Installing NextCloud on a Pi and an HP EliteBook
Yesterday I installed Nextcloud on two devices, a raspberry Pi and an HP Elite book and I could see a clear difference between the two machines. The HP is a laptop on which I installed a minimal version of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and I installed a similar version of Ubuntu on the Raspberry Pi.
Fast on the HP Elite Book
I believe I used Snap to install Nextcloud and then went to the web interface to configure it automatically by simply creating a user. Within seconds the system was up and running and I was able to upload images, create directories and more. It worked well.
Slow on Pi
I then tried the same installation procedure on the Raspberry Pi and right from the start I noticed a difference. With the Pi simply opening Firefox was a slower experience. Downloading Nextcloud took several minutes on the Raspberry Pi and then several more minutes to create the first admin/user.
I setup the Raspberry Pi to provide me with SSH access before trying to upload an image from a third machine. It failed, giving me an error: “insufficient memory” message. I killed the Firefox process, tried again and it worked.
Lack of CPU power
I believe that the error I was getting when uploading from the Nextcloud iOS app was due to a lack of resources but I am not sure. The Pi has sufficient RAM. I was playing with an 8GB model. It’s the CPU that couldn’t cope, which is why I killed the Firefox process.
Why Use a GUI
By using the GUI with the PI yesterday I got to see error messages that I don’t usually get to see and I got to experiment. By seeing error messages we have a better idea of what to fix than when we just get an error in the iOS app.
Next Step
The next step is to try the same experiment but with Ubuntu Server rather than the Desktop version. This should save CPU power and enable the same experiment, without the overhead. If configured correctly then you could plug it into the LAN network and use the device from anywhere where it can be wired in.
Why a PI rather than a Thin Client or Bare bone PC?
In practice you can use any old computer you have gathering dust, but in so doing you’re going to need a space for the laptop if you use a laptop or a tower if you’re using an old PC. A Bare bones PC or a thin client would be more interesting but the cost is around 200 CHF if you count 133 CHF for a NUC and 70 CHF or more for a hard drive. With the Raspberry PI you end up spending a similar amount.
I read that you could setup a NUC with two four terabyte drives. This is a great solution if you want to invest in a slightly higher spec solution.
The advantage of the Pi is that it doesn’t take much more space than a deck of playing cards. Your Nextcloud client could live directly plugged in to the router with a tiny footprint.
Flexible
One of the great things about playing with Raspberry Pi is that we all have at least three or four microSD cards. This means that we can install one OS on one card, and another OS on another card. We can swap from one OS to another within seconds with the Pi.
Remembering the 90s
When I was playing with Linux in the 90s I had to burn CDs and DVDs every time I wanted to experiment with a different OS. This was wasteful as each CD-ROM or DVD would be used once or twice at most, before being waste. When I installed Linux on the latest laptop I had to write the USB key, and then install from the USB key to the laptop.
With a Raspberry Pi SD card you write the OS to the microSD card and 30 seconds after you finish writing it you’re booting up the Pi. This means that experimentation can be very fast. To use an apt french expression “it’s not like drinking the sea”, “ce n’est pas la mer à boire”. It’s easy to experiment until you break something. It’s easy to reset.
And Finally
If you want to keep your personal Nextcloud instance available 24 hours a day then a Raspberry Pi makes sense because you can use a 500 gigabyte MicroSD card and store twice as much data backups as you have on your phone. The other option is that you can plug in a box like this to your Nextcloud laptop every now and then and get terabytes of storage for much cheaper than if you use Synology or another brand. The other advantage is that if a Pi or laptop dies, you can plug in another device and recover access within seconds.
There are simpler solutions for sharing disks between computers, like Samba but sometimes it’s good to learn tools that can do more.
