Best posts made by scooke

I guess lots of people use caprover. I thought I'd try it out because I like fiddling with things. So, I installed. It worked fine. At first. Then, one morning, it wouldn't load. Just a mysterious error message on the Dashboard, "Something bad happened". So, a lengthy dive into the incomprehensible world of troubleshooting Docker began. There's no real answer. So many others with slight variations of what might be my problem. No real authoritative source of Help. Just, try this, try that. Many searchers end up reinstalling everything. I considered the same. Then I wondered when my caprover install would suddenly crap out again, and I'd lose my work. Again. So forget it. No more caprover.

You know what hasn't crapped out? Cloudron. I don't know how the Team does it, but keeping everything working is so worth the Subscription.

Cloudron for the win. Cloudron to the moon. Cloudron rules.

I was perusing the Cloudron App Store, and just admiring the presence of some of these apps:
Weblate, Confluence, The Lounge, Taiga (Taiga! I mean, for real!), SOGo, Phabricator, OpenProject, Moodle, MediaWiki, Invoice Ninja 5, Gogs (or for that matter, Gitlab or Gitea), DokuWiki... I mean, over the years, I was wanting to run various apps that managed hosts like Webfaction (I started with them in 2008) didn't have available. This prompted my slow slog into self-hosting, self-installing, self-managing VPSes, lots of crash and burns, lots of learning about limits and how to work around or with them... some of these apps in the list were major victories for me to get installed and running. Some, I never did get installed and running on my own machines. I just think it's so cool that here they are, on Cloudron, ready for anyone to easily get up and running. I am grateful for all that I learned along the way, but what a treat for new people, of any age, to come across Cloudron and have all these apps at their fingertips!

I just want to say thanks!

For some of them, like Weblate, do you a way to see where traffic is coming from for them? Like, are there analytics indicating"Weblate searches are coming from companies, or universities, or research labs"? Do you have any targeted advertising for any of these apps on Cloudron, or has word-of-mouth in general been enough? Just curious, no need to spend any time looking it up.

Some recent posts have dealt with issues due to running out of space. I too had this challenge when I first started , and it was constraining to say the least. I eventually moved up to larger VPSes (my current one has 708GB), which allowed me to try different apps. However, apps like Peertube and Mastodon and Cubby all start taking up lots of space, more than before.

To help with this I started using the free tier of object storage offered by Scaleway, who gives you up to 75GB free! Amazing! But you know what, even with that I started hitting the limit after a few months.

So, now that I was using Object Storage, that got me looking for other ways it might help. My search led me to Minio - self-hosted object storage!? Cool. I also frequent lowendtalk and serverhunter, which eventually led to me snag a KS-1 from OVH/KimSufi. On this I installed Minio, using both the Minio instructions, but also this site was super helpful. I lucked out and discovered that my 1TB VPS was actually a 2TB drive. Double cool.

You may have seen some of my posts on this forum asking for help to get the various apps working with Minio. Thanks to all who helped! And let me tell you... I have set up my various Wordpress sites (using Media Cloud), Mastodons, Peertubes, and now the new XBackBone app, and OBJECT STORAGE IS LIT.

The best thing, for me, is that I can now back up ALL my Cloudron apps and not worry about how much space they are taking up because most of the media is stored in my Minio. I notice this most with Peertube, of course, but also Mastodon. The way I've set mine up, within a few hours it had several GBs of data. Backing all this up took forever, and in some cases, the backups wouldn't work because of either how long it took, or due to some file issue. But, the apps back up nicely, and their media is already on the Minio instance.

The most recent coolness is discovering XBackBone. I had no idea what that was. I had to google what "XShare" was... and holy smokes, what a lifesaver. I take tons of screenshots, and sometimes lose track of where they are. But with XShare uploading to XBackBone which I've set up to use my Minio (meaning the screenshots go straight to its bucket). Amazing!

I'm assuming that the Minio offered by Cloudron will be just as useful. Give it a try! So, grab one of those KS-1s (took me months), install Cloudron in it, and you're set!

As I've been looking for WhatsApp replacements I came across Beeper. Now, it doesnt' actually replace WA; it is however a pretty nifty looking unified chat hq, built on Matrix, and it self-hostable. They even provide a great Ansible playbook over at github - https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy.

Just to repeat myself - this doesn't replace any chat services, but it provides a way to use many different chat services in one interface. I've tried things like this back in the day and never really liked it, but for some reason this one looks promising, probably because it's based on Matrix, which is something I'd like to use more anyway, and see wider adoption.

Looks like it is pretty much ready to plug in to Cloudron too, but those with the skillset!

@nebulon If I understand the dynamics introduced by an open source licence like AGPL, someone having the access to the source code, and in fact having the source code, does not make them a "user" of Cloudron. They simply have the software and can install it and do whatever. But when they have problems, as they surely will because of Docker, where will they turn to? Most likely the original creators of the software... and when you and @girish can't help because of other time constraints, I can imagine the complaints and badmouthing that would follow. This would potentially have the effect of Cloudron (the subscription service) getting a bad name, losing customers, and eventually going out of business. So it makes sense to me that you've tightened up the licence so that the amazing user experience can remain intact and manageable.

I am not an open source purist, starting from the fact that I have no control over the VPS I rent on which I run Cloudron. It is, as someone in your chats said, a compromise for a purist. For the rest of us who don't want to pay an opaque behemoth company anything, Cloudron is simply the best. And it has the open source spirit, if not the correct licence on every bit of code. And importantly, the software actually works, a theme that I've repeated a few times on different threads. I applaud the Cloudron team for making decisions to enable them to keep the software open AND working.

Glad to be part of a community with people like you!
A balmy 18C down here in southern France!

Most of the apps I install on my Cloudron rarely change from their location, or, their initial domain name. The auto-backup feature is fantastic too (I'm using Scaleway).

