From NextCloud 29 to 31 using Alpine LXC

Not long ago we had some fun upgrading to NextCloud 29. Today I relized 31 is out!! times flies and hence we need to verify if the process has gotten easy or not.

For background, I'm using LXC with Alpine from the Proxmox Helper Scripts and something important to understand is that this way of installing NextCloud is not documented at all by nextcloud itself!

Recently, the packages from NextCloud changed the way to update which we learnt about upgrading to 29.

This time in theroy we should install nextcloud-30 and upgrade then repeat for 31 and done! sounds easy, let's see how it goes!

As said, this should be quick. Install the new apk, occ upgrade and done.

$ apk add nextcloud30

Executing nextcloud30-30.0.13-r0.post-install

  * If you are upgrading to a versioned package (starts at v29.0.4-r1),
    please do the following:

  * Run "apk upgrade -a" a second time to complete the upgrade of all
    nextcloud packages
  * Run "occ upgrade" to finish upgrading your Nextcloud instance
  * NOTE: since v29.0.4-r1 "occ" command is now in package "nextcloudNN-occ"

So we do as it says apk upgrade -a and then occ upgrade.

Immediately, we find our first problem. Some apps complain that they haven't been updated correctly. To fix this, I started disabling them and running the upgrade command again, which looks like this from my history:

901 occ app:disable activity
 905 occ upgrade
 906 occ app:disable circles
 907 occ upgrade
 908 occ app:disable comments
 909 occ upgrade
 910 occ app:disable dashboard
 911 occ upgrade
 912 occ app:disable federation
 913 occ upgrade
 914 occ app:disable files_downloadlimit
 915 occ upgrade
 916 occ app:disable files_pdfviewer
 917 occ upgrade
 918 occ app:disable files_sharing
 919 occ upgrade
 920 occ app:disable files_trashbin
 921 occ upgrade
 922 occ app:disable files_versions
 923 occ upgrade
 924 occ app:disable logreader
 925 occ upgrade
 926 occ app:disable notifications
 927 occ upgrade
 928 occ app:disable password_policy
 929 occ upgrade
 930 occ app:disable photos
 931 occ upgrade
 932 occ app:disable privacy
 933 occ upgrade
 934 occ app:disable recommendations
 935 occ upgrade
 936 occ app:disable serverinfo
 937 occ upgrade
 938 occ app:disable sharebymail
 939 occ upgrade
 940 occ app:disable support
 941 occ upgrade
 942 occ app:disable survey_client
 943 occ upgrade
 944 occ app:disable text
 945 occ upgrade

Phew... it felt like I had to disable all apps from NextCloud.

Finally, I run the recommended steps from NextCloud documentation and get out of maintenance mode.

$ occ db:add-missing-columns
$ occ db:add-missing-indices
$ occ db:add-missing-primary-keys
$ occ maintenance:mode --off

I check the UI admin view and run a repair because it's complaining about some mime types.

occ maintenance:repair --include-expensive

ok... we are on Nextcloud Hub 9 (30.0.13) and running occ upgrade doesn't find any upgrade. Seems the first part was much easier than last time!

I noticed activity is not there anymore, which I like; now it goes directly into files.

Memories is not working, seems more related to shared folders not being shared anymore... Since I'll upgrade to 31, I made a note about this and moved on.

Encouraged by the 30 upgrade, we move on to 31.

$ apk add nextcloud31
$ apk upgrade -a
$ occ upgrade

And... I have the exact same error as before, but with new apps:

$ occ upgrade
Nextcloud or one of the apps require upgrade - only a limited number of commands are available
You may use your browser or the occ upgrade command to do the upgrade
Setting log level to debug
Turned on maintenance mode
Updating database schema
Updated database
UnexpectedValueException: The files of the app "app_api" were not correctly replaced before running the update
Update failed

At this point, I have to wonder... I am missing a step that is not documented anywhere? But oh well... with a huge sigh, I move on to disable any app that complains yet again.

And... a pleasant surprise! I only had to disable app_api!

$ occ db:add-missing-columns
$ occ db:add-missing-indices
$ occ db:add-missing-primary-keys
$ occ maintenance:mode --off
$ occ maintenance:repair --include-expensive

I do wonder why some of these commands are not already part of the upgrade.

At this point, I remember to check the release notes for breaking changes... 🤦‍♂️

Lucky me, no breaking changes that I care about.

I noticed the reason shared files and so on don't work is because I disabled those apps 😄, but I can't install them again because "no internet" error. This is quite weird since we do have a connection.. I can reach it from my PC & phone. So, time to dig.

This was a fun one that didn't end up as good. Run it down to idn_to_utf8 not working as expected. Found an issue in GitHub that mentioned rebooting nginx. Rebooted the whole container and now it works.

I couldn't update apps through occ , but I could enable the ones I wanted in the UI. Some didn't work, which I guess they are not yet ready for 31.

Overall, the experience was better. I spent more time than last time with the weird bug, but that was me wanting to fully understand it