How to access external NextCloud datafolder

upliftedduck@feddit.nl to Selfhosted@lemmy.world – 14 points –

So, i have a NextCloud instance running, with the data directory binded to a folder on my storage. Now, when ik want to list or edit the contents of this folder directly from Nautilus or the terminal, I get a permission denied message. Obviously i do not have sufficent rights. How do i give myself permissions to at least view the contents of the folder? Maybe this is basis linux stuff, I have just not touched this before, and I don't want to modify this folder or break my NextCloud ;)

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I'm guessing you're talking about the client, right? The data folder on the server shouldn't be touched or modified, except by Nextcloud.

Check who owns the folder. I'll assume the folder is at ~/Nextcloud, but if it's not, just substitute in the path to the Nextcloud folder.

You can check who owns the folder using ls:

ls -la ~/Nextcloud

This should give you something like:

drwx------ 10 user group    4096 2024-03-04 00:00 Nextcloud

Where the word "user" is in the above example should be the name of the owner of the directory. Where the word "group" is should be the group.

If either is root, check to make sure the Nextcloud client is not running as root (using sudo or otherwise).

Otherwise, give yourself ownership of the directory:

sudo chown username:username -R ~/Nextcloud

Replace username with your username.

Thanks for the explanation. Would that break nextcloud if i changed the owner of the folder?

The data is all stored server-side. The worst that could happen is the sync connection stops working and you need to redownload the files. Nothing gets deleted by these commands. They will still be on your disk and accessible by you.

If this breaks Nextcloud, it indicates something's wrong with your installation.

Thanks, I went with the suggested webdav route, this is fine for now.