Hetzner Storage Box (CIFS)

[jdaviescoates]

Yes, lots of us have had similar issues in the past, search the forum and you'll find various threads about CIFS issues.

[nichu42]

@thebighead
I ran into problems while using Hetzner Storage Box via CIFS for backups.
I never had any more issues since I switched to sshfs.

[tadeas]

I've had Hetzner StorageBox mounted via sshfs for the last two years from within Cloudron server, never had any problems with it. I make the volume accessible to Nextcloud and then see the files from within the Nextcloud.

[BrutalBirdie]

I also switch all servers from CIFS to SSHFS and this reduced many problems.
+1

[BrutalBirdie]

btw. If you have many SSHFS setups to do for many Cloudrons here is my script for creating some needed stuff.

This script creates a folder and ssh-key to be used with Cloudron.
This script expects to have the SSHFS to be mounted locally so it can create Folders and Keys which then can be used.

#!/bin/bash
read -rp "Customer Name: " CUSTOMER
read -rp "Mount Point of SSHFS: " MOUNT_POINT

CUSTOMER_PATH="${MOUNT_POINT%/}/$CUSTOMER"
CUSTOMER_SSH_PATH="${CUSTOMER_PATH}/.ssh"
CUSTOMER_AUTH_KEYS="${CUSTOMER_SSH_PATH}/authorized_keys"

echo "=> Checking if customer already exists"
if [[ -d $CUSTOMER_PATH ]]; then
    echo "=> Customer existing, quitting"
    exit 1
fi

echo "=> Create Folder"
mkdir -pv "$CUSTOMER_SSH_PATH"

echo "=> Create Auth Keys File"
if [[ ! -f "$CUSTOMER_AUTH_KEYS" ]]; then
    touch "$CUSTOMER_AUTH_KEYS"
fi

echo "=> Create ssh-key and place into auth keys"
if [[ ! -f "${CUSTOMER_SSH_PATH}/$CUSTOMER" ]]; then
    ssh-keygen -f "${CUSTOMER_SSH_PATH}/$CUSTOMER" -t ed25519 -C "${CUSTOMER}-SSHFS" -N ""
    cat "${CUSTOMER_SSH_PATH}/${CUSTOMER}.pub" > "${CUSTOMER_SSH_PATH}/authorized_keys"
else
    echo "=> Key seems to be present, something is off"
    exit 1
fi

[jdaviescoates]

From memory I think I once had a CIFS issue, but I think that was related to things changing on the Cloudron end (when Cloudron started automating mount stuff but I still had my slightly different set-up as per Hetzner docs), but I don't think I've ever had issues again since I set it up again with Cloudron automating the mount set-up.

Also, I spotted that apparently SSHFS is no longer maintained, so perhaps CIFS is again the best way/ only supported way?

@nebulon said in Best way/protocol to mount Hetzner Storage Box?:

https://github.com/libfuse/sshfs#this-project-is-orphaned unless the development was taken elsewhere without mention?

Also, I think the main problems lots of people were having previously (which effected CIFS/NFS/SSHFS) was fixed:

@girish said in Cloudron 7.3.4: "Analyze Disk" doesn't do anything and no statistics shown...:

Thanks all. This issue was already fixed as well last month - https://git.cloudron.io/cloudron/box/-/commit/67cde5a62cf0394c8bf2d78ee3408e5995a220e7 . It's already in 7.3.5.

Essentially, if you have CIFS/NFS/SSHFS, there is a crash.

[nichu42]

One of the issues I had was that CIFS was awfully slow, and the backups took forever. But maybe I'll give it another try if @nebulon or @girish recommend so due to the lack of SSHFS support.

[lukas]

My backups via CIFS are also slow

[mdc773]

speaking about hetzner how did you guys get the SSHFS key? i also have problems with CIFS would love to use SSHFS with hetzners storage-box

[robi]

It's best to focus on finding the issue with CIFS as it worked well before a certain point mounts were changed.

SSHFS will always be much slower than CIFS if all is well.

[mdc773]

@robi has anyone figured out why CIFS is slow? why can't cloudron just allow volumes from objective storage

[robi]

@mdc773 said in Hetzner Storage Box (CIFS):

@robi has anyone figured out why CIFS is slow? why can't cloudron just allow volumes from objective storage

doesn't appear so.

Because object storage is not a filesystem and needs middleware to make it work. Things like rclone.org (which you can set up manually) or another gateway sw/hw that provides mounts for it.

[mdc773]

@robi okay i understand now

[girish]

Note that rclone mount is based on FUSE - https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_mount/ . So, symlinks etc won't work just like with s3fs.

[robi]

@girish I think your info is a bit outdated, as their repo notes: https://github.com/s3fs-fuse/s3fs-fuse

Features

• large subset of POSIX including reading/writing files, directories, symlinks, mode, uid/gid, and extended attributes

[girish]

@robi interesting... I guess it would work then.

Let us know if it works (or not).

[girish]

SSHFS continues - https://github.com/libfuse/sshfs/commit/551752c3a57def3c49ced08a6246fcfdd8640e7a

[avatar1024]

I also had issues with CIFS in the past, switch to SSHFS and all has been well, except a couple of times on trying to restore a cloudron to another server. This just happened to me again yesterday where the restore the server from backup doesn't work (loading the backup config file) and I get the following error:

"failed to mount (inactive): read: Connection reset by peer"

The same error is also reported in this post.

For it to work I had to connect to CIFS.

Weirdly now, in the restore server, the same storage box connects fine as SSHFS for volumes (and I didn't do anything, Cloudron just restored my Volume config).

So personally, I think there is a bug somewhere in Cloudron that prevents mounting SSHFS for backup on Server restore, because mounting as SSHFS works fine otherwise.

[nebulon]

Cloudron really just uses the native linux cifs tooling, but by experience cifs with hetzner every now and then results in a bad mountpoint, where a remount is required. So far the investigations why and when that happens were unfortunately inconclusive. At least for me the SSHFS option is a lot more stable.

[jdaviescoates]

@nebulon said in Hetzner Storage Box (CIFS):

At least for me the SSHFS option is a lot more stable.

Out of interest, have you testing doing a restore too as per @avatar1024 example above?