Website/Nextcloud

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    We use Nextcloud as a shared storage space for binary files including Marketing materials, Conference items, and anything else that Teams or individuals need to share openly.

    Note: We are still testing some features of Nextcloud, so please bear with us through any technical hiccups

    Accounts

    Accounts on our Nextcloud instance are currently restricted to The Document Foundation members.

    WARNING! Please familiarize yourself with Nextcloud before you start using it, to make sure that you don't delete data (Your own or someone else's...)

    How to Use Nextcloud

    WebDAV

    Accessing Nextcloud files using WebDAV

    You can even access files via LibreOffice directly.

    • One of the most convenient ways to work with Nextcloud is to access the server via WebDAV.
    • Once mounted as a WebDAV share, you can upload and download files and folders by drag-and-drop.

    Web Interface

    The Nextcloud Web interface

    • URL: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/
    • The Nextcloud web interface gives you more features than the WebDAV interface.
    • Ability to change your password and other settings
    • Set and change permissions/sharing on files and folders in your Files.

    Our Common Space

    One of our primary workflows for Nextcloud is to store content in a shared directory named Common editable by all accounts in the group users and visible (read-only) to anyone via a separate url.

    Accessing the Common space

    After you log in to Nextcloud, you should see a directory Shared in the top level of your files. This directory will contain any content that has been shared with you by other users of our Nextcloud instance, including a directory named Common. 

    Quick Version:
* Log in
* Click Shared -> Common

    Subdirectories

    Inside the Common folder you will see a number of subfolders including

    • Conferences
    • Design
    • Documentation
    • Marketing
    • QA
    • Website
    • zz - Playground for Testing Nextcloud

    These directories roughly line up with Teams in LibreOffice or TDF. It's good practice to organize content hierarchically under this directory structure so that if someone is looking for QA's proposal for migrating to our own Bugzilla, you could find that content under Common/QA/Proposals.

    All content should be under a subdirectory -- there should be no files shared directly underneath Common.

    Sharing links to files in Common

    To share a read-only link to a file or folder inside Common with someone who doesn't have a TDF Nextcloud account, just shorten the URL as described below...

    For example,

    Here's the private URL you'll see via WebDAV: 

     davs://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/remote.php/webdav/Shared/Common/QA/Triage_Contest_2013

    Or in your web browser: 

     https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/index.php/apps/files?dir=/Shared/Common/QA/Triage_Contest_2013

    ...and here's the public URL: 

     https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/Common/QA/Triage_Contest_2013

    Notes about Common

    • We use mod_rewrite magic to make this work
    • It only works with the shared Common folder
    • Public urls for the Common folder provide read-only access.
    • Given a public URL for any item in the Common folder, a user may browse the entire contents of the Common folder.

    Playground

    As you might have guessed, "zz - Playground for Testing Nextcloud" is a sandbox in which you may play around with Nextcloud. If you upload 100MB or more of test files, please delete them when you're done testing.

    If you would like to do more in-depth testing of Nextcloud, or have a new project that might require some further tweaking of the software, please let us know and we can work to set you up with a separate instance for testing.

    FAQ

    Have some questions? Please let us know!

    Q: Why can't I log in?

    A: Do you have an Nextcloud account? Have you double-checked your password?
    Please check with one of the admins if you're still stuck.

    Q: Why can't I upload to the Common folder?

    A: Please check to make sure
    1. You're logged-in
    2. You're accessing the Common folder via your account

    Q: How big a file may I upload?

    A: If you need to upload any single file or set of files larger than 150MB, please ping the admins ahead of time, so we can make sure there's enough free space allocated.

    Q: Walrus?

    A: Sorry, you're in the wrong place.

    QA

    Large Files for QA

    Files too large to be stored on Bugzilla may be stored (for now) on the Wiki.

    Once we have our own instance of Bugzilla we will increase the file size limit to at least 10MB.

    Sensitive Files for QA

    Sometimes we are given sensitive/private files for QA. Our first goal is to sanitize any sensitive files of private/confidential information or to create substitute files that reproduce the faulty behavior of the original files. If this is not possible or is considered too difficult, we may accept the file for private storage in the shared folder QA-Private.

    • The shared folder QA-Private is only accessible by a small number of devs and QA Team members.
    • Files in QA-Private are stored in a folder hierarchy based on bug and bug #:
     QA-Private/Bugzilla/Bugs/234567/sensitive-file-for-fdo-234567.ods
    • After uploading a new file, a comment should be added to the corresponding bug report that said file exists.
    • If you download content from this folder, please remember to delete your local copy of the file(s) after your work is complete.

    The Software

    Nextcloud is written largely in PHP and licensed under the AGPL. For more info:

    People and Moderation

    If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the infra team: Category:Infrastructure

    Proposed Improvements

    nothing so far...

    Technical Details

    The way that we implement the Common directory is to have a dedicated user libreoffice that owns this directory and shares it with all accounts in the users group (the users group was also created by us).

    The libreoffice user also uses the "Share with link" feature to share the contents of this directory, and we set up a custom mod_rewrite link so that https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/common/PATH/TO/CONTENT will work. Please note that any changes in ownership or permissions on this directory may mean that the Nextcloud url will change, which will require us updating the mod_rewrite rule on the server.

    As of April 2014, here's the public url: 

    https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/public.php?service=files&t=f059c05e19ffdfbf3aa3c70bbcb8221f

    Here's how the redirects work in nextcloud/.htaccess (right after the 'RewriteEngine On' line): 

    RewriteRule ^[Cc]ommon(.*)$
public.php?service=files&t=<magic hash # goes here>&path=/$1
[L]

    If desired, we may set up additional shared directories owned by the libreoffice user.

    Space constraints: The libreoffice user currently has 5GB of storage allocated. Because Nextcloud does some internal versioning and users may upload large documents, we may want to increase this size allocation as soon as we've used half of the available storage space.

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