From time to time I do turn off apps, partly for space reasons, or to make room in RAM while I try out a few other apps. Before doing so, I like to backup just that one app I'm going to turn off. I've then had situations where, after some time has passed, I'll forget if I did back up this or that app, but I have to admit, trying to look up the long convoluted name (which is thankfully possible in Cloudron) and then finding the same in my Scaleway backups, to verify, is tedious enough that I take a chance and don't back up, or I just back up again and thus use up space that wasn't needed.

What would really speed things up for me is if the backups for each app (both individually backed up and when part of a full backup) could include the location (the domain, or a truncated domain) and the name of the app installed. The backup name is already helpful by including the date 2021-03-08-220003-295/app_4145s2c0-hbs57-2g8n-kiw3-2h89si6d82y9_v0.4.0. But, maybe this is just me, keeping track of which domain+app has which long convoluted name is a bit of a hassle. A backup name like 2021-03-08-220003-295/example-com_vikunja_v0.4.0 would make things sooo much easier for me to quickly visually check, verify, and find backups.

I also tend to prune existing backups in my Scaleway buckets by hand, and a naming convention like this would be super helpful for me to be able to immediately see which app is where and has been backed up how many times and when most recently.

NOTE: I've just discovered that in the Backups pane of an apps Dashboard I can download the most recent backup configuration (Download Backup Configuration), and this configuration json file INCLUDES the location in brackets at the end of the filename, like so - app-backup-config-2021-03-09-08-14-31 (subdomain.example.com).json! -Including that location in the backup file name too would be super helpful.

https://www.medusajs.com/
https://github.com/medusajs/gatsby-starter-medusa

I would definitely use this if was available. Thus far I'm using tweaked WP sites, but this... would be nice!

FWIW, when I looked at cloudron.io, there is no mention of being able to (possibly) package any app I want and run it. There is a specific offer of running production ready apps. So, I pay for and support what Cloudron offers; I've never paid for the Wishlist.

Ever since the Wishlist started, I've watched with keen interest. But I've also viewed it as just that, a wishlist. I found it quite generous of the Cloudron team to even openly offer the chance of user-demanded apps. On the other similar platforms (Caprover, Yunohost, even FLAP, but less so as FLAP has a strict app offering), there is the potential for anyone to package any app they want... but if you've tried those you will know that the chances those apps launching, much less working after an update, are very low! So, the fact the Cloudron has actually listened to User wishes (along with the awesome help of many Users) and packaged apps is incredible.

I think I get the allure of KVM images/VM Containers. I imagine that would be a ton of work to rework every currently functioning app into such a format. I also feel like this would turn Cloudron into more of an actual Enterprise-oriented company, rather than one that caters to users like me. Mostly because Wordpress, Ghost, Nextcloud, most of the chat apps, heck, even Mautic, Odoo and SOGo don't need the techiness of a KVM image to just be used. The sort of apps that would benefit from this are probably apps I don't really need, or would use*. And if those ignore the built-in LDAP and email services... well, that ain't Cloudron anymore (for me!)

@marcusquinn I'm curious which apps you are thinking about that are currently impossible to package for Cloudron. For example, I was checking out https://www.egroupware.org/en/download and they have already gone the Container route. There are a few LMSes too, whose names I don't recall at the moment, who seem to prefer a Container approach rather than just a docker-compose container approach.

"The era of distributed, independent email servers is over." Nope.

Sounds like this guy works for Big Email. If anything, the era is still on. This sort of post seems to be popular these days - self-host this or that "has failed", "I've tried", "I give up"... let them. I've been selfhosting/home-hosting since 2002 or so, so I feel his pain about setting things up. But for some reason, this article is just way over the top. A few of his points even work against him - doctors, universities, banks, and businesses and politicians DO selfhost their email. Every time he rescues their emails from the spam folder, it helps everyone.

They haven't won; he gave up.

EDIT: edited for clarity.

I realize there seem to be more and more Support requests here regarding installing Cloudron on various platforms - at home, in a VM, in a VM in a VM, on a virtual USB stick plugged into a Mac running a Windows VM on a remote Redhat VPS (I made that up), on a Pi, etc. These then include troubleshooting DNS, ports, routers... don't get me started on throwing CF into the mix! I mean, that's all cool. I love fiddling too. And Girish's blog post about hosting Cloudron at home more or less encourages ppl to try that. But Caprover and Yunohost, as two related services, make it clear that installations not on a standard VPS are advanced (https://caprover.com/docs/run-locally.html, https://yunohost.org/en/install/hardware:regular). Yes, I realize that these other two DO provide documentation, which is what another post asked about; but if you've ever tried troubleshooting or getting help with issues with those other two on their respective Support Forums... good luck!

Could there be a totally separate Forum category for these types of requests, along with some notice or link on that Installation page (or somewhere) that installations not on the specified platform can go to such-and-such Forum for help? And to be honest, have them be lower priority than Support requests for Cloudon installed according to the documentation. Those who have attempted, and maybe succeeded, can help each other within that Category. Maybe even iron out all the various the wrinkles for all the various platforms until there is a 99.99% functioning set of instructions for non-VPS installations.

The Cloudron Team are super with how much they try to help everyone... but helping those who don't install Cloudron according to the documentation detracts from those who followed the official instructions. Particularly when said Help includes troubleshooting someone's home setup+router+ISP+model of Pi+DNS+voodoo. Kudos to the Team!

*I suppose it makes sense that the Cloudron Team gives Support for those on a non-VPS setup who are paying for Enterprise or Priority (but do those customers actually come to the Forum??).

This just came through my Mastodon instance. https://social.gitea.io/@gitea/107576791626052697, and the link within that https://nlnet.nl/project/Gitea/

This is something I hadn't even thought about before, but apparently it's getting traction. Cool.

Yes, and no. I followed Digital Ocean tutorials, and others from different sites, and conceptually there was a lot I didn't understand. This was challenging when something broke and I didn't even know what happened. But over time the tuts made more sense, the terminology was sticking, the concepts became clearer, but the amount of work and time needed to maintain and monitor the server didn't decrease much. The new Ghost works really really nice compared to how it started, and if that is all you will have running on the $5 server then you should be fine. Just always make backups of the Ghost app and assume at some point something will go wonky, or you will even get hacked, and learn from the experience. Restore from a backup and get back at it.

