Posts tagged: nextcloud Archive

Add yourself to www-data to view your Nextcloud data on the filesystem

2025-07-17T07:38:09Z

I am working on using gotify cli for notifying me of nextcloud uploads and I’ll start by running the gotify cli as my user so I’ll need to be able to see the directory in the filesystem that Nextcloud stores the data in.

That folder on disk is owned by www-data (see Nextcloud permissions with ZFS and Ansible-NAS

Turns out it’s my computer and I can do what I want so I just add myself to the www-data group instead of running the gotify cli as root

Bonus

You can remove users from groups with gpasswd -d username groupname

gotify cli for notifying me of nextcloud uploads

2025-07-16T20:33:25Z

The Ask

I was looking for a way to get notified from nextcloud when files were uploaded to a certain directory. This is because the upload is very spotty due to the physical environment of where the nextcloud client is, and once a file shows up I have a job to do. So I was hoping nextcloud had an easy way to say “if file shows up in X folder, notify me” but I can’t find it…

Solution 2 #

Since I already use gotify and they provide a DOPE CLI we can write a little bash script to work at the filesystem level rather than the nextcloud level.

Permissions #

We’ll need to make sure the user running this script has all the right read permissions… In my exact case the file upload happens in a group folder, which is easily found on the filesystem in the Nextcloud volume at .../data/__groupfolders/{id}/{rest of path}. This was owned by www-data on the host, see Add yourself to www-data to view your Nextcloud data on the filesystem if you want but a simple usermod -aG www-data <me> does the trick.

The Script #

With a little AI magic to spruce up the messaging, the script basically looks like this:

#!/bin/bash

# Script to monitor sermon directory using gotify watch
# Used with a systemd service or standalone
# Can run in local or remote (SSH) mode

# Configuration

# Target directory to monitor
DIR_PATH="/path/to/watch"

# Mode: Set to "ssh" or "local"
# If ssh, will connect to SSH_HOST as SSH_USER to monitor the directory
# If local, will monitor the directory directly on this machine
MODE="ssh"

# Remote SSH settings (only used if MODE="ssh")
SSH_USER="youruser"
SSH_HOST="yourserver"

# Log settings
LOG_DIR="$HOME/.local/state/sermon-monitor"
LOG_FILE="$LOG_DIR/sermon-monitor.log"
MAX_LOG_SIZE_KB=1024 # 1MB max log size

# Create log directory if it doesn't exist
mkdir -p "$LOG_DIR" 2>/dev/null

# Create or truncate log file if it's too large
if [ -f "$LOG_FILE" ] && [ $(stat -c%s "$LOG_FILE" 2>/dev/null || echo 0) -gt $((MAX_LOG_SIZE_KB * 1024)) ]; then
  # Keep the last 20 lines when rotating
  tail -n 20 "$LOG_FILE" >"${LOG_FILE}.tmp" 2>/dev/null && mv "${LOG_FILE}.tmp" "$LOG_FILE" 2>/dev/null
  echo "$(date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S') - Log file rotated due to size limit" >>"$LOG_FILE"
fi

# Ensure log file exists
touch "$LOG_FILE" 2>/dev/null

# Log function
log() {
  echo "$(date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S') - $1" | tee -a "$LOG_FILE"
}

# Create a temp file to store the previous state
TEMP_DIR="/tmp/gotify-watcher"
PREV_STATE_FILE="$TEMP_DIR/previous_state.txt"
mkdir -p "$TEMP_DIR" 2>/dev/null || true

# Function to get directory listing based on mode
get_directory_listing() {
  if [ "$MODE" = "ssh" ]; then
    # Remote mode - use SSH
    ssh $SSH_USER@$SSH_HOST "ls -la '$DIR_PATH' | grep -v '^\.\.$' | grep -v '^\.$'" ||
      echo "Error: Failed to connect to $SSH_HOST"
  else
    # Local mode - direct access
    if [ -d "$DIR_PATH" ]; then
      ls -la "$DIR_PATH" | grep -v '^\.\.$' | grep -v '^\.$'
    else
      echo "Error: Directory $DIR_PATH does not exist locally"
    fi
  fi
}

# Removed unused function - was leftover from previous version

# Display startup message based on mode
if [ "$MODE" = "ssh" ]; then
  log "Starting sermon file monitor for $SSH_USER@$SSH_HOST:$DIR_PATH (SSH mode)"
else
  log "Starting sermon file monitor for $DIR_PATH (local mode)"
fi

# Run initial check to establish baseline
CURRENT_LISTING=$(get_directory_listing)
echo "$CURRENT_LISTING" >"$PREV_STATE_FILE"
log "Initial state captured. Watching for changes."

