Pydio free file sharing

[A Former User]

OK I did some testing and found a few things:

The good:

• F A S T
• Clean UI

The bad:

• Horrible mobile app (can't even do native sharing?????)
• On the topic of the app, there is no mobile sync to be found...
• High resource usage while doing shit all
• LDAP is only on the enterprise distribution
• OnlyOffice is only on the enterprise distribution
• The Collabora integration doesn't play nice with the cloudron Collabora app

Its a cool app but fails to meet my needs. Either way I guess the code is there if anyone has an inclination to take it further.

[necrevistonnezr]

@atridad Thanks for your efforts and testing! It’s another case of having great software and doing the mobile app as an afterthought, I guess, like so many others. Today should always be mobile first!

[micmc]

@necrevistonnezr said in Pydio free file sharing:

@atridad Thanks for your efforts and testing! It’s another case of having great software and doing the mobile app as an afterthought, I guess, like so many others. Today should always be mobile first!

Absolutely, though sometimes some open source apps have started development before the 'mobile happening' so I guess that makes it more difficult to them to get on the bandwagon.

Cheers!
Andy

[murgero]

Teaser

[girish]

@murgero very nice! Is pydio like nextcloud but just for file sharing ? It also seems the project is now called "Cells" , is it?

[A Former User]

@girish yeah. It runs on a golang backend I think. Works alright. The mobile app isn’t quite as good as Nextcloud’s but it imo it’s better layout on the browser compared to nextcloud.

[A Former User]

@murgero Oooooo is this pydio cells or the older PHP version? I cant remember what issues I had packaging it but im glad you got it working!

[murgero]

@girish @atridad yeah - packaged it last night. It's Pydio Cells now. This is the latest stable cells version as of last night.

It takes like 5 minutes for the first boot but after that runs fast. It has some issues with file permissions still but I'll work on that later.

[A Former User]

@murgero

[necrevistonnezr]

@atridad said in Pydio free file sharing:

@girish yeah. It runs on a golang backend I think. Works alright. The mobile app isn’t quite as good as Nextcloud’s but it imo it’s better layout on the browser compared to nextcloud.

Well, it has WebDAV access, so there are a few more options for mobile apps: https://pydio.com/en/docs/kb/client-applications/using-webdav-clients

[marcusquinn]

Oh wow, significantly faster than Nextcloud!

• https://demo.pydio.com

@murgero does this include LDAP?

[murgero]

@marcusquinn Enterprise version includes ldap - I have left the ldap add-on from cloudron enabled in-case someone else comes up with a solution for that.

[timconsidine]

An old post but I have packaged Pydio Cells as a custom app.

My git repo : https://git.cloudron.io/timconsidine/cloudron-pydiocells

Built Cloudron Docker image : tcmbp132021/cloudron-pydiocells:v1.0.0

Available as fast install on custom app installer : https://ccai.appx.uk

Pydio is a cloud file collaboration (or just your personal file archive) and is much faster than Nextcloud.

It goes someway to providing Seafile-like functionality but I have not explored how to sync local devices e.g. desktops to the cloud archive. So it could be said to be limited use until that is resolved.

Note : files are stored on disk with Pydio-naming, which is not ideal, and one reason why I am looking for an alternative to Seafile.
Sync-in seems to be better (native file naming, sync clients) but needs more battle testing.

[timconsidine]

Err ... a disclaimer / alert is needed that Pydio uses MinIO under the hood.
Given the MinIO changes, I don't know (haven't checked) how this might affect the acceptability of Pydio Cells as a solution. Might depend on your personal stance.

But Pydio 5 is coming and that might change things.

Yes, Pydio Cells uses MinIO under the hood.

Here is the breakdown:

1. Storage Layer : Pydio Cells treats all storage (even local files) as object storage.
2. Internal Usage : It embeds a forked version of MinIO to manage the data layer. When you create a "local" datasource, Cells actually spins up an internal MinIO gateway/server to manage those files as if they were in an S3 bucket.
3. API : This allows Pydio to use the standard S3 API for file operations (uploads, downloads, multipart) internally and externally, regardless of whether the actual data is on a local disk, an actual S3 bucket, or Azure Blob storage.
   You do not need to install MinIO separately; it is bundled and managed automatically by the Cells binary.

[robi]

Interesting, is the API usable by other apps that want an S3 endpoint?

Might be an easy way to have a local S3 service/gateway until the Cloudron team integrates a shared service with App Add-on.

[timconsidine]

@robi interesting thought
I'm not sure, but will have a play around.

[timconsidine]

Hmmm, this last build seems to have some issues.
Stand by for a new version.

[timconsidine]

Oooof
Pydio Cells package fixed.
Changed approach to use the provided browser configuration process (seems more reliable than doing it programmatically).

What I like :

• nice UI
• functional
• desktop sync client (not yet tested)

What I don't like :

• file names not exposed in the underlying app data storage (but this seems quite common in such apps)

Not yet tested :

• API usage
• S3 bucket usage
• desktop sync client

Deployment :
My git repo : https://git.cloudron.io/timconsidine/cloudron-pydiocells
Built Cloudron Docker image : tcmbp132021/cloudron-pydiocells:v1.0.0
Available as fast install on custom app installer : https://ccai.appx.uk
and on custom app installer personal edition (remember to import the master catalogue)

[timconsidine]

I have found that Pydio Cells needs a decent amount of memory.
1Gb might be a viable minimum.
I am experimenting with 2Gb and will report back how that goes.