On top of the server though you have domain/DNS issues to understand and maintain. This can be tricky too, but over time it all gets clearer.

That said, using Cloudron is such a treat. Because I tinkered around on my own for awhile, I now better understand what Cloudron is doing, and how and why, and so it makes it that much nicer to use. But if you are starting from zero, then it is still a great way to get your Ghost site up and running. You could always familiarize yourself with webserver things locally while using MAMP or LAMP on Linux or...XAMPP (or whatever the windows version is called); and get used to servers locally with VirtualBox or VMWare and spin up an Ubuntu image and use it as a test server.

I will add that using Cloudron to run a Ghost app is advantageous in that you will also have the option for the built-in email server, and the option to install other apps that use Apache rather than nginx, or for that matter, php instead of nodejs; I still find it challenging to run php apps that would usually run well under Apache on an nginx server if the main app is a Ghost app, and vice versa, getting a Ghost app to run under Apache so that the other php apps can remain undisturbed. Cloudron makes this mixing of apps seamless.

You could install LimeSurvey and give it a try for all of us!

You already have the option to install apps from others in a general sense because of Docker.

I pay for Cloudron not just because it is Docker-based, but because of how easy the devs and admins and owners have made it to use. I think adding unsupported apps to the mix even more will distract from the appeal of Cloudron. The extra apps that are available are there because the app is in the pipeline to being added to the official Cloudron store; they have been/are being worked on by people who like the Cloudron approach and want to add to that, and not to a Docker-experience in general.

The price jump from no-support to support with nethserver is a huge jump from 48€ to 250€! I think Cloudron has a good pricing structure because they have limited what they have to support. To address one of your first points, I left Yunohost exactly because of how many low level quality apps that they have, and all the hassles and problems that approach introduced. I wouldn't want to see Cloudron go that route. I like the line being thick! I am already receiving all that I hope for from Cloudron.

All that being said, I think we already have a pretty good 'community repository' of helpful users and super helpful admins. For anything that I want to do that is beyond what Cloudron offers, I just tinker away on my other VPS.

Last week I was about to ask anyone their recommendations for an audio app. A quick search of the forums didn't turn up anything specific. So, I thought I'd install the 4 above and give them a try, and report back.

I did not try Jellyfin this time as I had previously tried it out on my cloudron and it slowed everything down (about 6 months ago?). Who knows if its better now; I just want something that works.

That is the gist of my requirements: Does it work? Can I install it, and then move my music into it, and play it, with minimal hassle. Features weren't necessarily the most important. Here is what I found.

• Ampache: I was actually looking forward to this being the winner. I've known about it for a long time, and was excited to see what it could do. Alas, despite several tries, and even checking out a few posts on the forums here, I could never just upload my 31 files (30 songs and a playlist file) and get them to play. I couldn't even get them to appear in the library! Sure, more troubleshooting may have solved the problem. But, my criteria was not, "Which app will take up the most time troubleshooting and consequently result in the greatest satisfaction that I persevered and made it work." So I turned off Ampache.

• Emby: This one seemed promising. The First Time Usage clearly showed me where to place my files. Like Ampache, I made sure the files were owned properly. I uploaded my 31 files... but they also never appeared in the Emby dashboard. Give me a break. Why should this be so hard? Sure, there is probably some "trick" to get this to work, but I'm not looking to become a magician just for my music.

• Koel: Cool logo. Cool history. Seems less cluttered than the previous two... maybe this would be the one. Like Emby, I could see where the files are supposed to go. I put them there. Unlike Ampache and Emby, I could actually see my individual songs. BUT, they weren't playable per album! Surely not?! But yes, even though there was a view for Album, I never figured out how to play one entire album. I could have made a playlist, but hello, I'm pretty sure Play by Album is a thing in the music app world. I did not have time for this. So, I turned off Koel. Bye bye slick interface. I just want to install an app, upload my music, and play it (by album). Is this so hard??

• Navidrome: The last contender. For some reason I kept thinking of Mel Gibson and Tina Turner in their seminal Mad Max movie, Beyond the Navidrome. I was expecting yet another battle, in a navidrome, to get my music uploaded, visible, and then playable (by album). I installed it, read the First Time Use, uploaded the music, fixed ownership, started a rescan in the app, and what do you know... there was my music. I could view the 30 songs in various ways. When I wanted to play the entire album I just clicked on the recognized playlist file, then pressed PLAY and all the songs played! Hallelujah! Navidrome was the winner. Everything just worked. I listened to my music for hours. I will be uninstalling the other three and sticking with Navidrome.

NOTE. I did this a few days ago. I have quit my browser, obviously, and just went back to my navidrome install to resume my music heaven... but it was asking me to (re)make an admin account? What? I already did that, it was already working. Fortunately there is a solution in the Cloudron forums, and I had to login with an incognito window, but, it was all there and it was all working.

I should also add, to be as clear as possible, that "Play by Album" actually doesn't seem to be a feature in Navidrome. At least, not the way I arranged my album. My album is a collection of songs downloaded from an auto-generated YouTube playlist using 4K Video Downloader. 4K includes an option to generate a m3u file when downloading a playlist. So it was this m3u file that Navidrome recognized and displayed, and let me play my "album". Since I get most of my music these days in a similar way, the m3u file recognition was the best part of Navidrome.

As I mentioned, this wasn't a feature comparison, so I don't intend to insult or disparage any die-hard users of the other apps here, nor denigrate the creaters. I just simply wanted to install the app, upload the music, and play it. In this respect, on my setup, using minimal troubleshooting, only Navidrome met my expectations. You may have better luck with your installations; your own Navidrome install might not work! But if you too are looking for a music app that just gets installed, and gets playing your music, I suggest Navidrome.

Finally, no more "Unread"s. Have a good sleep everyone!

I started with one domain at webfaction com, years ago. It was a good start for me. Now, I have 40 domains spread out over 4 registrars, on 6 different hosts. I was going crazy trying to keep track of where a given domain was being hosted, and with which registrar it was bought from, and most importantly, when do I need to renew it!? Yes, it's a crazy hobby!

