far as which one you want to be on And then update it whenever it comes time Yes, um The other thing too is Someone asked about where you should put it in your network and let me expand on that You in the event that your next cloud was taken over you should treat it like anything else Whenever you can put these on separate pieces of the network and the term is lateral movement is what you're trying to avoid So in the event that there's a flaw in next cloud and an unfortunate thing happens where they take over and Gain access to your next cloud server. What is adjacent to that server on that network segment? They could have access to well, maybe a lot maybe a little this is where you have to decide when you're putting it somewhere Where is the best place to put that? Um, this is also why at the beginning we mentioned hosting it in somewhere like linode The problem that linode or any cloud hosting provider can solve one. It's not on your network So it's not reliant on your systems. What if you have a power outage? Do you have redundancy? Is that something that matters? Do you have to maintain a level of uptime because you're collaborating with next cloud with someone else? Uh, this is some of the advantages of having it in a cloud and also if it is breached in a cloud It's much more limited than happening inside of your own network So you're like, man, they got a hold of my cloud server They didn't get a hold of a server inside my network That was adjacent to lots of other things that they could have pivoted onto So these are a couple of decision points that you have to think about when you're putting it in But you know, assuming if you're going to host it yourself lock it down internally Um And keep it as much as you can this goes for each segment you have on your network The more you don't allow the potential for lateral movement between the devices the better off you are So you can say they breached the network next cloud was on not the not the network that all my stuff was on Yep. And that yeah, that's very important set up a firewall. Um Preferably set up the firewall if you are lucky enough to be able to have access to a static ip You can just make next cloud only accessible to your home ip even if it's on a cloud provider That's great If nothing else make sure that ssh and it goes with anything you host not even next cloud specific Make sure ssh is not within reach of the internet Um, so for example, like mine is going to be open to the world for port 80 and port 43 But ssh no, that's not open to the world on other things that are protected. I just don't want that The internet so just make the logical decisions here and your database server Because it part of the process is setting that up never make your database server externally available unless you're Unless you own a company that offers managed database services for other people I can't personally think of any other reason why to make a database server externally available in my opinion Maybe I haven't seen the use case yet, but I just haven't Just just make sure that's locked down and that people can't log in from the outside That's important as well. Um, there's all kinds of security tweaks that you can make But I think the those things will get you going. Yeah, that'll get you going on it just That segmentation and also someone asked about like the problem if you're not able to publicly host things because you're behind a Nat or a cgnat Yeah, this is another reason that you the some of the two options really are Building more complex VPN so you can bounce off a public IP to get back internally There is actually what level one text has a good write up on how to use like cloud-based proxying back to local another option It's much simpler is looking at zero tier It's a great option for building your own network. They they're free version of their platform Actually is pretty scalable Even for home users and you can just assign next cloud on your zero tier And then even when you're not in your own network or anyone else you share your zero tier with would be able to then access the next Cloud server. So I that's another solid solution for Working around it. That's a powerful solution though because zero zero tier you could basically have your own little You know, let's just say for example If you're starting a company you could even have like all of your company services behind zero tier and invite the people That work for you and not everyone else or even if you're not a company You just have like family members that you want to share pictures with Or something like that which next cloud can also do then you could just invite them in there Here you go log in you can get the family pictures from our vacation last week Um, or whatever it might be and other people just use it as a drop point for people to upload files Um, a company I do business with I just send video files to them Like I just drop it in there. They get it. It's all kinds of use cases here. I think that's what makes it the most exciting absolutely So I'm trying to think of there's anything else we haven't touched on because I think it's a very expansive topic And I'm sure there's a lot of things we haven't covered But I don't think this is one of those things that you can cover everything because there's there's so many great features And different services. I mean, I just found out about the scan dot next cloud dot com like a month ago I couldn't even tell you how long that's existed But it it's there. That's something I've discovered recently. Um, there's all kinds of ways to make the performance better Um, and that's why I like next cloud because it just it's a perfect gateway to the life cycle of a linux server managing updates and security It's a fun project because it touches on so many different topics all all in one setup when you start building it um, but there's there's probably More tutorials that can be done I don't think they lend themselves as well to a podcast format for those of you that may have commented on this before about our podcast We try to keep this to a non visual medium This is dedicated towards a podcast and we do have and as and j specifically has some next cloud tutorials And videos he's done on this which will be linked down below in the show notes But they're easy enough to find over on learn linux tv that do visually and step by step procedurally walking you through How to get next cloud configured I've been i'm working on a new way I'm trialing a new way when I do this new version of the video which again, it's going to be a while It could be a month from now. Um, I'm just going to let everyone know But you know to make it easier to update every now and then this new version just you know I could redo the b-roll just do a minor update It's not like you have to redo your next cloud every time I do a video You can watch the current one and you won't even need to watch the new one when it comes out It's only for the people who