SMB

[joshtrichards]

Documentation

There are inconsistencies between the SMB and FULL examples examples:

• https://github.com/nextcloud/docker/tree/master/.examples/dockerfiles/smb
• https://github.com/nextcloud/docker/tree/master/.examples/dockerfiles/full

The former appears to be out-dated while the latter appears to better match the PHP image's recommended approach.

Some problems have been reported by others trying to use the SMB examples - e.g.

• [Bug]: SMB webdav Exception "Malformed state response from server", "Undefined index: attributes" server#41114 (comment) (this Issue isn't specific to the Docker image, but some of the comments in it highlight challenges noted by users trying to utilize the examples from here)
• smb support unavailable even from "full" image #1638
• Malformed state response from server icewind1991/SMB#109 (comment)

Tasks (preliminary):

• Review PHP image's recommended approach for adding things
• Assess whether our FULL example follows the PHP image model and otherwise seems reasonable
• Confirm native rather than wrapped SMB mode is detected/used by External Storage
• Test FULL example against a "typical" SMB server
• Port tested FULL example to SMB only example

Out of scope but worth mentioning:

• Upstream docs in this area could probably use some clarity (and I don't mean specific to Docker)

Image

Worth a revisit of whether to include/why we're not including smbclient in the image by default

Context:

• Community snap does not contain smbclient even though requested for years
• Community snap recommends using SMB/CIFS FUSE + Local mount
• SMB/CIFS FUSE is another option (possibly even preferred)
• Official Nextcloud GmbH AIO does contain smbclient

Tasks

• ... TBD
• If not including, document why as a FAQ/Known Issue in the README

[joshtrichards]

We also might want to explore documenting some other ways of mounting CIFS/SMB volumes since people don't seem to be aware of them:

• fstab (OS)
• docker volumes with the cifs driver (OS+docker)
• etc

Though at some point this is outside the scope of the image and more a pure documentation issue - and it's not realistic for us to document all third-party integrations. But maybe some hints + links to third-party docs

[juan11perez]

Gents,
I used the first example and worked fine for me.
I'm moving away from AIO and it did have smb.

[LevAnni777]

Anybody, please tell me if this bug will be fixed any time soon?

[joshtrichards]

@LevAnni777 What bug are you referring to? The full example is valid / functions just fine.

[LevAnni777]

Truenas: TrueNAS SCALE Dragonfish
Nextcloud App: 29.0.3

Nextcloud runs without any errors.

When External SMB Storage is mounted in Nextcloud, the user experiences whole range of weird behaviors like:

Unable to list folder contents,
Unable to upload certain files, or more than few files at once,
Unable to download some files

Etc..

Meanwhile the nextcloud.log file generates these errors:

{"reqId":"7G6f9KKlCrUv8OAtpOOw","level":3,"time":"2024-07-20T14:47:10+00:00","remoteAddr":"192.168.2.235","user":"maka","app":"PHP","method":"PROPFIND","url":"/remote.php/dav/files/maka/Home/All%20Pics/","message":"Undefined array key \"attributes\" at /var/www/html/app> {"reqId":"7G6f9KKlCrUv8OAtpOOw","level":3,"time":"2024-07-20T14:47:10+00:00","remoteAddr":"192.168.2.235","user":"maka","app":"webdav","method":"PROPFIND","url":"/remote.php/dav/files/maka/Home/All%20Pics/","message":"Malformed state response from server","userAgent":"M>

Seems like there is no other way to either wait for docker publisher to update the smbclient package, or users like me are forced to build their own nextcloud docker container composed with a newer smbclient package :/ which involves far more knowledge than I have :/

[maxhoesel]

For anyone interested, I have ported over the SMB-specific adjustments from the full example to a custom SMB-only container image: https://github.com/spacebird-dev/nextcloud-docker-smb/pkgs/container/nextcloud-docker-smb. These images are automatically kept up-to-date and should be a drop-in replacement for the ones provided by this project. Should be useful for testing the different SMB implementations if nothing else :)

I did this because using the smb example (which uses the system-native smbclient) caused issues with my setup (same as documented in here) and I did not want to use the full image with supervisord.

---

Personally, I would really appreciate it if this project considered shipping php-smbclient as part of its base image. I (and seemingly quite a few others) use Nextcloud as a "frontend" to a SMB share that lives on a NAS. This allows me to use all of Nextclouds wonderful features without having to "lock into" Nextclouds file management structure. Having to build a custom image for SMB support makes deployments more complicated (especially on k8s with the community helm chart, where one can't easily rebuild a container).

While it is possible to mount SMB shares through the docker host (or as a PVC in k8s) and then include them as a "local" storage, I am not a fan of this approach as it couples user-specific configuration (external storage) to the way the application is installed (mount points of the SMB shares), when the native smbclient integration requires none of this.

As far as image size goes, my SMB-enabled image consumes about 40MB more than the official image. While that's significant, I think the trade-off in convenience wold be worth it for a lot of people including myself, especially since the base image is already quite chonky as-is:

Regarding what approach to use for the SMB implementation, the Nextcloud documentation says that the php-smbclient approach is preferred over the "native" solution:

The SMB/CIFS backend requires smbclient or the PHP smbclient module to be installed on the Nextcloud server. The PHP smbclient module is preferred, but either will work. These should be included in any Linux distribution. (See PECL smbclient if your distro does not include them.)

https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/configuration_files/external_storage/smb.html