I tried an Excel spreadsheet, but it was clunky, and the file would get misplaced when I would clean up. I tried a mindmap, using nodes as a Domain Registrar and connecting domains under that registrar in their own bubbles. But that wasn't easy to then add the hosts (including their IP), nor was there an easy way to include their due date that could notify me if it was due.

If only I could find something that I could look at a glance to see where the domain is, when it expires, and with which registar. And maybe even include some additional info and notes about what I've done with it.

Then, I found Vikunja on the Cloudron store. Hmmm, a project management app. With Tasks, Lists, Labels, due dates, color coding, and the visual that ties it all together - Kanban boards! Here is what I've done.

I made Labels and color-coded them. The Labels cover every possible detail: Registrar, Host, IP, software, status. So, there are color-coded Labels for each registrar, and each VPS host. IPs are color-coded to the VPS. For example, I have a Label, "NameCheap", which is orange (using the html code for the main color on their website), and another Label, "SSDNodes", which is a green-ish color, as examples.

Next, I made a Namespace and called it MAIN. So, in the sidebar of Vikunja this Namespace appears at the top for quick access. Then I made a List called Domains (it retrospect another, more general name would work better). So, when I open Vikunja, I can see MAIN, and under it the first List, "Domains". When I click on Domains it opens in Kanban view.

Under MAIN-> Domains-> are another set of lists. Now, I made these Lists using Kanban view so that I could visually, at-a-glance, see the info. Each List is the name of VPS and its IP.

Under each List (Main->Domains-VPS+IP) are the Tasks. And each Task is simply the domain name. Using the previously set up Labels, I can make a Task, example.com, add an orange Label so I can easily see it is with NameCheap, and also (because this is a PM app) add a Due Date. The Due Date is, of course, the expiry date of the domain, and acts as a reminder for me. In the Kanban view I can see thus the List of VPS and which domains I'm hosting on it, along with small text saying "Due in 3 months", or, "Due in 1 week", helping me keep track of their expiry/renewal dates.

So, under the Namespace, Main, I can see in Kanban view all the VPSs I have, and at glance see how many domains are on each one. Because it is in Kanban view I have to scroll horizontally to see all the Lists of the VPS with their Tasks (domains), but as I said, it is so nice to be able to do this at-a-glance.

Some other benefits are that each Task has a place for Description and Comments. These are super handy for noting down what the purpose or goal of a domain was, and what software I've installed on it, along with other details.

Now, I still needed a way to keep track of the VPS service renewals, so I made another Namespace, called it Servers, and made a List for each host. Because a List doesn't have a Due Date assigned to it, under each List I made a Task with basically the same name, but here I could include the Due Date of the service renewal. And again, in Kanban view, I can see, with just a few clicks, when that VPS will expire.

One final need was to be able to see, at-a-glance, how many, and which, domains I have with the Registrars. I have them each as a Label, and a Task under each host List under the Main namespace, but it wasn't convenient counting how many orange Labels I could see to have a quick idea of how many domains I have with NameCheap.

So, I made one more Namespace and called it "Domain Hosts", and under this Namespace made a List for each Registrar, and used the same HTML code to color-code it (from the initial Labels), and under each List was able to show the related domains. But HOW? I was worried I'd have to make another whole list of Tasks using the names of the domains, but that would get messy. Thankfully, Vikunja allows something called "Task Relations". So, to repeat myself, I made a Namespace, and under that made a List for each Registrar, and under each List made 1 Task called basically the same as the List (So the List is "NameCheap" and the first and only Task is called "NameCheap List"), and then under that 1 Task I could "Add Task Relation". This would show a text box which would automatically find the domain name in question as I typed it, and then I could choose SubTask. Now, when I look at the Domain Hosts->NameCheap->NameCheap List-Domains (as Subtask).

This was a lengthy read, but I hope it can help you if you need help with your own records management. Vikunja has a mobile app too, which has come in handy if I'm not in front of the laptop and need to make a note or check a detail.

@kolaente Hello, you are the Creator of Vikunja! Thank you! As I wrote, I've tried all kinds of methods to track my info, even other PM apps. But something about Vikunja, its Labels, Tasks, and Buckets, colour-coding, Comments for each Task, just really clicked for me. It's perfect for my situation.

The only thing I was wanting was a way to drag-and-drop Buckets (which I erroneously called Lists) inn Kanban view into a different order.... but I recall reading somewhere this was now possible, so just as I was typing this, I checked, and voila! I can move my Buckets in Kanban view around. The reason this was important for me was that I like to spin up new servers for a month or two to test them. Each Server is Bucket, and the important Servers/Buckets I keep to the left of the screen, where I can see them easily, and I move the servers that will not be renewed, but about whom I want to have the info handy, just in case, to the far right, out of view (I have a narrow monitor).

I forgot to add in my initial post that the ability to drag-and-drop Tasks (which for me are domains) from one Bucket to another (which show the VPS+IP) as I also tend to shift domains around. Super convenient!

@doodlemania2 With the help of @timconsidine I have this installed also. Looks and runs smooth! Thank you!

I remember being at the stage you are. Hearing how wonderful the world of Linux is... just run some simple commands and voila! The World At Your Feet.

But it ain't working.

As long as you don't bother looking up the errors that pop up, none of this will ever make sense and you will continue asking for help when at least the initial problems are clear as day to others.

Cannot write to ‘cloudron-setup’ (Permission denied). Start there. In what directory are you? (Whats a directory, you ask... ok, start there then.) What causes "Permission denied" errors? Fix it.

You can do it! It's a rewarding adventure!

I love Cloudron. I love the increasing number of apps offered. But will there eventually be too many for the Cloudron team to manage? I'd hate to see Support quality, or quality in general, decrease just for quantity. If there is to be a limit, how will it be determined? By install number? By usage? By active maintenance by the git repository/project owners (not Cloudron)?

