added moving away from nextcloud post and skeleton of moving to germany.
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title = "Syncthing"
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date = 2022-03-10T01:33:59-05:00
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title = "Moving away from Nextcloud"
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date = 2024-08-05T01:33:59-05:00
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draft = true
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## Nextcloud
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While Nextcloud had a lot of features and provides a nice web interface,
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(I got a lot of use out of Nextcloud's caldav server)
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I kept running into problems and limitations with it.
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One thing is maintenance. Of my entire homelab,
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I easily spent the most time troubleshooting and fixing Nextcloud,
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sometimes having to reboot the VM multiple times per week.
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Additionally, I've ran into a few annoying limitations,
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such as the sever crashing if you view a folder with too many files in the web interface or apps.
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Nextcloud does a lot of things, and does things very well,
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but I would not describe it as a rock solid piece of software.
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Due to this, during our [move to germany](./movingToGermany) and the resuling reorganization of the homelab,
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I decided to *finally* ditch Nextcloud, after talking about it for months.
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## Syncthing
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[Syncthing](https://syncthing.net/) is one of the best file syncing tools in existence,
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and I don't say that lightly.
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Syncthing is a distributed, peer to peer file syncing service.
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This means that it doesn't rely on a central, always online server ran by you or someone else,
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but that your devices directly send files between themselves whenever they are online at the same time.
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I used Syncthing to replace Nextclouds file syncing.
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## Syncthing vs Nextcloud
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### Syncthing vs Nextcloud
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I use both Syncthing and Nextcloud for data storage and syncing,
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and while Nextcloud has a lot of features and provides a nice web interface,
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(I get a lot of use out of Nextcloud's caldav server)
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I keep running into problems and limitations with it.
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One thing is maintenance. Of my entire homelab,
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I easily spend the most time troubleshooting and fixing Nextcloud,
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sometimes having to reboot the VM multiple times per week.
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Additionally, I've ran into a few annoying limitations more than once,
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such as the sever crashing if you view a folder with too many files in the web interface or apps.
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Nextcloud does a lot of things, and does things very well,
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but I would not describe it as a rock solid piece of software.
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Syncthing, on the other hand, has no web file manager,
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Unlike Nextcloud, Syncthing has no web file manager,
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does not do caldav or any of the other million things you can do with Nextcloud apps,
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and requires setup on both ends to setup a syncing connection.
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In short, Syncthing does only one thing.
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			@ -35,12 +42,7 @@ Even with a device like my phone,
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constantly loosing and regaining network access,
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files have synced perfectly, every time.
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While all my files are stored on my Nextcloud server,
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for folders with large number of files,
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I only have one device syncing with Nextcloud,
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and all other devices use Syncthing to sync with the device connected to Nextcloud.
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## Distributed?
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### Distributed?
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With Dropbox or Google drive, files are not sent directly between your devices,
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but are sent from one device to the server,
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			@ -52,11 +54,22 @@ Instead, devices all connect to each other, sending changes made on one device t
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This makes all of your devices into a cluster, where no device has to always be online,
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but any devices that happen to be online at the same time synchronize while they can.
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## Introducers
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### Introducers
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If you have a lot of devices, making sure every device is connected to every other device can become a hassle.
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Thankfully, Syncthing has the concept of 'introducer' devices.
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In short, With an introducer, you only need to connect your devices to the introducer,
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and the introducer will make connections between any devices that share the same folder with the introducer.
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This is very useful, for example, to enable for a always online storage server,
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an architecture that I plan to implement in the future if I ever get around to moving away from Nextcloud.
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and it is the architecture that I used to fully replace nextcloud.
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## File Manager
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## Radicale
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The final function my family and I used nextcloud for was calander and todo list syncing.
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This was done over Nextclouds CalDav server,
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using DavX^5 as a mobile client, and Thunderbirds Lightning plugin as a desktop client.
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This was almost a more important function than filesyncing, as my wife and I use it to organize our calanders,
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Keep shopping lists, chore lists, lists of movies to watch, lists of long term projects, etc.
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(we *really* used the hell out of todo lists.)
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---
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title: "Moving To Germany"
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date: 2024-08-05T22:10:32-05:00
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draft: true
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---
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## TODO
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