# Monitor continuously
while true; do
  # Sleep for 30 seconds between checks
  sleep 30

  # Get current listing
  CURRENT_LISTING=$(get_directory_listing)

  # Find new files by comparing with previous state
  NEW_FILES=$(diff --new-line-format="%L" --old-line-format="" --unchanged-line-format="" \
    "$PREV_STATE_FILE" <(echo "$CURRENT_LISTING") | grep -v "^total" | grep -v "^drwx")

  # If new files found, notify
  if [ -n "$NEW_FILES" ]; then
    # Filter out directories and system entries, keep only regular files
    FILE_ENTRIES=$(echo "$NEW_FILES" | grep -v "^d" | grep -v "^total" | grep -v "^\.$" | grep -v "^\.\.")

    # Count how many actual files (non-empty lines)
    NEW_COUNT=$(echo "$FILE_ENTRIES" | grep -v "^$" | wc -l)

    # Only proceed if we have actual files
    if [ "$NEW_COUNT" -gt 0 ]; then
      # Create notification message
      if [ "$NEW_COUNT" -eq 1 ]; then
        TITLE="New File Added"
        # Extract filename from listing line
        FILENAME=$(echo "$FILE_ENTRIES" | awk '{print $NF}')
        MESSAGE="New file detected: $FILENAME"
      else
        TITLE="New Files Added"
        # Format filenames only for readability
        FILELIST=$(echo "$FILE_ENTRIES" | awk '{print $NF}' | sort)
        MESSAGE="$NEW_COUNT new files detected:\n$FILELIST"
      fi

      # Send notification
      gotify push --title "$TITLE" "$MESSAGE"
      log "Notification sent for new files: $NEW_COUNT"
    fi

    # Update previous state
    echo "$CURRENT_LISTING" >"$PREV_STATE_FILE"
  fi
done

# If we get here, gotify watch has exited
log "gotify watch exited unexpectedly"
exit 1

Credentials #

As noted in the gotify repo - you can put the relevant credentials in a ./cli.json which is what I did since this is in a big repo of mine and that’s where the script executes from

{
  "token": "yourToken",
  "url": "https://gotify.example.com",
  "defaultPriority": 6
}

Nextcloud PHP Opache Memory Consumption

2025-06-23T08:46:20Z

Intro

Today I was combing through Nextcloud, just taking a gander at the apps, updates, etc.

The OPcache buffer is nearly full. To assure that all scripts can be hold in cache, it is recommended to apply “opcache.memory_consumption” to your PHP configuration with a value higher than “128”

So I know nothing about php and I had no idea where to set this… Also I’m running Nextcloud in a container so any updates will be blown away when the container is removed (say next time I update Nextcloud)…

After a little duckduckgoing I came across this reddit post where a guy had the same issue…

The long and short of it is that on single instance nextcloud deployments this php memory consumption value can be too low for Nextcloud to keep up with the demand… You can see in the message they just recommend upping the value.

So I had to think about how to persist the change and have it take effect now ideally without affecting any users too much… So here’s what I did - made the change in 2 places:

In the container #

I exec’d into the container and used this handy sed command sed -i 's/^opcache\.memory_consumption\s*=\s*128$/opcache.memory_consumption=256/' /usr/local/etc/php/conf.d/opcache-recommended.ini to update the value in the running container - and I guess php maybe is loaded up dynamically or something? but the warning did go away….

So how to persist this change when the filesystem is blown away when the container is updated?

In the config #

I set the env var PHP_OPCACHE_MEMORY_CONSUMPTION in the docker-compose.yml file to 256 and voila… the change should persist…

💭 News - Apps - App Store - Nextcloud

2025-06-09T11:37:39Z

Here’s my thought on News - Apps - App Store - Nextcloud

I just started using FreshRSS to get familiar with subscribing to RSS feeds and leaning into that as opposed to social media… Twitter has become basically just a news outlet for me, not a place to connect with devs (except for 2 or 3 who are active). RSS seems like such cool and ancient technology that is protected from the corporate tentacles that hold up every social media outlet save for nostr…

So as I look for an RSS reader and/or feed aggregator this Nextcloud plugin seems like a good choice to look at since I’m already hosting NC.. although do I really want to lean into it for more and more?

Note

This is one of [[ my-thoughts ]]. I picked this up from Waylon Walker(https://thoughts.waylonwalker.com). It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online. Learn more about the process Thoughts