@nj In the spirit of Lunar New Year, 加油！ (Jiāyóu! This literally means, "add oil", but in every day use it's shouted as encouragement to competitors, a race, some event needing great effort.)

@seeker Just be sure to take advantage of the auto-backup feature of Cloudron, and you'll be fine. One of my backup destinations is the free tier of Scaleway Object Storage, where you get 75GB free.

Plus, every now and then, pay for a cheap VPS for a few dollars a month for just the month, install cloudron on it, use a spare domain, and practice restoring from the backup. Then if something really goes wrong your panic level will be lower since you know how to restore from a backup.

@jdaviescoates I went back and read a link you shared, a convo in a Mastodon instance, by someone who seemed to brush away Cloudron's approach and mindset automatically. I wouldn't take that opinion expressed in such a way seriously, especially since they didn't in any way outline exactly how they can see Cloudron managing or limiting access. I mean, the first and most important part of Cloudron is that we host it ourselves on our own servers and backup things to destinations we control.

Somehow the negative viewpoint (not saying this is yours) that Cloudron has benefited off the back of open source projects ignores all that it conversely has done to broaden each projects exposure, without (I assume) asking for financial renumeration from those projects for doing so, nor excluding projects if they won't pay up. I think if Cloudron went that way then a negative view of Cloudron would totally understandable.

I can take a step back and look historically at all the times I tried to self-host something, and got stuck, with minimal help from said-project's forums, and came away with nothing, and remember thinking, "I'd pay some one to help me with this!"... voila, that is the role Cloudron has played. I share your enthusiasm for this project!

Like you (in the mastodon thread), I tried Yunohost and Sandstorm and the like... just too many complicated problems that no help from forums could provide. They always forced me back to doing it myself: I've had a heck of a time trying to get nginx and apache running on the same server; I've never successfully gotten docker or docker-compose to seamlessly add services or apps to an existing two-app setup (mysql and wordpress) even though it is supposed to be so incredibly easy (even with the promised answer of portainer). I can setup and run a basic VPS running LAMP... going beyond that.... I am soo thankful for Cloudron!

I wonder if the licencing can play a role in how much ownership @girish and @nebulon and the Cloudron team feel toward their code and their subsequent "responsibility" to keep it running well. I mean, if it were as open as can be, and others started forking it and running it and offering their own specialized subscriptions for their version of Cloudron, I could see that there would be some run-off of problems and complaints back to the Cloudron team that this or that isn't working on Fork A or Subscription Service D, and then they end up maintaining code for ideological reasons rather than offering and improving a service for productivity and (user-)independence reasons.

@hakunamatata I just gave it a try and it went smooth as butter.

I used method 1 from https://docs.filerun.com/install_on_php#upload_to_your_server. (I've never used this method, I usually just upload the zip to my server, then move the contents to its webserver directory, but since this is Cloudron and Docker, I thought I'd try this method since it's all through the built-in SFTP and browser.)

I downloaded the Filerun.zip (and renamed it to FileRun.zip), as well as that other file, unzip.php, which, as far as I can tell, is not nefarious.

I uploaded both to the public directory on the LAMP app (/app/data/public), which you can navigate to using the Menu in the apps window in Cloudron:

You will need to delete or rename the existing index.php.

Two spots where you may have gone wrong:

1. I used a regular domain, as you can see in the screenshot. I did not make a folder in which to place the FileRun zip nor files. So, my FileRun is running in the root of the domain. So when I ran the command to install, it was https://filerun.example.com/unzip.php.

The installation went smooth, using the DB info found First Time Setup, in the apps dashboard:

2. The second place you may go wrong (as I have plenty of times) is that whereas MySQL DBs are often located at 'localhost', on Cloudron they are usually at "mysql". So, when FileRun is asking for the DB info, replace localhost with mysql.

Everything installed fine, and the final step is a pop-up giving you the superuser name and password. Copy that!!!!

Login, and the app prompts for the first superuser's data directory. I just chose /app/data/filerun, and pressed, "Create" in the dialogue. The 'dialogue' I mention is a series of pop-up walk-throughs, so read them carefully. Once you've made the data directory, you're gold.

Where do you think things didn't work for you?

EDIT: I gotta say, this is super speedy on my server, too!!
EDIT 2: I've turned off the app for now, too.

@jdaviescoates Do you mean selling the web service as Cloudron software, meaning, the client knows that they are paying for a Cloudron installation? Or do you mean selling webservices based on a self-hosted Cloudron? I have about 4 clients Wordpress sites hosted on my Cloudron, but none of them know how their Wordpress site is live, nor do I think they'd be interested necessarily to know about Cloudron, per se. I do have another client whose Wordpress site I've set up on a Cloudron install that will likely remain dedicate to just their site (because they may want email and chat options), so at some point I think I'll introduce them to the Cloudron backend.

Personally, I've been aiming to promote self-hosting, and totally see Cloudron as being an integral part of that to the clients I'm working with now, and and future ones. In some ways I might be losing income in that I'm trying to empower these users to eventually run with their Cloudron install on their own, but I also see that the service/maintenance/training side of things will probably still be needed.

@sam_uk How important is this in reality? I'm not conversant with its functionality or legality, but it seems to me that the sort of unexpected scenario you fear could happen even with a formal statement. Or, does the existence of such a statement on their website send a message to potential Big-Bucks take-overs attempts, that they won't get what they want, so they won't bother trying in the first place?

Otherwise, it seems like extraneous mental luggage that might be fine to deal with at some point in the future, but which distracts from their current focus and efforts, which are currently successfully meeting the needs of all of us Cloudronians.

This is coming from my stance as Messy Puritan - I love the stance of OS, but when and if someone else's company or efforts stray from that too far, then I just move on. So far, Cloudron hasn't done that. Will they? I don't really see how its my business. But right now, using it and paying for it keeps the business going.

Anyways, don't let my rant distract from my initial , sincere question: Does the existence of the sort of statement or document you are talking about have any actual real-world heft? Or is it more the principal of the thing? Thanks for engaging me on that.