haven't gotten around to it by then Um and and tom has videos about you know, a lot of the networking things that we talk about here On fire walls and the segmentation how to build rules how segment your network And of course I've got videos on zero tier for those of you that want to dive into what is zero tier It's actually kind of a fun way to build out some of your lab Like I said Everything that goes in the next cloud can help you if you're looking for a project that touches a lot of different things That we've talked previously during the last 14 episodes So basically just have like two browser windows open tile to have like tom's channel on the left My channel on the right and then like go set up the network infrastructure with tom and then the apps that I go through Um, I think that it uh will get you going especially with zero tier. We both have videos on that So, um, just just you know flip a coin, right? Yeah, watch both. You got time for that, right? Just watch all our videos every one of them Uh, and I I seem to probably mention and it's not something I've dove into is the open office collaborative server I let's an add-on for next cloud is it not Yeah, that's what I was referring to a little bit earlier. It's called code Which I literally just two hours ago discovered what that stands for collaborative online development edition I think it is. Um, yeah, it's sweet. There's another one. I can't remember that you can install but Basically, there's going to be like for example with engine x and Apache you're going to end up with two Config files like normally you have one config file for your site You have one for next cloud one for the collaborative editing feature because it's a docker container And it's going to be embedded inside next cloud It's not going to be externally available though. It's not like you have this docker container That's within reach of the internet. It's local host on the server But then next cloud will expose it in when you know when you click on the um, like a document But it's not going to do that by default You have to add that and by adding the collaborative editing you're also increasing the memory requirements as well So that 128 megabytes you might be able to get away with it You will not get away with that if you start adding containers to it. So, um, right Keep that in mind That is something that I see people asking in in the comments here for tutorial on It's going to come down the road I think that product is still under probably a lot of development and I don't know anyone and that includes me Of course that's actively using it which also is why I create tutorials on things that I use actively Um, so I haven't really actively used that so kind of Yeah, so sorry. I I thought that we don't want to it just may not happen soon I did use it for a while though of over a year ago Not heavily, but I would say fairly regularly for just basic things like a quick edit to a document They'd be documents I would have done on my desktop in livery office for example that were synced up there And I needed like a, you know, correct some spelling or something. I've never had a problem I just open it up. I I make whatever adjustment and save it. I can't speak about Um, microsoft office compatibility. That's kind of like the big elephant in the room. It's um What I find generally speaking and I'm going to try to simplify this because this is a debate that could be an entire episode A lot of people will say that the Compatibility between livery office for example microsoft office is really bad But also distributions like dubbian give you the oldest version of livery office They can which doesn't have all the new compatibility for microsoft office So I don't really feel there's as big of a problem as people think there is Especially if you're using up-to-date software when it comes to next cloud You might run into compatibility issues. You might not microsoft is always You know futzing with office suites for some reason complicating it making it hard for other competitors to Get the compatibility dial down Your mileage your mileage may vary, but I think it's probably going to be fairly solid Yeah, the The uh, the product overall is solid. So we'll definitely say that so we'll leave you we'll leave you with that So I think we've covered I was rolling to my head make sure we had everything covered in our notes here Well one thing I I'll touch on briefly though as we go because I can't believe I didn't mention this earlier Because I did kind of allude to contacts and calendar But what this gives you though is that you could have an android phone for example And you could turn off the sync. I don't know if you could still turn off the sync I know you at least used to and have it sync to your own contact server And your own calendar server that you maintain and in next cloud You could share your your calendar with other people And you could basically build that back end that your phone would normally be syncing to by just simply Using the services they provide and that's a great use case because they're your contacts It's your contact server But of course make sure you back it up because now the onus is on you If you actually rm-rf everything well, guess what I'll hear contacts your calendar invites everything is gone. So Just handle that responsibly Yes, absolutely Once you lose the convenience of all these cloud service companies It is completely on you to manage maintain and back up all of that. So hey, there's one more thing you get to talk about Or learn when you're building these servers is how to back all this up So, you know, we've talked about that previous episodes. It's one more thing This is this is kind of a culmination of a lot of different things functioning down to one So this is probably a great project to start with to figure out where your knowledge gaps are on setting up stuff in linux Yeah, I agree completely. So I think that's probably everything I could think of to talk about I know there's going to be something there always is but I think that's uh, Well rounded covered it I'll leave links below to jay's current videos on next cloud and we'll revisit the show notes at a future date If there's a new video Oh, we've been trying to do that is go back and refactor all the notes On different things when there's new versions available, but always you're going to get the latest updates from Jay's channel learn linux tv or on my channel Lawrence systems or of course I have uh my youtube channel where you'll be able to find everything in search for the latest versions of it Sort by date in youtube Not only that but if I do have the newer version I will literally put in the title if you're looking at the old version. Yes version available So you'll know there there's going to be no question when I have it out. So yep All right. Well, I'll share notes below and we'll think once again linux for sponsoring this and uh, see you guys next time Take care