Access consume folder from scanner/network

[tsharky]

Hey there,

I'm using paperless-ngx and nextcloud on my cloudron and being happy with it. But there is one thing I can't get to work.

My setup:

WAN --- Unifi Gateway ___(port 80/443)___ Cloudron (172.16.101.1/23)
                      \__________________ scanner (172.16.10.10/23)

What I would like to do:
I would like to have my local Brother scanner to have access to the consume folder of my paperless-ngx app on the local network. I also want to share the consume folder (read/write) and archive folder (read only) of paperless-ngx with nextcloud.

What I did already:
First I tried to install a nfs server and followed this guide (https://docs.cloudron.io/guides/nfs-share/) and opened port 2049 in the cloudron firewall.

ACCEPT     tcp  --  anywhere             anywhere             tcp dpt:nfs
ACCEPT     udp  --  anywhere             anywhere             udp dpt:nfs

I created a folder /srv/nfs and exported (/etc/exports) it. I have granted access to the nfs folder to paperless-ngx and nextcloud by creating a volume and add it as storage in the app config.

I can connect to the nfs share from localhost, but cannot access it from the local network. showmount -e 172.16.101.1 runs in a timeout. To me it looks like the cloudron firewall is blocking my traffic.

I also thought about to use the integrated ftp server, but I can only access the ftp server if I open port 222 on the WAN side and forward it to cloudron (what I would not like to do).

Do you have any ideas/tips how to solve this? I would appreciate your feedback.

Kind regards!

[joseph]

Does your hypervisor/vm runner block network traffic? Maybe port 2049 has to be opened up there? I think netstat -tulnp | grep :2049 will give you the IP nfs is binding to.

[tsharky]

I had to set a static port for mountd in /etc/nfs.conf and also had to open port 111 (PortMapper) and the mountd port in the cloudron firewall. rpcinfo -p helped me with this. Now I can access my nfs server.

btw: Your guide for the nfs share (https://docs.cloudron.io/guides/nfs-share/) is outdated. Since ubuntu 22.04 you have to deactivate NFSv3 in /etc/nfs.conf.
https://lansible.com/2023/10/disable-nfsv3-on-ubuntu-22.04-and-newer/

Thanks!

[james]

Hello @tsharky
Thanks for the information.
I have updated the documentation.

[charlesnw]

Is anyone using mounted volume as the consume directory ?

Will paperless leave the original documents in the consume directory and copy them internally?

I have a ScanSnap which will scan to a mapped drive. I want to leave those documents alone (to manage via ScanSnap by our CFO who is familiar with that system / process ).

I want a copy made into paperless where I , and our COO and CFO and some automation I’m working on will utilize paperless workflows / APIs etc.

The documents should exist in both places , this is a feature / desired behavior.

Ideally paperless would track the already consumed documents.

Documentation isn’t clear. I may need to open an issue with upstream. Which is fine.

My cloudron specific question is how to map a volume to the consume folder ?

[charlesnw]

Seems it’s something that can be set in the config but warns against doing so if running in docker

https://docs.paperless-ngx.com/configuration/#PAPERLESS_CONSUMPTION_DIR

[nebulon]

We are looking into the customization of the consumption directory.

Regarding the removal of the documents from that storage, the documentation is pretty clear that it will consume and remove those documents from the storage: https://docs.paperless-ngx.com/usage/#the-consumption-directory

[nebulon]

So using a volume with a folder for consumption is supported. Basically add the volume (in my case extradisk) to the app. This would mount it to /media/extradisk then I created a folder called consume/ in that disk and you have to give it read/write permissions for all users (so chmod it). After this adjust the corresponding env var in the paperless.conf in /app/data. In my case PAPERLESS_CONSUMPTION_DIR=/media/extradisk/consume then restart the app.

Also note the volume in Cloudron has to be read/write mounted! If paperless cannot write to it (for document deletion) it would simply not even attempt to consume documents.