@jdaviescoates And it would be cool if the sign up page could be customizable, with an appearance like the Element sign up page (customizable image background) rather than a bland rectangular box sign up. Something that tells them... You are about to enter an incredible place!

@girish Never stop never stopping!

This issue is only just now slowly popping up around the few forums I frequent. This post won't give all the juicy details, but suffice to say you need to be sure you have LOTS of room on your VPS if you are running Mastodon. My impression of Cloudron users is that we use high-RAM but not necessarily high-storage VPSes. My own Mastodon instance has been running for just over a year. I opened it up to federate with other instances bit by bit over time. At first 1GB of RAM and just a few 10Gs of space was needed. But as I connected with more and more federated instances, connected with relays... my RAM and space requirement shot up. Right now it is a lowly connected instance - I follow only 128 users, and have 26 followers, and have just 2 pinned #s, and it now requires no less than 5.5GB of RAM. I had to switch to a new Minio instance 3 days ago (I forgot to renew my precious KS-1 on which it lived) and in THREE days it has 20GB stored in the new Minio bucket.

People, get ready.

I recently announced to all my IG followers that I am going to break free from Big Data in 2022 and start using my very own self-hosted Pixelfed instance. If you want to join, you can find me at https://scookeoni.com/scooke. I think, because it's federated, you can also search for @scooke@scookeoni.com and you'll find my Pixelfed instance.

I also have a Mastodon server running, and I'm @shane@social.futurnumerique.com.

Both are set to be closed, for now. However, I am thinking of opening them up in order to let people sign up, in case they are hesitant to try running their own instance. But, I am nervous about that! How much work is moderating a Mastodon instance?? I don't think many will choose my Pixelfed instance since the domain is specific to my IG profile.

Anyway, I just followed a bunch of people who shared their own federated profiles, so if you see a Follow Request from scooke or scookeoni, that's me!

EDIT: I've been trying to use Pixeldroid there is still a bug in it stopping it from posting (to my own instance, at least). I've since stumbled upon Fedilab, installed from F-Droid, and though it lacks the built-in editing that Pixeldroid has, it can indeed post photos. I just need to edit them in some other app first.

@doodlemania2 Thanks
An update: I neglected to renew my KS-1 on which the Minio instance I was using in this post resided, so I lost it all. I then managed to get another KS-1 and used Caprover on it. By installing Minio via Caprover I have avoided hand-rolling all those certs - Caprover does it for me, I guess, in the background, with an approriately set up domain (*.example.com, not just example.com). Even though I enjoyed hand-installing it and managing it, using some software is actually nice.

The other difference, having installed visa Caprover, is that the HOSTNAME and ENDPOINT are the same (minio-s3.example.com). Not sure why. But the actual webapp of Minio is at mino.example.com. In my previous handrolled setup, the HOSTNAME was minio.example.com and the EndPoint was minio-s3.example.com. Like I said, I'm not sure why this is different. Maybe other software like Cloudron and Yunohost do the same as Caprover... all I know is it works.

Oh yes, another difference is that I used a region, eu-west-1, that doesn't necessarily correspond to my actual server location (Germany), but as long as I used that in the env file as well as the config for Minio, everything was fine.

One more difference is that there didn't seem to be a need to include the S3_PROTOCOL with my handrolled Minio, but it is needed with the Caprover install.

Here is the current env.production:
S3_ENABLED=true
S3_BUCKET=mastodon-bucket
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=longlongkeyand numbers
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=anotherlongkeywithevenmorenumbers
S3_REGION=eu-west-1
S3_PROTOCOL=https
S3_HOSTNAME=minio-s3.example.com
S3_ENDPOINT=https://minio-s3.example.com

Let me add that I am LOVING my little Mastodon instance; following and getting all kinds of super cool people and info, way more than I ever found on Twitter.

@marcusquinn Now that's a name I haven't heard in a loong time - Hed Kandi. I'm off to YT to see what gems might be there. In the meantime, here's my workstation. Just a 2015 MBPr running Windows, external monitor, nice headphones, handy masks in case I need to mask myself quickly, extra tablets and devices laying around for prototyping. I would like a second external monitor, tried to suggest to my wife that that would be a super Valentine's Day gift, but no luck.

Holy moly, looking up Hed Kandi on YT brought back a surge of memories, with Ministry of Sound being featured on that page, which then reminded me of deephousenetwork.com - 19 years ago I had been traveling to HK a few times a year for a project, and I'd found this internet cafe (going to google maps to look it up...) near Jordan and Nathan, and I'd groove out while working all night. Ah, I miss HK. Haven't been there now in about 7 years, and I fear it won't be like I remember whenever I do get back.

@dxciBel I might be wrong, and I hope I am for your sake, but when you change storage systems I think you will basically be starting over. There is a way to move buckets if origin and destination are both already S3. For me, even though I was one user on my own instance, at the time the amount of data I had stored was huge, so I just called it a loss, changed to Minio, and let the instance slowly repopulate all the data it needed. The one thing I did do was SAVE all my own images, headers, icons, etc., for my instance.

In the process of writing this I did find these:

https://stanislas.blog/2018/05/moving-mastodon-media-files-to-wasabi-object-storage/
- the author recommends AGAINST Wasabi, but you want to read about the tools to move data from a regular storage to S3 using aws-cli. Almost halfway down there is this command which is what you want, and which you'll (obviously) have to adjust for your use-case: aws s3 sync public/system/ s3://my-bucket/ --endpoint-url=https://s3.wasabisys.com. "aws" is the command, "s3" is an option, "public/system" refers to where the data currently is, in your cloudron image, and "s3://my-bucket" is your Minio instance. I guess the last bit you need to include; if it doesn't work initially tweak the endpoint a few times, like remove the https...not sure how that it will go, but, it looks straightforward.

