What's coming in Cloudron 3.3

[girish]

• Ubuntu 18.04 Support
• Base image 1.0.0 - the cloudron base image is now based on Ubuntu 18.04. We have already started pushing out apps that use this new image.
• Addon updates - this upgrades all the addon databases to use Ubuntu 18.04. This involves also major version upgrades for all our addons. Lots of changes here.
• Easy installation of docker apps - We are making it simpler to run apps with a Dockerfile. For example, even if an app has not been ported to Cloudron, we want to make it easier for one to clone a github project and just install it on Cloudron as long as it has a functional Dockerfile. There is a simplified workflow to use a private registry and private apps.
• Volume management - apps will start using docker volumes internally. This will help us build a system where apps can easily share data with each other. Currently, even if your photos are synced with nextcloud, it's hard/impossible to run a piwigo/lychee that uses the photos on nextcloud.

[msbt]

Very nice! Does this mean all future app-updates require Ubuntu 18.04 or can the server upgrade be postponed?

[girish]

@msbt Ah no, the apps don't require Ubuntu 18.04 since they are run as containers and they are shielded from what the host OS runs. So yes, the server upgrade can be postponed. (Cloudron will continue to support 16.04 and 18.04 as the host OS for the foreseeable future).

[fbartels]

@girish said in What's coming in Cloudron 3.3:

Easy installation of docker apps - We are making it simpler to run apps with a Dockerfile. For example, even if an app has not been ported to Cloudron, we want to make it easier for one to clone a github project and just install it on Cloudron as long as it has a functional Dockerfile.

That sounds interesting, but I guess such apps won't be covered by the current backup mechanisms or will they? Also automated updates will probably not be possible.

As mentioned in https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/1082/bitwarden-self-hosted-password-manager the support for multi stage builds would be interesting as well (with just the last stage using Cloudron as a base). Speaking of this I think I already stumbled upon this feature (cloudron install --image)

[saglagla]

Nice news !

[A Former User]

Any idea what the ETA is? This is great!

[girish]

@spectrely Progress wise, the first 4 bullet points are already done. We are looking into the practicality of the final feature. We hope to ship this next week.

[A Former User]

@girish Take your time! Thanks for the hard work! (If managed easily, docker volumes would be awesome.
even slimming backups to user content, not the whole docker. Lots of options.

[FTLAUDMAN]

Major upgrades all around. Easily installing other Docker apps sounds amazing.

[girish]

An update on this. We tried to push the update today with a plan to roll out later this week. We found some issues with the database migration which we are currently working on. Over all, it's unlikely this gets pushed out this week.

Now for some good news: we have updated all apps to use the latest base image 1.0.0 (which is based off ubuntu 18 and contains many security fixes).

[FTLAUDMAN]

@girish Looking forward to 3.3! Any update on the database migration issues and release timing?

[A Former User]

@girish quick question. Will cloudron update to ubuntu 18 from 16? or will we have to do that?
Thanks!

Respectfully,

Will

[nebulon]

@spectrely Cloudron will not update automatically to the next ubuntu version. For the moment this would be too risky doing this by default automatically.

We will eventually provide a step-by-step guide for this at least, hopefully more.

[A Former User]

@nebulon Not a biggie, its pretty easy. I just know upon SSH login there is a warning to let cloudron handle updating. But that is limited to security and "apt-get" type updates?

[rmdes]

Sweet things to come !!

[nebulon]

Just a quick update on this. We are mostly blocked by wallabag for this release. Since the postgres addon will be updated to postgres 10, we need to wait until that app can work with the new postgres version. The upstream pull-request is https://github.com/wallabag/wallabag/pull/3758 please vote for it or if you know php better even support them.

[girish]

Another quick update: the release is live now and we support 18.04. Newer Cloudrons will now get 3.3.

For existing Cloudrons, we are still working on some update issues. So they will still be on 3.2.

Thanks for your patience, but we literally have thousands of Cloudrons and we have to be ultra-careful on how we push updates.

[A Former User]

@girish For some of us more adventurous users, can we kick on a new cloudron, say in a VM, and restore from a backup?
Could that be a quick and dirty upgrade path?

Also, on the topic of backups, is there a way to backup to some kind of network share? I want to host cloudron in my data center, but have only seen AWS-type backup solutions for Cloudron. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
[Edit: After reviewing the backup documentation, I see that you can direct backups to somewhere else on the filesystem. Excellent. Are there any restrictions on where backups can be sent on the server's filesystem? e.g. some sandboxed apps can only write to specific folders, etc..]

Thanks again for all the hard work behind the scenes! Best $15 a month I've ever spent.

Respectfully,

Spectrely

[girish]

3.3.3 seems fairly stable now and we are going to start pushing this out slowly. Over the course of making this release, we also found that owncloud has issues with postgres 10 which means it is also incomaptible with Cloudron 3.3

We are still working on our appstore update logic to push the updates to Cloudrons without wallabag and owncloud installed.

@spectrely and others, as long as you don't have the above two apps installed, we can make the update for 3.3 available to you guys. For this, you have to send us your Cloudron domain to support@cloudron.io OR just ping us on https://chat.cloudron.io.

[necrevistonnezr]

@girish
Do you have a guide for those on their own server how the upgrade to Ubuntu 18.04 will work?