Here are a few more. I suggest reading all of them before embarking on your journey:
https://github.com/cybrespace/cybrespace-meta/blob/master/s3.md
https://chrishubbs.com/2022/11/19/hosting-a-mastodon-instance-moving-asset-storage-to-s3/

We all probably know Yunohost, Caprover, Sandstorm, Portainer, and of course hand-spun Docker installations. I've come across a "new" one (it's probably been around, but I only just heard about it today) called Ethibox. It's French, like several others are, which is cool. I don't have a spare sever to see how it well or intuitive it works, but I thought I'd share it here to see if anyone else knows about it, or can share their thoughts about if they've used it.

It may, or may not, be considered a competitor to Cloudron, and thus may not be welcomed here as a topic. But one reason I share it is curiosity about how it packages its apps, and how that might inform the Cloudron effort, particularly concerning apps we don't have yet on Cloudron.

A final question: Why does it seem the French are really into self-hosting? I can't say I've come across many other options from countries other than say, the US, France, ... Is it a political thing? A language thing?

Anyway, bon, voilà.

@fbartels and others. If you look in the Minio topic of the forum you'll find some posts from me about using Minio with Mastodon. There is simply no other way to do this while on Cloudron, unless you have a huge VPS and run only Mastodon. If you federate with your instance, you are going to rack up a lot of data being stored. I'm going to post something about this on Mastodon for all those new users. Most I think have signed up on someone else's instance, and whoever runs those probably knows about the storage demands. But the new self-hosters are in for a shock after a few weeks of federation fun!

You can add as many domains as you need from your Dashboard. Under your username is a dropdown menu (1), and in that you will see an option for Domains & Certs (2), and from there you can enter in a new domain, sometimes using a handy API from a registrar. Of course, you have to have set an A record for the domain(s) you are adding (do this ahead of time for it to work seamlessly).

Or, in the App dashboard, you can simply add a subdomain if you want to keep just one domain. So, mastodon.example.com, or chat.example.com, etc.

Dashboard

Domains

Enter domain name here

@micmc I totally get what you are saying. Perhaps one work around for now could be promoting the packages as you suggested, and then when the initial Admin account is created you also make one each of the Package apps (Education - Moodle, Chat, NC, e.g.) using typical subdomains (moodle.example.com, chat.example.com, cloud.example.com) and assign those to a Group that that Admin can see, and only those apps. Then, if they wish to change the url, they can from their Admin Dashboard. But they won't see all the other apps. (Or will they? I've only ever made regular users and in those cases they only see the Apps for which they have permission).

If the Admin though is going to be more like an actual admin and want to, and is able to, fiddle with all the other settings, then I guess they will be able to see all the other apps in the App Store. I agree, an ability to present "Packages" for clients would be great.

The replies seem to be coming more from developers lately, people who have skills enough to contribute, who also hold strong beliefs about open source. This is good, and by and large it is pleasant to see an overall positive approach to Cloudron.

I am a non-developer, but am also someone who likes the idea and principle of open source. I want to get away from proprietary apps and data lock-in. From my perspective, Cloudron has been an incredible way for me to learn about and access a plethora of open source apps, the delivery of which just works! I hope the various principled devs out there can appreciate a users perspective like mine, and just how radical Cloudron is. I've tried other open source attempts, and frankly they are all lacking in deliverability; checking out their forums reveals not even the devs can figure out what went wrong when something does; and rarely it seems are the project heads in the forums, like the Cloudron Team is, since the resolution of any problem relies on the upstream devs pushing fixes that may or may not come in time. What a mess for a user like myself, and I think there are many many users like myself. I think we are one mid-layer that will help make open source more understandable, reachable, and friendly, to all our non-techy families and friends, they who think only of Skype, Word, Facebook, but themselves are increasingly becoming disgruntled. They will never read certain /r/ nor news.ycombinator.com articles, but they will listen to me when I set up an open source chat instance, using a vanity domain, with email, on Cloudron, and it just works!

Another positive aspect of Cloudron's approach is that they don't try to cloak the open sources apps they offer as though they are something the Cloudron team created. I've come across a few such endeavours, and it worries me when I think there are regions and countries that think ****blog, *****forms, *****pad are all made by *****soft! It verges on deception, even though, after some digging, a user can find out that the software is actually made by other open source efforts. I hope this means that as more people hear about Mastodon, or Element, or booktype, etc., and look for options, they will be led to Cloudron. I for one came because I couldn't for the life of me get Rocket.Chat, Taiga and SOGo all running on the same server, by hand. Not a problem for Cloudron!!

Keep it up!!

I realize this doesn’t answer your question, but I love your Help requests Dustin. They stem from real-world, in-use, time-sensitive contexts, the solving of which actually helps many of us (I think) who read through the issues, and likely have had/will have the same. Your requests are a dynamic alternative to others’ requests about “why can’t Cloudron do X because unicorns and fairies”, or “I have an imagined use case that will apply once to me, maybe, and I demand the Cloudron devs put all their focus on my bizarre niche demand”.

Press on!

@SirFiChi I just stumbled upon this and came here to add it to the Wishlist, too. Seems like it would be a good fit for a LAMP-installed Moodle.

Looked great. Sorry I couldn't make it, I was swimming in the ocean with my kids.

@jdaviescoates @LoudLemur I second the directional mic. It's a world of difference when I make a recording with my MBPr mic (all kinds of computer sounds are plain to hear). When I use my old USB Samson mic, wow! A pleasant warm tone with almost zero hum, hiss, brrr, what have you.

@drsum1 This has made me very curious. Could you share other services which do allow for more than one instance/more than one installation? I took a look at the pricing page and sure, it doesn't specifically say that the price is for one paid Cloudron instance on one server... but I'm curious what precedents could have led you to even think that more than one VPS could be possible. And if so, I'd be curious to check out whatever other services you've used that do price like that.

I'm just thinking digitally here, but most fonts, Wordpress themes and plugins (and other paid themes and plugins), etc. are for one installation/project. Paid graphics, audio, various media can be used however many times in many different projects. Other projects like Yunohost and the like (the paid versions), as far as I know, also price it per server.

Anyway, like I mentioned, I'm curious what you've been using that allows for mutiple installs because I'm always on the look out for good software (often paid) that can be used in lots of ways. Thanks!

If you (01) click on an app's gear in the My Apps dashboard view, it will take you to an app-specific view of information. In the specific view you can click on the far right "book" icon (02), and a drop-down menu appears. At the top of that menu is First Time Setup. (03) Click on that and a small pop-up will appear, in which the app's info is revealed. It may or may not be the same as your Cloudron user, so double check.

If that isn't available, then you've installed an app with more detailed info which can be found by clicking on File Manager (04), which will open a new window in which you will find a file named "config.json", or some variation of that, "config". These ones usually include lots of details, like DB info, server, info, as well as the user info. Don't erase these!

1. Click the Gear

02. First Time Setup

03. App info

04. File Manager for detailed app info, depending on the app.

Finally, be sure to read the docs!! Most answers can be found there, but sometimes it is a bit more helpful to ask on the Forum.

Yeah! This would be nice.

@girish said in What's coming in Cloudron 6.3:

Pushed a change that makes the filenames of backups more readable. It's just app_<domain>_vVersion.

root@my:/var/backups/2021-05-09-000811-352# ls
app_test.cloudron.work_v1.1.3.tar.gz

Thank you!!

I have only poked around with SOGO, but I don't recall being able to make new email address from within it.

Does anyone know a way that I can make email addresses, with an existing domain, without also creating Cloudron users?

Thank you!

@superhua Assuming you can access the VPS using ssh, or even through the webhost Dashboard, you will need to navigate to the directory which @nebulon indicated, /var/backups and delete the oldest ones, maybe the about half of whatever number you find in there. Be careful when running rm, if you use the wrong commands you can delete more than /var/backups/whicheveryouwish.

Once you deleted some of the backups, you can then follow the link @nebulon shared, BUT, rather than running each of those commands and coming back here to get help for each and every one that didn't do what was expected, I suggest you simply restart, or reboot, the VPS. Everything should/could start up normally. However, it is possible that some files that Cloudron needs function after a restart didn't get written to the disk, so you very well may end up back at the link shared above.

There is, at this point, absolutely no need to nuke the server and start again. All that's happened is the backups (most likely) took up all the space. YOu also don't need to "increase the disk size", all you need to do is delete some of those backups.

In the meantime, I suggest signing up at Scaleway for their object storage, make a bucket, etc., and when Cloudron is back up and running, enter the Scaleway details into the Backup section of the Dashboard. You get up to 75GB for free, which should take you a while to fill up. Plus, if you trim your backups to only 2 weeks, it will take lots, probably LOTS, of time using that backup before you actually need to upgrade something (the Scaleway plan, another backup option, migrate to a bigger VPS) - I started with one that had 16GB ram and 100GB space, thought it would be fine, but Cloudron has so many goodies I had to upgrade again, to 24GB ram...wasn't enough, 36GB ram, and now finally one with 64GB of ram and 780 GB ssd. But that process took 2 years. You are at the start of a wonderful journey!

Amazing! You are all simply amazing!

@girish Normally a question like this would see me running off to give it a try, to give feedback, but when I got to https://charmhub.io/ I realized that's a whole other world. I didn't see my beloved Wordpress, Ghost, CRM-style apps right away... but Bigdata Dev Rsyslog Forwarder Ha, Ballot Content Cache, Zabbix Java Gateway (I recognize "java" but was under the impression it should be avoided at all costs!), Thrunk External Agent, Pipelines Visualization, Nexentaedge Iscsi Gw, Ibm Platform Lsf Server, Ceph Radosgw... I'll slowly back back away now. Good luck to you all.

@fbartels thanks for that. I was getting caught up in a missionary fervor!

@doodlemania2 Keep up the good work!

@girish I think you need to shut this poster down, much like another earlier on (a year ago or so?). Their behaviour and attitude is beyond any measure of civility, no matter the reason. Please. I'd support any decision to even remove them completely and delete their comments. It's unbelievable.

I've already upvoted this, but want to add that it really would be incredible to get this!

Another similar effort is FLAP. Seeing as it's just one person, I think, running it, it's pretty impressive. There are still updates to its repository. He is open to direct feedback. Its GUI is not as polished as Cloudron, but I like it a bit more than the sparseness of Yunohost.

It takes a lot of managing. I recently installed it via Yunohost on a VPS with 6GB RAM, 100GB SSD, and every 15 minutes it would crash. This is because the default setup includes what looks like 100s of feeds, and you gotta then try to delete the ones you don't want... but there's soo many, and most I had never heard of! I realized I could just delete them column by column. Still took awhile. Once it was all gone (because I wasn't going to just let all these random feeds load), I decided I really didn't want to wade through the setup again! I could just read the websites I'd want "in-person".

Anyway, it looks handy, and if the initial install could have just a few samples, it would have left a better impression on me.

Hello,
I've come across another company offering open source apps, and they use names like the following: KABIcloud (Nextcloud), Email, KABIsocial (Mastodon) and KABIchat (Matrix) . This reminds me of another company that uses their own names for open source apps that they haven't made, and the same convention for what I think are apps they have made.

I'm thinking of offering similar services, but plan on sticking with the app names, and not "rebranding" to SCChat, SCCloud, SCSocial, etc. I don't intend to denigrate these laudable efforts to offer open source apps, but what convention is there about labelling them with another name? Is there something in the licence that allows for that, or maybe doesn't actually allow for it? One root question about this practice I have is: Doesn't this give the impression that "I" made SCChat, or any other app? With the other one (whose name I'm forgetting, that's why I'm not using it, and it's too late for me to feel like googling it - i googled it - frama*), even though I knew they were using these existing open sources apps, I had to really dig in their websites to find any kind of acknowledgement. At least this KABI includes the app name in brackets; but for someone new to this, it's still confusing.

Anyway, I figure someone here could direct me to a website about open source licences in general, and maybe more specifically what it expected/allowed when it comes to renaming or acknowledging. Thank you!

PS: This is yet one more reason why I appreciate Cloudron. They don't obfuscate the source of the apps they offer in the App Store.

Good thing I recently upgrade my VPS!! Go @Benoit!